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[Bumblebeetuna]

the game isn’t bad. Some people just get butthurt by colors.

And women.

Unless that woman is saying Avowed wasn’t a success.

 

[Sooner]

It’s truly depressing how many good games people miss out on due to retarded tribalism.

Such as?

 

[Nonehxc]

I really liked the little I played before returning to finish Starfield, but guess for the great majority MS did release an...

AVOID

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

The art style is truly revolting. Purple vomit. Critics sometimes like that style…

You have no idea what you're talking about. There are some things illuminated with purple, nowhere near describes the majority of the game whatsoever. Sounds like regurgitation, doubtful you've touched the game even for a minute.

Look at all this purple:

But I totally understand - you'd have to actually know something about what you're being unnecessarily critical of to realize how wrong that criticism is.

 

[Smoke6]

Steam CCU only again for "pLaYer EnGagEmEnT". Does she have gamepass & battle.net?

Meanwhile Circana's Xbox

Rest of her video is fine honestly.

Indiana jones made this same chart and haven’t heard from it since

 

[adamsapple]

My disdain for avowed is because it looks awful and seems to have really bland world building and writing to go along with the cringe art direction

No it doesn't, no it doesn't, subjective but sure and no.

There is a very easy way to remedy this, give the game a try. Multiple people who were in the review topic are now prominent posters in the OT because they're enjoying what they're playing firsthand.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

What is with people hyping up this mid ass game? I've seen nonstop posts on reddit saying 'Avowed is the best RPG i've played in the last 10 years etc etc' and just constant hyping up this mid ass product like they're bots with marching orders. Avowed is the netflix originals of games. It's just gamepass fodder that's thrown onto a subscription service and forgotten about in 3 months after release once newer and better games come along to bury it.

Play it.

Its good.

It won’t be forgotten or buried.

 

[Ashamam]

I've finished it and have to say I have very mixed feelings about it.

Negatives

- On the companion narrative side it has just a bit too much in the 'feels' department. With most of it pretty much relegated to spoken word in the camp it sometimes comes across like a therapy session.
- Gear progression can be pretty minimal if you settle on a build early on, at which point all you are doing is camp upgrades.
- Enemy variety is poor.
- Map size is just too small for what they are trying to portray. After your first pass through a region, everything feels very close together.
- Static world isn't great.
- Game systems don't innovate the further you progress, once you've played the first zone you have basically played the whole game.

Positives

- Overall story is pretty good and you have reasonable agency in decisions.
- General art style is excellent. Can look stunning at times even.
- Combat is a high point, locomotion also being very smooth. Parkouring mostly felt quite natural assuming you weren't trying to traverse something they didn't want you to.

Overall I think I see the game as a miss, but that's because I can see the potential there. A bigger darker fantasy could have been really compelling, with a focus on companion progression through story beats rather than introspection would suit me better. But it was good enough for me to finish it. I mainly stuck with it to see whether my choices were going to work out, and that's got to be worth something.

 

[Lionel Richie]

What is with people hyping up this mid ass game? I've seen nonstop posts on reddit saying 'Avowed is the best RPG i've played in the last 10 years etc etc' and just constant hyping up this mid ass product like they're bots with marching orders. Avowed is the netflix originals of games. It's just gamepass fodder that's thrown onto a subscription service and forgotten about in 3 months after release once newer and better games come along to bury it.

You sound awfully mad about a game you haven't played while the "people" you mentinoned to be "hyping up" the game are just having the time of their lives talking about shit they enjoy.

 

[laynelane]

She mentions that no team starts a game with the goal of not creating a great game, but that there may have been issues in Obsidian's case. Her insight into how difficult it is to ship a game post-acquisition and praise for Obsidian's ability to do so was very interesting. However, her idea that other development teams within MS should look at Obsidian and learn seems like wishful thinking. The issues surrounding MS' development teams didn't start post-acquistiion. It's been ongoing for years and would take more drastic steps (eg. Why is Booty still there? Hire people who actually know what they're doing) than simply following the steps of a prolific studio.

Great video with some interesting points from her, as usual.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

You have no idea what you're talking about. There are some things illuminated with purple, nowhere near describes the majority of the game whatsoever. Sounds like regurgitation, doubtful you've touched the game even for a minute.

Look at all this purple:

But I totally understand - you'd have to actually know something about what you're being unnecessarily critical of to realize how wrong that criticism is.

I don't need to play a game to tell you the art design is unappealing. What you showed me doesn't impress. It's like something procedurally generated and lifeless with nothing hand crafted to it at all.

No it doesn't, no it doesn't, subjective but sure and no.

