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Avowed – Veneer Off
I have added another 16 hours into Avowed (total: 32), clearing the entire second zone. And while some of what I reported earlier is still accurate – traversal is fun! – the game’s veneer is definitely rubbing off.
Combat, which hitherto has been fun, is now very rote. For the first half of the second zone, I respecced into a Ranger gun build and almost ended up abandoning the game entirely. There was… just no buttons to press. Sure, Ranger has a sort of vines CC ability, but aside from that, it was power attacks from pistols and nothing else to actively press. Technically I could have grabbed some more active buttons from Wizard as well, but Ranger is the only real splash-class, and trying to elevate your Intellect stat to the point where spells are relevant is a fool’s errand without just being a Wizard.
During the last half of the zone, I went into Fighter, first with a 2H weapon focus and then 1H with shield. Fighter had some more buttons to press – including a very satisfying Charge – and was a more dynamic experience overall with the Parry mechanic and blocking. The issue is that the DPS was just not really there. Avowed loves to throw groups of 5+ enemies at you, which is understandable considering Rangers/Wizards will nearly one-shot most of them from range in the opening salvo. As a Fighter, it’s not satisfying at all spending all your Stamina trying to block/dodge so many enemies. Although you do have two squad mates to help spread aggro around, the reality is that so do Rangers/Wizards, and those classes can actually eliminate enemies quickly. Which technically goes against the “gameplay” of Fighter, as if things die before you get into Parry chains or full attack combos, a lot of the Fighter-based weapons are useless. Which they are anyway, since they don’t kill quickly.
The other major issue that I glossed over previously was the world in general and interactivity in particular. Avowed is not Skyrim. Which is fine, most games aren’t. But as a first-person fantasy game that came out 14 years after Skyrim, Avowed is incredibly static. NPCs barely move (if ever), there is no world reactivity, there is no “stealing,” and every object out in the world is bolted onto the floor, aside from some breakable crates. To be fair, this is more an intellectual criticism, as I hardly noticed anything amiss in-game. But now that I have, I see signs of a Hollywood set everywhere. Which might have been fine, if this were not a fantasy RPG released in 2025 for $70 MSRP.
The final thing that is really dragging me down is the upgrade system and Unique weapons. I have been playing the game “as intended” when it comes to looting and experimenting, but have come to find out that the devs punish that playstyle. For one thing, all the respeccing I have done required me to upgrade several weapons that, oops, I am no longer using. Then I found out that all unique weapons in the world scale to the highest upgraded weapon you own at the time of pickup. What this means is that if the best weapon you have is Fine (blue quality), all the uniques you discover will be Fine. However, if you funnel all your upgrades into one particular weapon and get it to Exceptional (purple), those same uniques would have been Exceptional. And this works all the way into Superb (red) and Legendary.
Do you like exploring the map and picking up things organically, doing a few upgrades here and there? Punished! Because now if you decide to go with another weapon or playstyle, you will need to double (or more) the upgrade materials required to level them up. Which, let me remind you, is very necessary because weapons and armor get a debuff if they are more than a few “tiers” below the enemies you are facing. Also, remember that enemies and money is finite in this game, so it is very possible to just screw yourself and be locked into something that is no longer fun.
Which might just be the entire game itself for me, at the moment.
I don’t know, guys. Not everything I play needs to be Game of the Year material; lord knows I play plenty of trashy survival games for hundreds of hours. But, truly, Avowed feels like a game that would have been really great… in 2015. Or maybe 2010. Obsidian is not Bethesda, yes. But this also ain’t New Vegas. And between this and Outer Worlds, I’m thinking that Obsidian needs to stick to what they do best: iterating on the shoulders of better games, rather than trying to make their own.
Grounded was great though, so… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Bad Romance
Avowed is an upcoming Obsidian game that is, perhaps unfortunately, being more defined for what it’s not. As in, not Skyrim, not Baldur’s Gate 3, and so on. Instead, it’s… basically The Outer Worlds set in the Pillars of Eternity universe. Which is a thing they can do, I guess.
