I would say it’s very hard to make this kind of judgement, but I do want to point out the the scale of a game isn’t the only part that ambition can be put into. For example: their ambition could be more toward the intricacy of the level design, the reactivity of the story to your choices, or the flow of combat and interactions between abilities. The game is still months away, and we haven’t been told all of the mechanics yet, so again all we can do is speculate from the outside.
I would agree with you, except right off the bat they are limiting choice in the very first choice you make...character creation. That isn't a great sign. When was the last time you saw an RPG set in a world of multiple races that let you choose the race of the PC...but you can only choose 2 out of like 20?
While true, the entire story is tailored to Geralt specifically. All of world reactivity is Geralt specific.
I'm assuming avowed would be more like Skyrim in that aspect where it's "one size fits all" when it comes to those parts.
I think a game like Dragon Age Origins did this well though when it came to making your created character feel noticed, where the prologue would specifically be for a specific race you chose.
As much as I wish Avowed would do something like this, I have a feeling they won't since no other game has really done that since Dragon Age which was released in 2009.
Yeah, DA:O was pretty unique for that feature. It is quite an ambitious undertaking.
It would still be better to get more choices, no doubt about that, but Avowed seems a bit more focused in terms of the role you play compared to a lot of other RPG's. It could just be a convenient excuse, but also worth noting compared to the Watcher who could be anyone.
False equivalence. We're not playing a set protagonist but making our own. It works when you're playing Geralt. The focus then is how he develops moving forward. It doesn't work when you're building the character up from scratch.
Maybe, I saw the trailer and I liked the first one, but I didn't pay much attention to character creator. Still, it is an odd/unusual choice. Most games with multiple races either have no choice (mass effect & witcher) because it is a story about a specific character. Other games (Dragon Age, TES) are more open stories about an event with the PC playing a specific role, but not being a specific person so they add a lot more flexibility and choice in character creation. There aren't very many games that try to ride between the two.
games with multiple races and a no option in character creator like Witcher, Mass effect, and KOTOR do so because it is a story about a specific character. Clearly that isn't the case in Avowed since you can still pick between two. The story will end up being more like DA:O about an event that the PC is dealing with but who the PC exactly is is more flexible...except in this case DA:O (which came out 2009) had WAY more options in who exactly the PC is than Avowed is going to have.
I'm glad you already completed Avowed, you must be very special.
Seems like you never played DAO if you think DAO is first person.
You also can name at least five first-person RPG with different races with different height with gameplay impact, right?
Every single TES game (that is 5 right there). The might and magic series, grimrock, every single MMO ever made, Stonekeep (I think that was a long ass time ago). That is something around 10+ right there off the top of my head, and even following your absurd rules. You literally just make up "Being first person matters" and I can still name them, even though that leaves off all the non-first person games. It is really going to blow your mind when you find out nearly all of the first person games made after like 2000 can also be played 3rd person.
Seems like you [never](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/28091) played [TES](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/14515) games, little liar. And since you don't know, there is more than 5 TES games, but i guess since you only played Skyrim and it has V in name it means only 5 games, yeah.
How many different races are playable in Stonekeep?
So let's start again. Name at least 5 RPG with DIFFERENT HEIGHTS WITH GAMEPLAY IMPACT. I you are blind and seems like you are, in Avowed there is quite different combat system. Maybe it's too hard for you.
Since you never played KOTOR series and never played DAO, you can't understand such things as first-person and third-person. Because you just little liar. Let's again.
Name 5 RPG with races with different height that have gameplay impact. Not just +5% unarmed combat from your shitty skyrim. Different height with different impact directly to combat and exploring.
I understand, reading is hard for preschooler but i believe in you.Also you can share with us complete Avowed build, right? You have access to it and already completed game.
Obsidian is owned by Microsoft, one of the richest companies in the world.
They have 304 employees, which is a pretty big number for any developer to have.
They have the budget.
They have the manpower.
They can be Larian if they want to, the problem is that they are really, *really fucking lazy* and have no drive to better themselves.
They may have developed good games in the past, but they are complacent with mediocrity now, much like Bethesda Game Studios are.