There is a very easy way to remedy this, give the game a try. Multiple people who were in the review topic are now prominent posters in the OT because they're enjoying what they're playing firsthand.

Tons of games have similar complaints, DA:V being one of them. The characters look like poorly designed cartoons for modern audiences.

That doesn't mean it's a dreadful game - the combat looks decent to me - but I can't get over everything else which is known to be very poor. Even people like Matty Plays, that are devout Obsidian Xbox fanatics have expressed big disappointments with Avowed.

Seems OK to try out on a Sub service but no way would I play this otherwise.

 

[TMLT]

7/10 game releasing in a month where there were multiple bigger and better releases for it to compete with including another open world RPG option in KCD2. Its not surprising it bombed.

 

[Shifty1897]

80 is a lot. And it was developed for many years

This is by every objective measure a commercial failure

Your beloved Firewalk was 150 people, plus contractors, and they made Concord for 8 years, two more than Avowed. Obsidian also released 4 games in the last 5 years, this isn't the only thing they had cooking.

We all know if Sony had released it you'd call it GOTY.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Your beloved Firewalk was 150 people, plus contractors, and they made Concord for 8 years, two more than Avowed. Obsidian also released 4 games in the last 5 years, this isn't the only thing they had cooking.

We all know if Sony had released it you'd call it GOTY.

Firewalk was 150 for 18 months at its peak.

In 2019 they had a dozen people working on the game.

We all know that if Microsoft had released Concord, you'd be calling it GOTY even if it ended up being pulled from the market like it was.

Why are you bringing up Concord? I'm not stanning for that failure at all - yet you guys are clearly stanning for Avowed.

Stay on topic please.

 

[Rocky_Balboa]

I've finished it and have to say I have very mixed feelings about it.

Negatives

- On the companion narrative side it has just a bit too much in the 'feels' department. With most of it pretty much relegated to spoken word in the camp it sometimes comes across like a therapy session.
- Gear progression can be pretty minimal if you settle on a build early on, at which point all you are doing is camp upgrades.
- Enemy variety is poor.
- Map size is just too small for what they are trying to portray. After your first pass through a region, everything feels very close together.
- Static world isn't great.
- Game systems don't innovate the further you progress, once you've played the first zone you have basically played the whole game.

Positives

- Overall story is pretty good and you have reasonable agency in decisions.
- General art style is excellent. Can look stunning at times even.
- Combat is a high point, locomotion also being very smooth. Parkouring mostly felt quite natural assuming you weren't trying to traverse something they didn't want you to.

Overall I think I see the game as a miss, but that's because I can see the potential there. A bigger darker fantasy could have been really compelling, with a focus on companion progression through story beats rather than introspection would suit me better. But it was good enough for me to finish it. I mainly stuck with it to see whether my choices were going to work out, and that's got to be worth something.

I haven't finished it yet, but this sums up my feelings pretty well. I would add that the character design is not great. It is a 6/10 game for me. Not sure if I can finish it. I am now past the initial "this is pretty good" and experiencing the "should I start skipping all the side stuff and go for the main quest only" phase.

 

[Karak]

My thoughts on the discussion in general. Subjects not people are pointed out in the following.

First. I am not stanning for anything. Probably because I fucking hate 13 year old twitch slang spouted out to appease the fucking mouth breathers and rotlips that usually troll through gaming discussions like kids drawing lines in the sand playing with their toys and flicking their belly buttons all day.

I didn't love the game the writing was off kilter and I have no love for Obsidian writing in general. Yes that includes the masturbatory jank fest of New Vegas, despite it being better than its sibling which wasn't great.
Avowed combat and exploration and gameplay though had some serious chops. Not enough for me to suggest getting it day one but I had some issues with tech issues.

So a couple things. Objectively its a unique art style(artists agree across the board). Unique doesn't mean I think its good or bad but it is different in many ways and its complexity within its design is actually pretty impressive especially how it handles world view and continuity of visual distances. Something games rated higher haven't always done.
Enough that we see devs mention it both in dev forums and in opencritic forums.

Second discussing the "this many worked on it blah blah blah" Shit is fucking stupid sometimes.
Case in point social fuckwarriors video makers lied about Ascent having barely any devs and even the devs themselves had to correct the discussion because even they thought it was assinine. Or as one said "If I had 2 people on vacation and replaced them with 4 contractors do I arbitrarily go above some idiotic total number of employees that makes our team more ripe for complaints?"

But the fucking side drawing like a a bunch of girls pulling pigtails in these discussions fucking infuriates me and makes all gamers look like god damned idiots.

