Obsidian New RPG Avowed

floatindolphin said:
Turns out I worked on this a few years ago. Animated some NPCs, look out for a guy fishing!
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I'm glad you mentioned that rather than the facial animations. I'm being slightly tongue in cheek there, I played for a few more hours last night and couldn't get over how poor that particular aspect was.

That said, I'm enjoying the combat more as I unlock further tiers of abilities. Caster is good, much better than my initial direction which was an archer type ranger build in terms of gameplay. The world isn't really grabbing me however, I'm more of an RPG nerd than hardcore action/open world player. The dwarf character you unlock after Kai is a mixed bag, sort of funny at times but equally annoying at others. I'm struggling to become invested in the storylines or characters you interact with, and the world as a whole while pretty enough despite my not liking the art direction/aesthetic, feels soulless to me due to how static everything is, there's very little interaction to be had or things going on.

To go back to my earlier statement regarding an archer/ranger build, I'm a big fan of playing stealthy sneak-thief types in RPG's and was hoping to get that opportunity here. It felt a bit pointless, the world doesn't really reward that sort of playstyle in my opinion, there's zero point in being stealthy in cities because nobody cares if you steal their junk, they don't mention it whatsoever. From a combat perspective I did find the archery route quite clunky compared to casting or playing melee, you're not really going to play the silent assassin type either as you'll kill maybe one or two enemies in a pack (they almost always are in packs) as it immediately alerts the entire group regardless of how far away some are. I'm so-so on the way you increase in strength too, ultimately it's reliant on your gear being upgraded more than anything from what I can tell. I can use lower tier spells and abilities and kill things just fine. I feel the focus on equipment upgrading is a bit too strong, I'd rather have a broader range of collectible equipment that can be better or worse than what you have without said focus.

I actually did clear a fair chunk of the first area, I have a couple of side quests left but the option to leave for the next map/area is available to me now.
 
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Gray2233 said:
I'm glad you mentioned that rather than the facial animations. I'm being slightly tongue in cheek there, I played for a few more hours last night and couldn't get over how poor that particular aspect was.

That said, I'm enjoying the combat more as I unlock further tiers of abilities. Caster is good, much better than my initial direction which was an archer type ranger build in terms of gameplay. The world isn't really grabbing me however, I'm more of an RPG nerd than hardcore action/open world player. The dwarf character you unlock after Kai is a mixed bag, sort of funny at times but equally annoying at others. I'm struggling to become invested in the storylines or characters you interact with, and the world as a whole while pretty enough despite my not liking the art direction/aesthetic, feels soulless to me due to how static everything is, there's very little interaction to be had or things going on.

To go back to my earlier statement regarding an archer/ranger build, I'm a big fan of playing stealthy sneak-thief types in RPG's and was hoping to get that opportunity here. It felt a bit pointless, the world doesn't really reward that sort of playstyle in my opinion, there's zero point in being stealthy in cities because nobody cares if you steal their junk, they don't mention it whatsoever. From a combat perspective I did find the archery route quite clunky compared to casting or playing melee, you're not really going to play the silent assassin type either as you'll kill maybe one or two enemies in a pack (they almost always are in packs) as it immediately alerts the entire group regardless of how far away some are. I'm so-so on the way you increase in strength too, ultimately it's reliant on your gear being upgraded more than anything from what I can tell. I can use lower tier spells and abilities and kill things just fine. I feel the focus on equipment upgrading is a bit too strong, I'd rather have a broader range of collectible equipment that can be better or worse than what you have without said focus.

I actually did clear a fair chunk of the first area, I have a couple of side quests left but the option to leave for the next map/area is available to me now.
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I’ve not seen anything of the game, was just given the body anims to work on from an outsource company.

Maybe they should have come to me to do the facial anims? (That used to be my speciality) ☺️
 
floatindolphin said:
I’ve not seen anything of the game, was just given the body anims to work on from an outsource company.