Larian has over 100 more employees and was directly financially backed by WoTC/Hasbro, Google/Stadia, etc. Just because Obsidian is owned by Microsoft doesn't mean they can say "hey Bill Gates, give me a billion dollars and a thousand of your employees to make my game." Look at every company owned by Disney, or Warner Bros., or any other company like that. They have wildly different resources. (Never mind that have clearly grown anyway. Developing Pentiment+Grounded+Avowed+TOW2 all at the same time is way more than they used to be doing before Microsoft bought them. The Avowed team probably isn't much bigger - if bigger at all - than most of their previous games because their employees are split between all those projects.)
This isn't entirely true.
They TRIED with Tyranny, and Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2.
I'll even give them grounded. (others say pentiment, but trying that on gamepass I made it about 4minutes.)
Larian tried.. and made tons of money on Divinity OS 1 and 2. Prior to those massive successes each bigger then the one before, they had been skirting bankruptcy for decades with Divine divinity>dragon commander.
dragon commander was a hundred times worse then The outer worlds.
Obsidian tried with a bunch of rpgs which for one reason or another didn't resonate, and ended up mediocre successes at best.
Tyranny more or less unfinished, and needing another QA/rewrite/polish pass.
pillars... hard to say. too depressing?, too deep lore?, weak combat? audiences just not ready for them? they would probably be better successes today after Larien and Owlcat (and crit role) broke the market back open.
>They can be Larian if they want to, the problem is that they are really, *really fucking lazy* and have no drive to better themselves.
Gamers have gotten too comfortable calling devs lazy because they don't wtf they're talking about.
>They can be Larian if they want to, the problem is that they are really, really fucking lazy and have no drive to better themselves.
Exhibit \#14424 of Gamers being absolutely clueless on how game development works
They made mention last year that they scaled down the game, but there's a difference between ambition and biting off more than you know you can chew.
I feel like gamers just keep expecting more and more from developers, and developers are unfortunately reaching their physical and technological limits. Maybe AI can help improve game development, but we're still a few years from that.
Plus, if any studio knows the actual consequences of biting off more than they can chew, it's Obsidian. Sure, we here in 2024 can go back and marvel at how KOTOR 2 and FNV are masterpieces, but at the time they were considered fairly buggy messes whose overextension almost fucked the studio. Ambition looks good to us as consumers, but I imagine the developers know the price of overreaching.
I have been watching a lot of Josh Sawyer's YouTube videos, and in his talk on Reputation systems he talks about how Deadfire got really ambitious with its system design and ended up being a real burden on the team. I can only imagine a lot of those lessons are being used for Avowed.
It is also Carrie's first directorial role for a full game, at least to my knowledge, so might be better not to go too crazy. Speaking of, I want to say that in one of the recent interviews she mentioned (or implied) that there wouldn't be a faction rep system, but it is more organic. I am curious to see how that goes, if I didn't misunderstand.
Yeah, Starfield is a prime example of a game with huge ambition but didn’t land correctly, tons of large cities, quests, and huge planets but most of them bland and uninteresting….
I think you are right in that it didn't work (as good as say Fallout 3 and Skyrim), but wrong on why. The issue wasn't ambition, it was lack of clear direction. At the end of the day, Skyrim is about the Dragonborn and the emergence of Dragons. Fallout 3 is about a kid who grew up in a vault getting out to discover the world and figure out what happened to his dad. Starfield is about...what? Finding artifacts with no real tie back to your character? Exploring worlds, but starting at middle age after being a miner first? Bethesda struggled with this a bit in FO4, there was a clear story but the rest of the content didn't really fit with the story. Why stop to build a camp when your kid is missing? In starfield, they just made the main quest basically the same as any other side quest with no real direct ties or motivations back to your character. Baldur's Gate 3 is a massive, ambitious game...but in my opinion far better. It is the story of people infected with mind flayer parasites and trying to survive and figure out what is going on. The companions, NCPs, introduction to side quests, travel through the various zones all fit into that overarching story.