Numbers.
Steam concurrent is a valid number to report on. ALSO valid, and this is backed up by any studies in the world that will point this out, is the LACK of the other numbers. I am not saying magically 3-4-5 other stores had tons of people. I assume Avowed had pretty good early upgrade numbers and the developers privately seem much happier than I expected. But I am pointing out that any attempts to pretend they don't matter doesn't understand a single thing about business, basic math, numbers, reporting, or general god damned life. Cause that shit is like basic reporting 101. Its also telling that now the main devs are indeed talking about future expansions DLC. But only in so much as they have apparently altered or adjusted their original course(none)

That being said I understand that now we don't trust companies. I am glad everyone got there finally cause Sony doesn't save people from floods, Nintendo doesn't fight crime, and Xbox doesn't tuck in kids at night.
But god damned pretending that this stuff is black and white is embarrassing wherever I read it.

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

We all know if Sony had released it you'd call it GOTY.

All that needs to be said, really. He’d have literally a thousand posts defending the game. Idk why anyone engages with him in a serious manner

 

[Ashamam]

Unique doesn't mean I think its good or bad but it is different in many ways and its complexity within its design is actually pretty impressive especially how it handles world view and continuity of visual distances

Yeah but it's a parlour trick. They deliberately break line of sight all the time to give the illusion of size. Which is fine in the moment, but when you turn the corner from an enemy camp and you walk into a friendly camp, like literally 30 metres away(~100 ft for you yanks) the illusion breaks down. Just like movies games have to achieve a suspension of disbelief and the Avowed world doesn't really get there. I think it needed 2x on both axis at least. I'm sure its a fine line to get right and its easy to spectate and criticise but to me it was a problem in this game.

 

[Mortisfacio]

Game is fun and the environments look stunning at times, up until you go into some city area and the NPCs can remind you of 10 year outdated static ugly NPCs. Out in the world exploring? Great environments. Parkour is fun. Combat is fun.

Story is weak and RPG systems are weak.

Was it a commercial success? I don't need to be gaslit into believing it was, at least based on Steam CCU. I'm playing on GamePass. Have some friends playing this on BNet. So can't say conclusively just yet, but doesn't seem to be. It not being a commercial success doesn't take away from my enjoyment, however.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

Meanwhile Circana's Xbox

Rest of her video is fine honestly.

Isn't that lower than Indy during it's launch week?

The same Indy that vanished from the Circana charts in it's second month?

 

[Karak]

Yeah but it's a parlour trick. They deliberately break line of sight all the time to give the illusion of size. Which is fine in the moment, but when you turn the corner from an enemy camp and you walk into a friendly camp, like literally 30 metres away(~100 ft for you yanks) the illusion breaks down. Just like movies games have to achieve a suspension of disbelief and the Avowed world doesn't really get there. I think it needed 2x on both axis at least. I'm sure its a fine line to get right and its easy to spectate and criticise but to me it was a problem in this game.

There are over 250 instances in which the sightline we measured was farther than most current games, including many other titles including complex geometry without a good deal of the LOD switching we see. For example even Hunter Call of the Wild(which is a good sightline measurement comparison for pure distance(not complexity)
But once again. It can't be well done or even middling it has to be "a party trick" can't be well done sometimes or impressive. It has to all be a trick as if we are pretending that 0 equals 1 because they both have the letter o when spelled out. So while again world building and continuity distances are not what you described which is enemy placement, they do go hand in hand a bit but they were not what I was describing.
Because enemy placement is one of my bothers here.

 

[Buggy Loop]

Avowed has gotten peoples to play Pillars of Eternity, both of them trending on gamepass

Somehow peoples will find a way to twist this into bad news for Obsidian

 

[Buggy Loop]

Isn't that lower than Indy during it's launch week?

The same Indy that vanished from the Circana charts in it's second month?

Peoples get done with single player games??

Yea little troll

 

[Ashamam]

But once again. It can't be well done or even middling it has to be "a party trick" can't be well done sometimes or impressive. It has to all be a trick as if we are pretending that 0 equals 1 because they both have the letter o when spelled out.

Language is interesting on forums, it can't replicate conversation. For instance if we got into a conversation, I'd be saying most game worlds are a parlour trick, and expanding my comment to say Avowed doesn't hide enough behind the curtain. In this case visual tricks might be well done, but the overall impact doesn't work very well because as you actually traverse the world false notes have you going wtf, how did that person not hear what was going on just around the corner for example. Not an uncommon problem in games but it stood out to me a number of times in Avowed. Despite not having many quests per zone it all feels compressed.