But one of the things the developers intentionally left out is causing some discussion: romance options.
Yeah, we decided to forego full romance paths in Avowed. It’s something that we thought very hard about, and we talked about it as a narrative team. I think if you’re going to invest in romance, everyone who’s writing them needs to be absolutely, fully bought in. And the other thing you need to do is make sure that if you’re going to provide that path, that you’re balancing that with an equally meaningful and well-developed, non-romantic path because you never want players to feel that, “Well, the only way I really get to know this character or really get to form a meaningful bond with them, is if I commit to romancing them, which maybe isn’t something I want to do.” So, for all of those reasons, we decided to forego romances, specifically in Avowed.
For the record, this is generally how Obsidian rolls anyway. Fallout: New Vegas didn’t have romanceable companions, the original Pillars of Eternity didn’t have any, and The Outer Worlds teased a bit but didn’t have any either. At some point though, you have to wonder if it’s more a philosophical viewpoint, personal preference, or… a lack of experience.
On Reddit however, the thread turned into a deeper commentary on romance options in games more generally. The topic did give me some pause, as the two “camps” were not necessarily in direct opposition. On the one hand, you had people who said:
That’s the best you can really expect, I think. In order to craft a mature, believable romance in a video game you’d need to spend a game’s worth of writing on top of whatever the actual game is.
And then you have people who respond elsewhere:
And I say it’s a cop out. Speaking as somebody who has devoted at least 10,000 hours to FNV.
Fallout 4 would have been a worse game without its paper-thin, gender-transparent romance. Because it nonetheless added a layer that those companions really benefitted from.
I would say both things can be true at the same time. Crafting a believable game romance is difficult, and yet a paper-thin attempt is often better than nothing. Now, obviously, no one really wants it to be paper-thin, and a lot of this is predicated on the devs being able to craft companions that you care about to begin with. We’re also kind of hand-waving away what counts as a “believable romance.”
Anyway, there are some baseline improvements all devs can make who do include romance in their games. For one: how about not having the relationship start at the last Save Point before the final boss? It’s a fairly common trope in basically all media, and I understand the function, e.g. it allows players to head-cannon their own happily ever after. And, sure, sometimes whether two characters get together is the entire plot; basic relationship maintenance is much less exciting. But I would really like to see more attempts like Cyberpunk 2077 wherein you have more interaction with your bae over time. With some RPGs that might end up too complex – imagine having to script hundreds of branching combat dialog depending on when and with whom you are smooching – but even the little gestures would make things feel more grounded in-game. Again, like with Cyberpunk’s little chat messages and such.
The one argument against romance options I do not respect though is the whole “it’s usually just a checklist of dialogue choices, a quest then fucking,” therefore why even bother including it. There might be a broader conversation to be had about how media depictions of romance may lead some to incorrectly believe real-life relationships are a matter of putting in enough gift tokens until sex pops out or whatever. But also… no. As someone else more elegantly countered:
That’s fucking cute but… isn’t literally EVERYTHING in ALL Obsidian games can be boiled down to a checklist of dialogue choices, quests, then the result. Like everything because, it’s a fucking video game? Does Obsidian even portray anything ‘truly’? Does the Outer Worlds even portray space faring economics true to life? Does New Vegas portray humans living in a nuclear shithole true to life? Does Pillars of Eternity portray island piracy, gunnery combat true to life? Is Avowed combat true to life?
Games are gamified with game mechanics, news at 11. Love bombing an NPC with gifts until they marry you is indeed not realistic (although…). But it’s not as though the player often has any choice in the language of action available in the game. You cannot wink, joke with, twirl your hair, casually touch the shoulder of, or any of the myriad of ways we clumsily indicate and/or reciprocate romantic interest IRL. If the only way you can interact with the game world is pressing E and picking a dialog, then yeah, those are the parameters on how romance happens.