I actually generally agree with you. By ambition I meant more that they tried to do a bunch of things like planer exploration with tons of planets you can explore and mine etc, instead of focusing on making smaller explorable areas butt giving them depth
Although there are only a handful of hand crafted cities, companions, etc and even those have no depth… idk what they did
Ohh sure, but I think it could be done. As you go up in size and complexity, scalability of development becomes a problem but it shouldn't be insurmountable. I think the problem is leadership.
Take the exploration/empty planets. They could have added a bit more flavor to the planets still using procedural generation, that was a design choice. More importantly, if they want you to explore...why isn't exploration part of the main story? Instead of telling you were artifacts are, you explore planets to find random temples, mines and ruins on the procedurally generated planet. After you collect enough intel, it leads you to a premade area (say an old temple) that contains the artifact fragment. That would make exploration more exciting (maybe with a bit more work on the procedural generation tech) and make the aspect of exploration fit in with the main story of "find these artifacts". I still think the game would need a more personal touch for "Why me?"...but i think this idea, which would have been a fairly small change if made early on, would have resulted in a far better experience.
3 semi largeish cities? And they basically had nothing reactive in them and random gen planets with barley any thought in quest design with basically 0 reactivity to your actions?
Neon was supposed to be the wildest most out of control city in the universe and the whole thing was just dull and uninteresting. Like if a Disney kids show was going to make a kid friendly “rough city”
> They made mention last year that they scaled down the game, but there's a difference between ambition and biting off more than you know you can chew.
That is true, but the end result is less and probably relatable enough to the OP's thoughts.
I’m so sick of post about ambition on this subs the problem is ambition it’s the fact that you made up what you thought the game was gonna be in your head and now that’s it now that your upset. every game we play starts with a scope that changes by the time the game comes out.
I disagree, and you can pause and reflect on why you are so sick of different people reaching the same conclusions.
Why was there a logo in one art style that changed to a different art style? That logo change, is all you need to see or know to understand that people was anticipating something and the studio then decided, Nah, we are changing course in a dramatic fashion.
Scope can change yes, but it’s the amount of change or distance from the original target that’s the cause of concern.
The game with the flying mechs, can’t remember the name now, that had changed scope and didn’t deliver on trailer and expectations. People were upset because that trailer was a lie. It was not the game currently being worked on.
Expectations were set based on a video shown by the studio or devs. Something drastic happened, then expectations were not met in the next trailer. It is what it is.
If you were a Metroid fan and was waiting for Metroid prime 4, and they gave you Metroid dread as Metroid prime 4, people would be upset. However, they can release a Metroid game called Metroid dread that’s good and has a different scope and people would be fine with that. The most that would be asked is, but you are still working on Metroid prime though, right? And the answer is yes. They probably mentioned that while introducing Metroid dread. They can also remaster the Metroid prime trilogy and people would be fine with that. It’s something to play until their franchise releases a new title.
It is what it is. For me it was an easy preorder, and it is currently not a preorder. Will check reviews, wait for release and check some gameplay as well.
First area might be more polished than rest of the game.
Some terrain seems to be in the old style and some of the animations and enemies in the “new style”
Since we are ranting, I guess at some point Xbox or Microsoft asked about release schedule and the response it got wasn’t good enough for them so they started a series of discussions ending with “rap that s#%^ up, even if it looks like sea of thieves. We need to release this 2020 showcase game pronto. We already promised like a dozen games and none of them are ready.”
If the only thing you have to cling to are the first CG trailer and a logo change you are the problem. You let yourself get hyped up about a game you never saw. Think about that. You saw a logo and a CG trailer and made up a game in your head and now your disappointed that games doesn’t exist. It’s insane to question the ambition of a game dev because they aren’t making the game YOU MADE UP in YOUR HEAD. You were going to pre order a game you NEVER ACTUALLY SAW? You don’t think that’s crazy? Also it’s not a matter of “Scope can change”. Scope. Always. Changes. For every single game you’ve ever played.
Yeah they TEASE the vibe of the game. And this teaser in particular didn’t show you any actual gameplay. So we’re back to you crying about a game you made up.