Have to laugh though the time I was most pulled out of the game was towards the end a portal gets opened and the skybox was rendered as a skybox literally, edges and all. Way to ruin the moment. Made worse by the fact the camera was looking directly up towards the vertex of the cube.

Edit: saw your edit after replying, but basically yes I take your point but the game has to work as a whole, and enemy placement is tied to POI placement which is tied to how the map is designed with terrain features around those POI's, and it all feels too compressed.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Avowed has gotten peoples to play Pillars of Eternity, both of them trending on gamepass

Somehow peoples will find a way to twist this into bad news for Obsidian

Obsidian needs to add controller support to the PC version.

 

[Karak]

Language is interesting on forums, it can't replicate conversation. For instance if we got into a conversation, I'd be saying most game worlds are a parlour trick, and expanding my comment to say Avowed doesn't hide enough behind the curtain. In this case visual tricks might be well done, but the overall impact doesn't work very well because as you actually traverse the world false notes have you going wtf, how did that person not hear what was going on just around the corner for example. Not an uncommon problem in games but it stood out to me a number of times in Avowed. Despite not having many quests per zone it all feels compressed.

Have to laugh though the time I was most pulled out of the game was towards the end a portal gets opened and the skybox was rendered as a skybox literally, edges and all. Way to ruin the moment.

Maybe but I would simply say, if in person, for accuracy lets parse the actual words so that the discussion makes sense(as it was originally stated 2 specific things to indicate the POSSIBILITY of something good in the game that were getting drowned out) and so that discrete discussions can be had without "trick" being used in a place where it assuredly is not, or where a kudo is given where its not at all deserved.

Otherwise I would simply say that every single time Nate traveled through a rocky vagina in an uncharted game broke the entire story and pushed me out of it without regard to plot drift or narrative punctuation.

 

[demigod]

So much for greenturd’s best seller on steam for a day. Notice how he went silent. The game bombed, couldn’t even hit 20k ccu.

 

[Karak]

Avowed has gotten peoples to play Pillars of Eternity, both of them trending on gamepass

Somehow peoples will find a way to twist this into bad news for Obsidian

Crazy to see Watch Dogs Legion on there. That is the first time it was on gamepass correct?

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

Somehow peoples will find a way to twist this into bad news for Obsidian

Can dream this encourages a Pillars of Eternity III...

 

[odhiex]

So, which is Obsidian's bigger title (regarding budget and staff)? Avowed or The Outer Worlds 2?

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

I see some people missing the point of the actual conversation.

under MS, Obsidian has not being able to "level up" or reach its full potential.

and after the latest comments:

you can kiss this:

goodbye.

A studio without ambition (especially a first-party one) is doomed to fall into irrelevance.

Avowed is that, a completely irrelevant game.

 

[Ashamam]

Maybe but I would simply say, if in person, for accuracy lets parse the actual words so that the discussion makes sense(as it was originally stated 2 specific things to indicate the POSSIBILITY of something good in the game that were getting drowned out) and so that discrete discussions can be had without "trick" being used in a place where it assuredly is not, or where a kudo is given where its not at all deserved.

I gave some positives and negatives earlier, so I think you might be reading too much into my use of 'trick' based on others comments.

 

[panda-zebra]

So releasing a game on current-gen systems and not getting shut down is a success now?

A mild success?

She thinks they know what they have to keep doing to survive, and, as Laura says in the video, that's making games that are "good enough for Game Pass".

 

[Killjoy-NL]

Peoples get done with single player games??

Yea little troll

It's also hard to play a game you didn't buy or download.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Avowed has gotten peoples to play Pillars of Eternity, both of them trending on gamepass

Somehow peoples will find a way to twist this into bad news for Obsidian

This is pretty clear sign that game generated a lot of interest.

Just like KCD2. They made a great game, that brought KCD 1 in steam top played charts.

 

[HerjansEagleFeeder]

You could say it's a.. mild success

 

[Nickolaidas]

What is with people hyping up this mid ass game? I've seen nonstop posts on reddit saying 'Avowed is the best RPG i've played in the last 10 years etc etc' and just constant hyping up this mid ass product like they're bots with marching orders. Avowed is the netflix originals of games. It's just gamepass fodder that's thrown onto a subscription service and forgotten about in 3 months after release once newer and better games come along to bury it.

This.

 

[Heisenberg007]

Get back in the kitchen.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Peoples get done with single player games??

I cannot comment on its quality, have not played it yet, but we all may have games we like that did not sell or become successes (Team ICO games were never commercial successes really for example).