Can devs do romance better within the confines of the medium? Absolutely. I really appreciated in My Time at Sandrock how there was a clear dialog option which indicated your romantic interest with an NPC, which opened up more flirty dialog later; that would prevent the sort of (now infamous) misunderstandings with Gale in Baldur’s Gate 3. Going further, my idealized “solution” would be for the player to be able to select in a menu somewhere that you are romantically interested in character X, and then subtly enhance all your interactions (body language, etc) towards that character. That may alleviate some of gift-spamming and perfect dialog choice concerns and help the relationship progress feel more natural. Or as natural as you can do via a controller and game menus.
And, yeah, writing deeper characters with more interesting personalities works too. Obviously.
Obsidian is, of course, free to sit things out if their writers aren’t feeling it. I haven’t played Pillars of Eternity 2, but I’ve heard the romances there were especially bad, and thus the devs may be feeling it’s not worth trying again. It’s also true that not every narrative needs or is appropriate for having romance options. But I do think it’s okay to be asked about romance in any game focused on developing “meaningful bonds” between characters with dialog choices because that is a thing that happens. And many players, myself included, enjoy it even if it’s at or below trashy romance novel levels. Sometimes especially if it’s at that level.
As to whether Avowed works without it, we shall see.
Impressions: Grounded
Grounded is a Honey, I Shrunk the Kids survival game from Obsidian, which recently graduated from Early Access. I played it for about a dozen hours during Early Access, but decided to wait until full release before diving in for real on Game Pass.
What I have discovered is… well, a fun albeit highly incongruent survival Soulslike.
To start out, the world of Grounded is amazing. You wake up in a small cave that opens out into a forest of grass and weeds that towers above you. Although there are giant juice boxes and other items to hammer home just how tiny you are, they are really unnecessary – everything about how you move around the yard, the distances involved, and of course the creatures keeps everything front and center.
Your first experiences with the yard fauna is usually benign. Aphids, Weevils, and Gnats are basically mobile food and resources. Red Worker Ants are curious about you, but only go hostile when you hit them. Same with the lumbering Lady Bug, although they will quickly one-shot you in the beginning when attacked. Mites are typically your first hostile mob, and they are only really dangerous when you’re distracted or get surrounded. But it doesn’t take a lot of exploring before you encounter the apex predators of the backyard: spiders. Orb Weavers relentlessly patrol their territory and Wolf Spiders are the terror of the night, ranging far and wide through the yard from dusk till dawn. Daylight does not offer much comfort once you journey further afield though, as you encounter Larva, Stinkbugs, Mosquitos, and more.
And this is where things go a little off the rails for me. Grounded has all the trappings of survival games, including a huge map where you can build bases just about anywhere, resources needing to be gathered, and so on. But what you are actually doing to progress at all is a series of escalating Souls-like melee encounters. I say “Souls-like” because everything revolves around performing Perfect Blocks against insect attacks, then counter-attacking. You can technically just regular block attacks (with a shield made out of Weevil meat), but you still take a significant amount of damage, can get debuffed, and eventually stunned depending on the frequency of attacks. Meanwhile, you completely block all damage even with a Pebble Axe from any enemy if you Right-Click your mouse at the correct time.
In games like ARK, there’s no Perfect Blocking a T-Rex bite. But, you can still take out a T-Rex through clever terrain and/or structure use. In Grounded, most enemies ignore most terrain that otherwise slow you down, e.g. grass stems. And even if you happen to engage from on top of something they cannot reach, your (early) ranged attacks with the bow don’t deal much damage. Indeed, since you cannot block while using the bow, the game seems to discourage any realistic use of it outside first-strike or fleeing bug scenarios. “What about flying bugs like Mosquitos?” Yeah, sure, try to get a few arrows in. But you will 100% die if you don’t perform Perfect Blocks with a regular melee weapon of some sort, even if you have the clunkiness of having to toggle between it and the bow.
The worst part, IMO, is how there isn’t much of an escape from the bug-based progression. I guess I cannot claim that it is impossible to complete the game without learning each bug’s song and dance, but it is a fact that several crafting stations require bug parts to be constructed. Again, in ARK the dinos are “soft” required because nobody has time to collect 10,000 Stone and Iron to build the goodies you want. In Grounded, you simply aren’t building a Drying Rack without Bombardier Beetle parts. I haven’t made it into any of the later Lab story areas yet, but there are plenty of bugs between me and where I think the front door is, so… yeah. Prepare to “git gud” or die trying.