Maybe they should have come to me to do the facial anims? (That used to be my speciality) ☺️
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I'm not one for streaming or recording play, but there's this mad jaw animation that makes it look like a good few NPC's are going to unhinge it at any moment like a snake going for food.

I'll keep an eye out for the fisherman thing though, I don't think I've seen that so far but might have skimmed, and I've not spent too much time around coastlines etc.
 
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floatindolphin said:
Turns out I worked on this a few years ago. Animated some NPCs, look out for a guy fishing!
Click to expand...
VK8RDkOS_o.png

This guy by any chance? Shame he didn't have anytyhing useful to sell me, but I guess that wasn't your job ;)

Quite into the game now. It does some things really well, and other things really badly. But overall I'm pretty hooked.

Being a mage with a rifle is pretty sweet, got to say :)
 
hytin11 said:
It's woke. So I won't be touching it.

Lots of references to characters in the game being gay, not interested. Clearly they don't want my money.
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That's what counts as woke for you is it? Some imaginary pixels have some gay dialogue

I guess Fallout: New Vegas was woke 15+ years ago.

Fallout 2 was woke 20+ years ago.

'The Wire' was woke 20+ years ago.

Buffy was woke 25 years ago

Friends was woke 30+ years ago

Etc.
 
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strumpusplunket said:
VK8RDkOS_o.png

This guy by any chance? Shame he didn't have anytyhing useful to sell me, but I guess that wasn't your job ;)

Quite into the game now. It does some things really well, and other things really badly. But overall I'm pretty hooked.

Being a mage with a rifle is pretty sweet, got to say :)
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Ha ha! Could well be! Did he cast his line into the water?
 
floatindolphin said:
Ha ha! Could well be! Did he cast his line into the water?
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It might be better to question why they were hiring externally for basic things, especially given the static nature of NPC's in general:


This is a great watch, as we know Avowed had a long dev' cycle with a huge budget. Your fishing animation was outsourced, but they couldn't spend the money on built in Unreal tools to simply make NPC's walk around?

The dev' team was huge too, why did they need to outsource?

I'm sure this is something you're aware of, I'm not questioning your work (which I'm sure is great) but the way things were managed is clearly barmy. It very much feels that those in charge aren't technically minded, and they're hiring people who are very much the same as them rather than competent developers.
 
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Gray2233 said:
It might be better to question why they were hiring externally for basic things, especially given the static nature of NPC's in general:


This is a great watch, as we know Avowed had a long dev' cycle with a huge budget.
Click to expand...
Gray2233 said:
The dev' team was huge too, why did they need to outsource?

I'm sure this is something you're aware of, I'm not questioning your work (which I'm sure is great) but the way things were managed is clearly barmy. It very much feels that those in charge aren't technically minded, and they're hiring people who are very much the same as them rather than competent developers.
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Eh? Avowed is what they would consider a lower budget title.

Probably in the 30-40 million dollar range.
 
VincentHanna said:
Eh? Avowed is what they would consider a lower budget title.

Probably in the 30-40 million dollar range.
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While I can't find hard data, every estimate I've seen puts it within the 80-150m range.

Probably due to the frequent resets, and even assuming your 30-40m this is not a game I would expect to have that sort of budget.

I'd recommend Greedfall if you enjoyed it but want more RPG, it was made by an indie studio for a hell of a lot less than 30m while having very similar themes.

You cannot sell Obsidian under the MS flag as an indie/low budget studio, and there is zero excuse for the state of the game. I enjoy parts of it, but the fact the NPC's are entirely static is shockingly bad, we didn't see that in 3D RPG games 20 + years ago.

Edit: 30-40m being "low budget" is laughable as an argument and frankly pushes my concerns, you surely cannot be serious by arguing that 30-40m is a budget offering? If that is the result of 30 million, let alone hundreds of millions, 90% of the staff need to be fired and the management need to be investigated.
 
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