On the other side if a game sells well / has really good word of mouth and it keeps selling / bringing new users in should be maintaining player count to moderate levels. I do not think it is fair to say that all single player games sell in their first month and then just stop and have player count drop off a cliff never to recover. Anyways, we will see .

 

[Heisenberg007]

I cannot comment on its quality, have not played it yet, but we all may have games we like that did not sell or become successes (Team ICO games were never commercial successes really for example).

On the other side of a game sells well / has really good word of mouth it keeps selling / bringing new users thus maintaining player count to moderate levels. I do not think it is fair to say that all single player games sell in their first month and then just stop and have player count drop off a cliff never to recover. Anyways, we will see .

Yes. And it's perfectly fine to compare one-and-done single-player games with one-and-done single-player games anyway, right?

Currently, there are more people playing:

• Baldur's Gate 3 (29,721)
• Red Dead Redemption 2 (23,076)
• Black Myth Wukong (17,239)
• Cyberpunk 2077 (16,029)
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance [part 1] (8,100)
• The Witcher 3 (7,981)
• Hogwart's Legacy (4,406)
• Dark Souls 3 (3,939)
• Sekiro (3,303)
• Dying Light 1 (2,848)

than

• Avowed (2,538)

It's not like people are comparing Avowed's player count with live-service games like Counter Strike / Helldivers 2.

 

[Doctor Hades]

The problem with Avowed in my opinion, after 30+ hours of playing it on my PC, is that it doesn't do anything special to stand out. As an RPG, it is merely passable: boring companions, dull writing, even duller dialogue full of tedious terminology that makes it hard to listen to even with the compendium and a less than amazing storyline that relies too heavily on reading lots of notes (well, that's fun, right? Erm...). The framework is there but this is more of an action-adventure than an RPG in my experience. There is no morality system at all; you can loot things right in front of people without any consequence which kind of destroys any sense of immersion for me.

This is a 6/10 game at best and Obsidian's more mediocre RPG to date. Not awful, just completely forgettable.

 

[evanft]

Avowed was not good enough to warrant this much discussion. It's a totally skippable game that brings nothing really worthwhile to the table.

 

[xrnzaaas]

A mild success?

She thinks they know what they have to keep doing to survive, and, as Laura says in the video, that's making games that are "good enough for Game Pass".

Joking aside, it is a plan. Definitely better (from Microsoft's perspective) than what a company like Ninja Theory is doing. The publisher doesn't have to wait 5+ years for the studio to make a short linear game that's going to be forgotten in a month.

Question is how much longer Game Pass subs will want to keep playing 'mild' RPGs delivered by Obsidian. From my perspective the game is completely bland and suffering from rather poor writing, definitely not up to the standards set by Obsidian in the past. Even Pillars games were more interesting - the first one was a blast from the past and a feast for BG fans and the second game had that rare piraty theme going on (even if not everyone liked it).

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Did critics truly claim the art style was bad..? Game looks incredible, environments look awesome...

It’s the same Fortnite art style as Veilguard, tells you all you need to know about their target audience. This is a company that shipped Tyranny btw.

 

[cireza]

This is by every objective measure a commercial failure

First, who cares if a game is a success. Does this mitigate your enjoyment as a player ?

Second, you have absolutely no clue of what are the measures of success for the publisher/developer.

This narrative of games having to be constantly top of the charts makes no sense.

 

[Ammogeddon]

I like Laura but have to disagree with her here. Applauding them for getting the game out simply isn’t good enough. If I went to a Michelin restaurant and they served me beans on toast I wouldn’t be patting them on the back. I’m not likely to go back there.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

First, who cares if a game is a success. Does this mitigate your enjoyment as a player ?

Failure or success directly influences MS' decisions on studio closures and/or multiplatform releases.

The narrative of saying "sales don't matter" is part of the reason why Xbox is dying.

 

[winjer]

This is the kind of game that serves to pad the catalog of subscription service.
It's the kind of game that sells so poorly, so the publisher has to resort to using "engagement" metrics to pretend all is fine.
I really doubt this game sold anywhere near enough to cover it's development cost.
And I doubt it increased gamepass subscriptions in any significant number.

 

[Kataploom]

Only Microsoft can say if it's meeting their expectations, those claiming Steam numbers mean anything when MS have other plans with their games and it's too trap people into their ecosystem.

Even if the game is having loses, MS is the only one that can say if the loses are worth it for them or not.

 

[cireza]

Failure or success directly influences MS' decisions based on studio closures and/or multiplatform releases.

The narrative of saying "sales don't matter" is part of the reason why Xbox is dying.

Then please share with us what are the measures of success decided internally for Avowed, and show us that they have not been reached.