(Or play on a lower difficulty, I guess.)
Overall, though? I’m still having fun. The first dozen or so hours had me running from everything more powerful than a Solider Ant, but I’m basically approaching Tier 2 equipment and a general level of confidence to take on most things. Had it not been for an Orb Weaver Jr joining the fight in defense of its momma, I would have taken one of those down already. Luckily, the game features both the default survival “fuck you” of dropping all your gear on death AND the ability to Save your game at any time. Which… is weird. I’m assuming you don’t get saves while playing Multiplayer and that’s the difference. In any case, saves won’t, er, save you from getting owned by spiders or whatever, but it at least affords you the opportunity to practice Perfect Block timing as many times as necessary to get the last bug part to craft a new Hammer or whatever.
The Outer Hype, part 2
When I started playing The Outer Worlds back in December, I was not impressed. Having just completed the game yesterday, I can report that the game did not particularly redeem itself.
To be clear, the game may have been rigged from the start, so to speak. This was Obsidian, makers of Fallout: New Vegas! With a brand new IP! Like some kind of Mass Effect x Fallout space western! Except it wasn’t. At all. Like not even remotely close.
Was that Obsidian’s fault? Probably not, but they suffer the consequences of the hype just the same.
Regardless, the game did not improve. I was playing on Hard difficulty and the combat was just a mess from start to finish. Companion AI is tough to get right in any game, but here they are glorified abilities that you press once per combat, as they typically die immediately after they use them. Exploration was pointless, rewarding trash consumables or weapon mods you never have need of using. The whole Tinker/Upgrade system for level-based gear starts out as a promising way of keeping unique weapons (etc) relevant, but the escalating cost of doing so spirals out of control. When it’s easier and cheaper to just buy guns from a vending machine rather than try to upgrade the super-special gear you spent time exploring/questing for, you know things have fallen off the rails.
Quest-wise, things did not improve either. If you treat the game overall as a comedy, things might play out better from a tone perspective. And indeed there is some witty dialog to be had. Aside from that though, there was precisely one moment towards the end of the game in which I was surprised at the visual impact of a particular decision. Arguably though, it was surprising precisely because nothing else was ever taken seriously.
Overall… well, I was going to suggest to give this game a pass, but I myself played it for a whole dollar via the Game Pass, so… do what you want. If you get past the first planet and aren’t feeling it though, don’t feel bad about moving on. It’s not going to scratch a Fallout itch, a Mass Effect itch, a BioShock itch, or any itch beyond a bizarre one for BBB Unreal engine comedy games.
And if you have one of those, you might want to see a dermatologist instead.
The Outer Hype
I have been playing The Outer Worlds via the Xbox Game Pass lately. And… I am not impressed.
People have been gushing about how this is Obsidian’s return to form, how it is a non-Fallout Fallout game, and so on. From what I have seen thus far though, having completed the first major area? It’s a slap-stick snooze-fest generic Unreal Engine title. That might be a controversial impression, so let me unpack it a bit.
First, it’s slap-stick due to the comically evil corporations in charge. One of the very first side-quests you get is to collect the grave fees from the families of those workers who have died. No payment, no continued burial. Another NPC mentioned how one of their workers committed suicide, and if anyone found out, the family would be fined for destruction of company property. All the words were there to evoke a sense of capitalist dystopian hellscape… but the tone wasn’t.
Every single quest or conversation is accompanied by a wink and/or eyebrow waggle. This isn’t Deus Ex or Syndicate or Blade Runner, this is Rick and Morty-level irreverence. And while there are certainly outlandish elements to the Fallout lore and in-jokes aplenty, the actual post-apocalypse piece is taken seriously. That isn’t the case with the Outer Worlds. I don’t know if that was done intentionally or not, or if perhaps things get more serious later on. I just know that when I completed a recent quest in which a NPC was sold as an indentured servant to pay off her debts instead of being assassinated, it did not even remotely register as a moral quandary.