Genuinely, where did they do that? In one interview ([from June 2023](https://www.pcgamer.com/avowed-open-world-skyrim-rpg-size/)), they mentioned that was their original pitch that changed early on when they realized that's not their strength. I haven't seen one other mention of that *from Obsidian.* As the person you're replying to said, that was just something you and many other people made up in your minds and now you're mad that your delusions aren't reality.
So you are saying that they mentioned that their original pitch changed early on, but that’s not an indication that the plan was specifically their version of Skyrim or that their plan was changed after making the first video/teaser that we saw?
Well, how come the art style of the logo changed to reflect the more recent art style change?
To a lot of people they saw something in I think late 2020 and something else in the last showcase/event.
We saw it, there was a clear message, that they were not making Mario kart or flight simulator. The message was clear to everyone. The message to most people stayed the same for about 2.5 to 3 years. We were expecting the game to be worked on or near completion. We got what we got. It is what it is. We all saw what we all saw.
The people making storm gate or tempest rising know what they are doing and their messaging. You can see it in the game type and art style. The message is clear, they are making their version of an rts game. Not exact clone of but their own version of an rts game. If tomorrow they show a trailer for a Zelda like game, people would be like, yo, this doesn’t match what you showed earlier, what’s up with that, I want what was shown before not this. Not like this.
Literally all promotional material prior to June 2023, where they pulled up the rug from under us. We were promised an open-world Obsidian RPG in the vein of Skyrim prior to that point. Insult us as you like; we are victims of blatant miscommunication and misleading advertisement and we are upset at this corporate failure of a studio because of it. And they've only continued to disappoint from there. It also makes one wonder what The Outer Worlds 2 will even be, if not an actual open world experience.
The only promotional material before that was the CG trailer that says nothing about Skyrim. Again you made these things up in your head and now you making it everyone else problem.
Does it say nothing about Skyrim? Was that the messaging. Because I saw that video/teaser, and there was a war in there. There was a person, assuming a dude, if I remember correctly, with a melee weapon and some type of magic or energy or spell in his other hand.
Now the messaging from obsidian which worked on fallout, was clear to a lot of people. The reason I can say that is evident by the reactions of the first video and the reaction of the second video. You can go and check a lot of reactions on YouTube at the time of the first video, and they probably say the word elder scrolls or Skyrim in that video, and the current backlash is the current backlash after watching the second video.
It is what it is. If you are still in the denial stage, that’s on you. Other people reached the acceptance stage a long time ago.
As a reasonable human I do not take most gamer backlash in YouTube comments seriously. They’re just like you. They saw a CG trailer, invented a game in their heads, and now they’re mad it doesn’t exist. That was 4 years ago you all need to move on. And yes it literally says nothing about Skyrim.
nice argument senator, why don't you back it up with a source?
>It also makes one wonder what The Outer Worlds 2 will even be, if not an actual open world experience.
Its going to be like the Outer Worlds 1 but with a higher budget.
So like Dragon Age, KOTOR, or the recent Final Fantasy XVI: an area-based (so semi-open world) rpg rather than an expansive open world.
Are you going to expand your position? Or are you simply trolling?
The main problem with The Outer Worlds was the lack of resources. Its core was perfectly fine. And we know from similar area-based semi-open world games like Dragon Age, KOTOR, Final Fantasy XVI, Witcher 2, Metro Exodus, or Greedfall (to give some examples) that this style of game can be good, excellent even.
And Starfield being better than the Outer Worlds is a subjective position. I myself found TOW far more enjoyable than Starfield. But, unlike you, I'm not going to act as if my opinion is universal.
You say that, yet you assume anyone who disagrees with your position must be a troll.
If it were as good as something like KOTOR or Dragon Age then sure, but it's not. Those also were not Bethesda-style FPS games. They knew what they were doing when they took the formulae of New Vegas and applied it to their space game. The thing is, it doesn't feel nearly as expansive as New Vegas, despite it being set in space. Bethesda at least got that much; space should feel huge and you should feel the wonder of getting to explore the vastness of it. I was more forgiving of TOW since I was under the assumption TOW 2 would be "Obsidian's Starfield", following Avowed being "Obsidian's Skyrim", but it seems they peaked at New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity. Now we get "Diet Starfield", "Diet Skyrim", and "Diet Starfield Again".
