Microsoft Avowed (first-person RPG set in Pillars of Eternity world, Fall 2024) - interviews with game director Carrie Patel and gameplay director Gabe Paramo

[Massdriver]

Looking good. Give us a high budget Pillars 3 after this!

[Dre801]

Looks better than the last time we saw it, at least.

[skillzdadirecta]

6 hours ago, Bacon said:

That looks a lot like the outer worlds but magic

[Keyser_Soze]

The "worst" part of The Outer Worlds was the corporate humor they slather you with every step of your journey. This looks nothing like that. 🤷‍♀️

[Bacon]

7 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

The "worst" part of The Outer Worlds was the corporate humor they slather you with every step of your journey. This looks nothing like that. 🤷‍♀️

The ranged combat was mid. Like 3 of 5 weapon were ranged. Bow, Gun, and Wand. NPC dialogue still comes across as garbage lame and boring.

[crispy4000]

3 hours ago, Dre801 said:

Looks better than the last time we saw it, at least.

 

Does it?  Maybe the lighting was tweaked?

 

The combat breakdown didn't do it any favors, IMO.  But it's an RPG, so its more important it holds up hours in than just snap appearances.  I would have liked to see the towns and settlements.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

I’m not sure I’m feeling the current art style. Something about the visuals in the latest video just seems off putting to me. I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe it was a lack luster amount of environmental detail. Maybe it’s the FOV. Maybe it is the art style itself of trying to be something like Elder Scrolls with a color pallet closer to Sea of Thieves. 

[Dre801]

FOV is shit.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

[Keyser_Soze]

That video does offer a little bit more insight into the game. Perhaps it was hinted at but never explicitly said (although Wade said it) it is set in the Pillars of Eternity world.

 

tl;dw

 

- The area they showed off, Shatterskarp, is considered a sidequest and the player could miss it

- Tyler McCombs designed the area and it's open zone like Sonic Frontiers or The Outer Worlds (but bigger) and there are multiple paths to combat encounters

- You can use magic on the environment to get to other places, like burning vines and stuff

- You can swim

- You get two loadouts, you have a power attack, a parry. Dual wands can mix and match magic.

- There is a skill tree and it's easy to respec

- You have companions.

 

there is slightly more footage in the video than what they showed but not like a super amount. But those are the main points of the video. She talked about the story which the gameplay guy said she said too much but maybe that's a big deal for POE people or something.

[Spork3245]

This looks like a 7/10 gamepass game

 

[Bacon]

Wands are just so fuckin' lame. Like, just use orbs or staves or tomes. Wands are just some pansy ass shit.

[Bacon]

Just now, Spork3245 said:

This looks like a 7/10 gamepass game

 

Shame they got rid of the one dollar game pass.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

The official Xbox Wire blog post for the Deeper Dive video:

 

Diving Deeper into the World of Avowed - Xbox Wire

NEWS.XBOX.COM

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Avowed's appearance in Developer_Direct was our most in-depth look at the game yet - but Obsidian just told us a lot more about the game in an exclusive interview.

 

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At the recent Xbox Developer_Direct 2024 broadcast, Obsidian Entertainment shared its most comprehensive look yet at its upcoming fantasy-action RPG, Avowed.  

 

But even that only scratched at the surface of what’s coming your way this fall. On today’s special episode of The Official Xbox Podcast, Avowed Game Director Carrie Patel and Gameplay Director Gabe Paramo shared an extended look at the quest showcased during Developer_Direct, providing more detail on the moment-to-moment experience of the flexible combat system, and where this side quest fits in the larger narrative of Avowed. 

 

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Interviews with game director Carrie Patel and gameplay director Gabe Paramo

 

Obsidian interview about first-person RPG Avowed

WWW.EUROGAMER.NET

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Last week, we finally got a proper look at Obsidian's new role-playing game Avowed. It was one of the handful of exclus…

 

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Last week, we finally got a proper look at Obsidian's new role-playing game Avowed. It was one of the handful of exclusive Xbox games at the Developer Direct, so the spotlight was searingly on it. But while there were things I was encouraged by - I really liked the otherworldly, colourful setting - there were other things I was less convinced about, and a bit confused about. Because for all it was billed as a deep dive, this showing, I didn't come away with a solid sense of what we'll do in the game besides fight, so when Obsidian offered me a chance to talk to Avowed game director Carrie Patel and gameplay director Gabe Paramo afterwards, to clear a few things up, I took it.

 

 

Avowed's commitment to ubiquitous player choice could make it 2024's standout RPG: "At Obsidian, it's your world, your way, right?" | GamesRadar+

WWW.GAMESRADAR.COM

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Interview | In combat, in questing, and in everything between, Avowed puts you at the heart of everything it does

 

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Avowed could change the face of the RPG genre. That's not to heap undue pressure on Obsidian Entertainment, the studio now lining up its latest venture under the Xbox Games Studios umbrella following 2018's high-profile acquisition. But if recent history has taught us anything in this space, it's that role-playing games can, and often do, make a splash when mixing the right ingredients. 