Second, the snooze-fest piece refers both to combat and the non-combat pieces of the game. Having heard that Normal difficulty was actually quite easy, I went ahead and chose the next level up on the slider. And while I have indeed died several times in routine combat, there was never a sense that it was due to skill or anything. “Oops, there was a melee guy there, and he deals increased damage because the difficulty level is higher.” Indeed, combat feels disjointed most of the time, especially when you have companions who essentially teleport around when you trigger their special abilities.
Outside of combat, things are so formulaic that I don’t even know why Obsidian bothered with exploration elements at all. There are three ammo types for all guns (light, heavy, energy); there are multiple damage types (physical, corrosive, etc) but they map 1:1 in a cookie-cutter resistance way; 99% of everything you find is either currency, unnecessary food, and more copies of generic guns/armor to break down for generic parts to repair the guns you chosen to use; mods for guns/armor sound important but are again generic nonsense (your melee weapon deals plasma damage now!) that just ticks the customization 101 box. Even the Perks are boring.
Finally, when I said “generic Unreal Engine title,” you probably know what I mean. NPCs look basically the same, enemies look the same, you can look at a room and immediately understand where you might be able to go and how you might interact with the space. For all the bugs and shortcomings with the Gamebryo/Creation engine that Bethesda uses, going from that to this game is like going from an Erector Set to Mega Bloks.
Like I said, I’m only past the first planet so maybe things turn around. I have heard from basically everyone on the internet already that the game doesn’t though, and it’s only a 20-hour trip besides.
Suffice it to say, I’m not impressed. And I’m starting to think Fallout had more to do with Obsidian’s success than the other way around.
In An Age 
Avowed – What’s My Motivation?
Mar 18
Posted by Azuriel
I haven’t written much because I’m trying to work my way through Avowed. And it really is work at this point, because Avowed is not a good game. But I feel it is not good in a similar way that Bioshock Infinite was not good: the most frustratingly nuanced ways imaginable.
One example is with the combat system. I’ve talked about it all before, in that Ranger was strong but boring, Warrior was active but weak, and Wizard was both active and strong. About halfway through the 3rd zone though, none of it really mattered – even the Wizard became a chore. There are a lot of little reasons that quickly add up in the background until it hits you all at once.
Regarding the last point, Avowed has a really shitty talent/skill tree. It’s not something I’ve seen many other people talk about, but it’s one of the most uniquely uninspired one I’ve ever seen in a game. Seriously, look at this shit. Warrior has 6 buttons to press, Ranger gets 5, and Wizard… 21, technically. But look at the level 15 and level 20 bands, which is where one might assume you’re getting the biggest power boosts. Outside the active button, Fighter gets shit like… perfect (!!) blocks rebound arrows, and you deal 70% of the damage you received. Ranger gets increased crit chance (already 100% when you hit weak spots), and bonus damage on unaware enemies. Wizards get… increased elemental accumulation, but you have to spec into each element individually.
Oh, and on the ultimate level 20+ band? Fighters can… heal companions by 10% when you kill enemies! Rangers can… deal more stun accumulation with power attacks with ranged weapons! Wizards can… get fucking nothing, unless you want to learn Meteor Shower without a spellbook, which you never would because spellbooks give you like an 80% Essence discount on that otherwise meter-eating spell. Yes, Arcane Seal is something a Wizard can take at 20+ and effectively have infinite Essence regen. But at that point in the game, you effectively have infinite regen already from the hundreds of random vegetables you’ve collected throughout the game.
The other half of character progression is also shit. Getting Uniques out in the world has long ceased to be exciting. First time you replace a generic weapon with Unique? Fantastic. The second time? Frustrating, because you likely sunk a bunch of upgrade mats into the first one. Then you start to realize that none of the special abilities of Uniques matter all that much compared to the overall “tier” due to the asinine enemy “level” balance. If your stuff is blue and they are purple, you deal 35% less damage and take 35% more damage. Meanwhile, each time you upgrade a weapon or armor, you get silly shit like +9 damage or -4 damage received. Upgrading a Unique never boosts the special effects… why?