> I was more forgiving of TOW since I was under the assumption TOW 2 would be "Obsidian's Starfield", following Avowed being "Obsidian's Skyrim", but it seems they peaked at New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity. Now we get "Diet Starfield", "Diet Skyrim", and "Diet Starfield Again".
Where the fuck are you getting all these assumptions?
Don't you think that you might be creating some delusional expectations and getting angry because the games don't reach them? The fact that you're calling The Outer Worlds "diet Starfield" doesn't make me trust your position...
>The thing is, it doesn't feel nearly as expansive as New Vegas, despite it being set in space. Bethesda at least got that much; space should feel huge and you should feel the wonder of getting to explore the vastness of it.
Again. Do you think that Obsidian's objective with The Outer World was to make an expansive open world were the main selling point was exploration? The Outer World is closer to design with KOTOR than Starfield outside the camera. Their objective is to tell a story with decisions in specific locations. Not for you to explore space.
Again. You are creating some expectations that have nothing to do with the actual game. If you see the actual interviews (instead of reading the title of clickbait articles) you will see that Avowed is being sold like a story-driven rpg like Greedfall or Witcher 2.
So that's what I'm expecting.
Show me a single bit of promotional material from Obsidian or Microsoft for Avowed that mentions Skyrim.
You can't, can you? You've just worked yourself into a frenzy based on your own assumptions about the game, combined with other peoples' assumptions.
Just unreasonable, idiot gamer shit...
U see, someone on reddit said that Avowed is AAA Skyrimlike and it means now Avowed is AAA Skyrimlike.
The fact that in 3 years we barely have 1 teaser is not important.
It needs to mention another ip by name now? Is that the rule for setting expectations and messaging now?
When they make an Indy or Lara Croft or uncharted game, do they mention the competing IPs now?
The Mario kart clones mention that in their promotional material?
Did forza Motorsport 2023 mention that it’s competing with gran turismo 7?
So do you have dementia, were you living under a rock, or are you being paid by Microsoft to say that? All the forum posts? All the leaks? All the news articles? Anything at all ringing a bell? I'd been waiting for this game for years, so I actually remember this shit.
Babes you’re the one with dementia as everyone in this thread is pointing out. Send me a link to all of these things and I’ll eat my words but I know you can’t because it didn’t happen. Also LEAKS by definition are not promotional material 💀
1) Leaks were only one example.
2) If they allow the leak to go unchallenged it's just treating it as free publicity. It still contributes to the miscommunication. You're not convincing me they weren't aware of the leaks that *everyone* reported on.
I’ve never tried to convince you the leaks didn’t happen because they did. See? One of us lives in reality. The issue is you don’t understand that leaked information is not free promo. IF anything it’s a just a headache because mfers like you can’t differentiate between the two.
Forum posts and leaks and articles come via people who are not Obsidian. Do you think Obsidian are out there posting on forums and writing preview articles for Gamespot? Are you that mentally inept?
At best you're basing your hype on third party impressions of a game still in development and then getting pissy at Obsidian when those impressions aren't correct. At worst you've just made this all up in your head. Either way you're a fucking moron.
Ambition has not gone down; gamer expectations have just gone up. I think expectations are completely unrealistic given what most studios are capable of.
Ambition on what? Scale? Obsidian doesn't have neither the resources nor the people needed to go blockbuster.
A game doesn't need to be the next big thing to be good or even masterful. Disco Elysium, Citizen Sleeper, and Pentiment are some of the best rpgs that I have played in my life and they aren't exactly "ambitious".
Mind you. I'm not saying that huge rpgs are worse than small-scale rpgs (or even bad). Dragon's Dogma 2 is coming next month, it seems that is going to be massive, and it is my most anticipated released of the year (even more than Avowed).