 

2023 alone delivered some of the most unforgettable, genre-defining experiences we've seen in some time, with games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Sea of Stars helping to push the boundaries of what RPGs can, could, and maybe even should be moving forward. Player choice, in combat and narrative terms, was a driving force in last year's biggest success stories – and so with a studio so well-versed on both fronts at the helm of Avowed, the fantasy-with-firearms role-player already has a lot going for it. From Fallout: New Vegas to South Park: The Stick of Truth, The Outer Worlds, and the Pillars of Eternity series, after all, Obsidian is no stranger to leaving its mark on a tried and tested formula.

 

"Player choice is really key to all of our games at Obsidian," says Avowed game director Carrie Patel. "And for us, that is really about letting the player build and express their character. It's about who they want to be in the fantastical worlds we build, and the dilemmas and challenges we put in front of the player. I personally find that to be really effective in games where you have some sort of starting premise that prompts roleplay and gives you something to make difficult choices around."

 

 

 

Avowed's companions won't ditch you for making the 'wrong' choices: 'It's not about maintaining their approval, it's about getting to know them' | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

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You'll be able to adventure with two companions at a time in Obsidian's upcoming RPG.

 

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Avowed, the upcoming first-person RPG from Obsidian, mixes and matches a few RPG standards in its approach to companion characters and their stories. Before we get into details, some basics—in an interview with game director Carrie Patel and gameplay director Gabe Paramo this week, we learned the following about Avowed's companions and party management:

• We'll meet multiple companion characters throughout Avowed (Obsidian isn't revealing how many there are yet), and they'll hang out at a "party camp"
• Two companions can come with you on adventures at a time
• There are "a few cases" where you must include a particular companion in your party because their knowledge or expertise is relevant to the situation, otherwise it's up to you
• It sounds like you can issue some basic orders to companions, but you won't "micromanage" your party in combat
• There's no "approval system," but conversations may influence our companions' decisions and stories

Avowed takes place in the same world as the Pillars of Eternity CRPGs, but its approach to companions and party management is much more like that of a Mass Effect game, or Obsidian's own Fallout: New Vegas. We might rely on their help in combat, but we won't be giving them granular instructions or controlling them directly.

 

 

Obsidian's next RPG Avowed won't have the option to do 'a pure pacifist run' | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

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Avowed has a 'focus on combat'.

 

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Discovering just how many pacifist choices you could make in the original Fallout was a delight, because not only were you allowed to talk or sneak your way out of problems, but the game recognized you were doing that and rewarded you for it. Subsequent RPGs and immersive sims sprinkled peaceful options in, but an entirely pacifist playthrough often ends up being a masochistic challenge that feels more like you're breaking the game than playing it. Just have a look how much of a hassle it is beating The Outer Worlds as a pacifist.

 

Given that Avowed is drawing inspiration from Vermintide's best-in-class first-person combat, it's no surprise that Obsidian's upcoming RPG won't let you go 100% nonviolent. Speaking to PC Gamer this week, game director Carrie Patel said, "This isn't a game where you're gonna have a pure pacifist run."

 

 

 

Obsidian's next big RPG Avowed is looking to Vermintide's 'masterclass in having a sense of hitting and impact' to make its first-person sword-swinging feel weighty | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

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FPS: First Person Swordster.

 

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Obsidian (the studio behind Pillars of Eternity, Fallout: New Vegas, and The Outer Worlds) released an extended gameplay trailer diving into its first-person RPG Avowed last week. PC Gamer's own Ted Litchfield sat down with both the game's director Carrie Patel and the gameplay director Gabe Paramo to talk shop.

 

First-person melee combat is hard to design. In any third-person action game, you have all kinds of tools at your disposal—bespoke animations, the situational awareness of bird's-eye view, cool flips—things that are much harder to execute on when you're in your protagonist's skull. Especially the cool flips thing, that'll just get you motion sick. 

 

Luckily, Obsidian is looking to a dev studio that's basically perfected it over the years: Fatshark, developer of Warhammer's Vermintide and 40k's Darktide.

 

 

Obsidian's Avowed is going 'classless', ditching Pillars of Eternity's crunchy stat-heavy builds in favour of Skyrim-like ability trees | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

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I suppose classlessness is the logical next step for a studio so keen on historical materialism.

 

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I was downright gleeful when I learnt that Avowed—Obsidian's upcoming first-person fantasy RPG—was set in the Pillars of Eternity world of Eora. If there's one thing I'm perpetually a bit mad about, it's that the Pillars games didn't do much, much better than they did (If there's a second, it's that Tyranny somehow managed to do even worse). To my eyes, Avowed is the series' second shot at mainstream success.

 

But just because Avowed is returning to the Pillarsverse™ doesn't mean we're merely getting those isometric CRPGs in a swanky first-person wrapper. In a recent chat with PC Gamer's Ted Litchfield, Avowed's game director Carrie Patel and gameplay director Gabe Paramo mentioned that the new game is going a bit Skyrim with it, leaving behind the Pillars games' class system in favour of a set of ability trees you can sample from as you level up.

 

"There's multiple ability trees," Paramo told PCG, "it is a classless game. The player will be able to kind of pick and choose their abilities as they level up and progress, and you will be able to respec." You will choose between different background archetypes at the game's start, but those "don't bind the player to particular choices or builds," said Patel, and instead "provide kind of a starting point for building your character, your headcanon."

 

[best3444]

We shall see. I'm not getting hyped for this shit just yet. Long way off.