Finally, I want to talk about the story in general terms. I’ll throw a Yellow spoiler warning just in case, but the short version is: the game never answers the question of “what’s my motivation?”
The general premise of the game is that you are a godlike of an unknown god, working in the court of an Aedyran emperor. You are then tasked with solving the Dreamscourge plague problem in the Living Lands, an isle that the emperor is interested in taking over. You are sent over as an Envoy of the emperor himself, granting you leeway in resolving the Dreamscourge crisis in any manner you deem fit.
The problem is that all the Aedyran empire stuff just up and evaporates as soon as you step on the docks, unless you commit to being cartoonishly evil for the rest of the game. And if you do, all of your companions are from the Livings Lands, so they’ll be mad at you for everything you do. Having evil options in RPGs is a good thing even if players do not typically engage with it, but the problem is setting up your game to support it. None of your Avowed companions will leave you no matter what choices you make. There are no Aedyran or Steel Garrote companions, which would make such an evil playthrough more reasonable. And while I have not yet finished the game at the time of this writing, I haven’t really seen any good motivation to even care about the Aedyran side of things. Nobody is reminding you of your duty to the emperor, or even really questioning your loyalty.
This is not the first place Avowed leaned so far into “roleplay” that it fell directly into RPG mad libs. There are frequent dream sequences throughout the game where you are asked to choose how events in the past played out. Some of these choices lead to you getting one godlike ability versus another, but the majority of it is just… there. I understand that there are (presumably) people who like this sort of thing, but Avowed just sort of drops it on your porch and leaves. There’s no context, no sense of purpose. Again, what’s my motivation? Am I training somebody to be more forgiving or spiteful, depending on my dream answers? Or am I literally playing one-person mad libs?
I get that this may not sound all that different from all the normal RPG choices you encounter in the genre. In Baldur’s Gate 3, you can choose to free a gnome strapped to a windmill or send him flying by cranking up the speed. That choice doesn’t matter too much in the scheme of things, either way. Except, of course, to the gnome, and possibly some party members. But that at least has some immediate context and consequences and feels like a real choice. There are some quests vaguely similar to that in Avowed, but they all ring hollow. Perhaps in the abstract the quests are identical, and I’m just not invested in the world of Avowed in the same way as BG3 or Mass Effect or anything else. Or perhaps the devs simply were painting-by-numbers and forgot to include a soul in their creation.
And that brings me back to the Bioshock Infinite comparison from the top. There are some games in which I can understand people enjoying, even when I do not. League of Legends? That’s definitely of no interest to me, but I get it. Overwatch 2? Sure, I enjoyed the original for a time as well. Call of Duty? I prefer the Battlefield series, but a more arcade feel can be fun.
If someone says Bioshock Infinite is one of their favorite games though, my eyebrows go all the way up. Maybe the DLCs fixed the plot later, but Bioshock Infinite’s story was otherwise objectively terrible, like Mass Effect 3 original ending terrible. I feel the same way when I see people online say Avowed is a 9.5/10 or they are eager for another playthrough. I don’t even want to finish this first playthrough, let alone running around opening chest after chest of the same random crafting materials again. Some aspects of Avowed are fantastic genre improvements, like the feel of melee and the feel of exploration via jumping/traversal. Unfortunately, tragically, there is just no follow-through, no stuck landing.
The only way I can see Avowed being someone’s favorite RPG or deserving of a high score is if they simply haven’t played better games before. Which, given that many of my own favorite games came out 10-20 years ago, might be increasingly understandable. What a bummer.
I suppose there is still time in the 4th Act and resultant endings for Avowed to pull a miraculous redemption. Well, aside from the combat and itemization and character progression and world interactivity – those ships have already sailed. We’ll see if the plot payoff was worth the pain.
Posted in Commentary, Impressions
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Tags: Avowed, Bioshock Infinite, Mad Libs, Obsidian, Plot, What's My Motivation?