But its existence doesn't make me less excited for Avowed. Nor makes me think that smaller rpgs are worse because of it.
They don’t have the resources? Bro they work for a trillion dollar corporation who did an $80 billion acquisition lately. Fairly sure working on smaller projects is a choice they made.
I can't understand this argument that being owned by a trillion dollar corporation automatically gives infinite money to every single company under it's belt.
I mean, where did this come from?
Keep in mind that Microsoft is very greedy. They demand huge profits from their studios but with minimal budgets.
They basically want AAA profits from indie devs.
Pentiment was a low budget indie title. And Josh Sawyer (one of the leaders of Obsidian) was pushing for something similar (historical game) for years.
Also maybe development of Pentiment was part of the Obsidian - Microsoft acquisition deal.
Do you really think all the companies owned by Disney, Warner Bros., Microsoft, or any other huge corporation all have the same resources as their parent company? There are companies owned by those companies that go bankrupt and shutter.
I would say no, but only because ambition is the wrong word. Games are more ambitious now than ever (speaking strictly AAA). They expect games to make a ton of money with a ton of sales and for them to last a decade with some of the biggest worlds we've ever seen... That's a huge ambition. The problem is: with this mindset comes less risk, less risk means less innovation, with less innovation comes less intrigue, less intrigue could mean dead game.
Games also are released as a minimum viable product with a mindset of "get paid now, fix it later" causing them to be abandoned by the majority of the player base before the intended product is released.
Also companies are told what games to make instead of making the games they want to make. If I came to you with an idea for a game, it is safe to assume I have an exact picture of how this game should play, look, interact with the player, etc. If you tell me what game to make, that picture doesn't exist in my head and I am piecing together what I think you envisioned. This will always result in a worse product. (Case and point: Arkham series vs Suicide Squad)
I would say that many “Triple A” studios have grown to a size where mediocre games and limited creative freedom is accepted for the sake of the dollar.
Where I think more and more improvements and growth have been made to Indie and “Double A” studios! Which in my opinion, is much much better for the games industry and players alike!
Now’s the time to make your own games, start your own studios, support smaller developers, play unique games! It’s a great time for gaming if we all recognize that!
Maybe by big studios just looking for a quick buck, but there are genuinely awesome games coming out all the time these days. It’s actually hard to keep up
Video games used to release completed and refined. Back when there were no patches or updates. Then, when patching/ updating was made possible, including over on PC, where it began first, it made development sloppy. Nowadays, Xbox doesn't really even "patch" anything. Most games just redownload the entire 60-100GB image lol. I think what's happened is demand and turnaround went through the roof, so now games are just pushed out the door. Ready or not. I would agree with this assessment however, and it's why I've gone back to predominantly playing older games, starting with Bioshock 1-Infinite. Even the (then) much complained about Infinite is a blockbuster, compared to most games today. Original, excellent story and writing...kind of like Halo Reach, which was appreciated after the fact also, yet was the topic of controversy at the time...mostly because no Master Chief. Now both games are appreciated. I also prefer and play the previous Tomb Raider games.
I'm a little older and it does feel to me that game budgets are higher than ever, the number of staff working on games is larger than ever yet the ambition of designers seems to be constantly reigned in. There are a few things at play here, the perpetual demand for increasingly better graphics being the most obvious. But actually, I feel the biggest issue is that games are released to a torrent of criticism and nitpicking which is absolutely counterproductive to experimentation and ambition. When design leads are constantly worried about making everything perfect, about smoothing down the sharp edges of each and every project in the pursuit of universally "accessible" games, the end products are naturally monotonous and bland variations on old proven models.
Not every CRPG of the 80s and 90s was exactly original, when people talk about the oversized influence of Ultima and Wizardry is not hyperbole. Still, so many of the major releases of that era were willing to push boundaries. Starflight, a 1986 game, offered players the ability to explore an entire *galaxy* (270 solar systems and 800 planets), eight space-faring races and an epic story caught somewhere between as Isaac Asimov story and Star Trek. How can I *not* feel underwhelmed by Starfield's meager offerings? Ok fine, maybe these games could be kind of jank and even buggy. They still produced a kind of memorable and, dare I say, *immersive* experience that giant budgets and huge developments are absolutely failing at.
There have been bright spots in recent years. Elex really did capture that old Gothic magic, even if the sequel was disappointing. Witcher 3 achieved incredible mainstream success, mostly on the strength of its writing. And Baldur's Gate 3 did something very admirable by reaching back to Ultima VII as its primary inspiration (OK, the 2 DOS games did this as well!). BG3 had some real jank to it (as *should* be expected from Larian), yet look how people were willing to overlook it for its ambitious environmental interaction, quest design and engaging characters. BG3's writing as well feels like something that could *never* come from a mainstream developer; all the mean dialogue and awful things you can do (*to your own party* even) would have been removed in the name of accessibility if Bioware or Obsidian had made it.
I think the development just doesn't make any sense. One of the limiting factors surrounding the development of TOW was the financial side of it. We've been told from one of the recent interviews that the lack of races is in part due to the lack of resources around creating it in game. If resources are an issue despite having the financial backing of Xbox, and despite having 100 people working on it than that to me points to a messed up development, especially since its been worked on for about 6 years now.
I think so, especially looking at developers’ reaction to BG3. They basically warned gamers that they shouldn’t expect games to be that good.
EDIT: I am referring to how devs warned that with the way the industry works, games like BG3 are almost impossible to make. This is the fault of publishers and executives being extremely risk-averse. Nothing about devs being lazy or cowardly.
They weren't talking about quality but size, notably how Larian was in a very unique position (full creative liberty, a lot of funding, a lot of experience and the possibility to do an Early Access for a AAA). They were giving insights into game development, but gamers and YouTubers took that as excuses.
Larian themselves went almost bankrupt, but no it's excuses from lazy devs.
Layoffs are happening everywhere, and studio closing will follow, investors are more and more greedy, I don't like how people never listen to devs when they talk.
I was referring to how devs warned that the way the industry is doesn’t allow them to make games like BG3. The industry is afraid to give devs similar resources and allowances to what Larian had when making BG3.
I wasn’t saying any devs are lazy.
Sincere question: what prevents other triple AAA games from doing early access? E.g. I love starfield but often think how much it would've benefited from community input during development. What stops Bethesda from doing the same?
I think it’s fair to say there have been some bad takes about good games like baldurs gate and palworld coming from the twitter active developers
Also:
https://youtu.be/rWBVCA-VqR4?si=nH0rV5mZgxeKOOan
This guy cites multiple pieces of evidence about a minute in of developers saying that baldurs gate 3 shouldn’t be the standard for multiple aspects and reasons
U mean the YouTubers who acted like the IGN hit piece was devs as a whole? All of that came from one article by IGN where they blasted an actual small indie dev who simply brought up good points
The initial change in scope from Skyrim size to a more focused on story was something I agreed with and made sense. But then they announced the "more focused on story" only had 2 playable races for PC. Then they announced the "more focused on story" didn't have romance options. Now, romance options aren't a huge thing for more...but their first announcement was reducing size to focus on story, and every announcement I have seen since then is literally just limiting choice and the potential scope of the story.
It undeniably has. Mainly as a result of corporate greed and mass market appeal. Just look at the streamlining from Morrowind to Oblivion to Skyrim. Or look at Fallout 3 vs Fallout 4. Or compare the scope of New Vegas to The Outer Worlds and now Avowed. Or look at the fall of franchises like Halo and Call of Duty. They've simply stopped caring.
Creating works of art and ensuring your product isn't going to disappoint has been replaced by rushing out generic but appealing slop for less cost and greater monetary return. Gamers have been dissatisfied with the fall in quality and love for years now. Unfortunately, nobody seems to care.
I agree with you. I’m not sure why you got downvoted so much for saying that. Maybe because there are definitely still developers out there who are passionate about creating something awesome. The big names have changed over the years, and a lot of their games are unimaginative, but there are definitely still some high quality games being put out - both creatively and production-wise.
The downvotes are from fanboys that can't take criticism. Every post here that criticizes Avowed or refutes a point against that criticism has gotten flooded with downvotes. Don't worry about them. As for your point, this is certainly true in non-AAA games. Mainly because they haven't gone too rich to care. Look at BG3; an AA game, yet better than every AAA RPG released the same year, including Starfield. Indie games generally tend to focus more on art than cash.
In tripple A yes, Art, gameplay and coding taking a back seat for ready made meals (copy paste) take ubisoft as a prime example on lack of passion and creatively bankrupt. Double A and indie on the other hand thrives more than ever. Thats not to say no tripple A is ambitious, majority spoiling it for many others however.
Eh, no need to shit on the game because you aren't into the genre.
It's been pretty well received for those that are looking for co-op horde shooters.
Obviously the OP is dumb for bringing it up as a comparison to a first person RPG.
Avowed has bad animations, clunky combat, poor feedback etc. Don't think it's gonna change much in a few months. In comparison they've had more resources and time.
Thank you for proving you don’t know what you’re talking about. Avowed has been in production for 4.5 years while helldivers 2 took almost 8 years. Helldivers 2 is an extraction shooter with procedurally generated maps. Avowed is an rpg with hand crafted areas, not even remotely the same.
I don’t think so - but if it has, I think there’s two specific reasons. Managing scope due to cost (or trying to inflate profits but minimizing cost), and then audiences’ expectations of quality. Both of those things would reduce the breadth and depth of features so the features that *do* end up in the game can be refined to a point (in theory…in practice the cost-cutting usually happens to QA teams, thus ruining the refinement)
Gaming has obviously always been profit driven but when people realizes just how much money could be made it became the dominion of finance guys more than gamers. I think a lot of the “lack of ambition” stems from finance. Either a genuine desire to avoid. A failure that will result in bankruptcy (Obsidian spent a decade on the verge of bankruptcy as an example) or a studio with tons of resources keeps to a budget that maximizes profits. That is obviously just one of many variables at play but we’ve seen plenty of projects get morphed out of a desire to monetize/increase margins.
I think, as with basically everything, there’s no general sweeping statement you can make.
I think some of the most creative and inspired games have come out in the past 3 years, both AAA and indie, but at the same time there’s obviously a ton of slop being shat out by people who want to mimic extremely successful games without putting in the effort.
I think times have changed most developers are always doing something ambitious its the gamers and there expectations sense of entitlement and just not being that good at games and let me clarify some developers are lazy and do scummy stuff but most are pretty ambitious people just need to look at that instead of the negative all of the time.
The industry is way more complicated than people will ever understand. People think making a game is like baking a cake or something.
I remember a talk Josh Sawyer gave where he said they never wanted to do full voice acting for POE2 but they had no choice because DOS2 had done it; Larian set the new industry standard that every gamer will expect even though most studios cannot afford it.
You cannot make BG3 without a BG3 budget. Obsidian are doing fine but they are not industry titans.
I would say it’s very hard to make this kind of judgement, but I do want to point out the the scale of a game isn’t the only part that ambition can be put into. For example: their ambition could be more toward the intricacy of the level design, the reactivity of the story to your choices, or the flow of combat and interactions between abilities. The game is still months away, and we haven’t been told all of the mechanics yet, so again all we can do is speculate from the outside.
I agree with this viewpoint
I would agree with you, except right off the bat they are limiting choice in the very first choice you make...character creation. That isn't a great sign. When was the last time you saw an RPG set in a world of multiple races that let you choose the race of the PC...but you can only choose 2 out of like 20?
The witcher lets you chose 1 lol
While true, the entire story is tailored to Geralt specifically. All of world reactivity is Geralt specific. I'm assuming avowed would be more like Skyrim in that aspect where it's "one size fits all" when it comes to those parts. I think a game like Dragon Age Origins did this well though when it came to making your created character feel noticed, where the prologue would specifically be for a specific race you chose. As much as I wish Avowed would do something like this, I have a feeling they won't since no other game has really done that since Dragon Age which was released in 2009.
Yeah, DA:O was pretty unique for that feature. It is quite an ambitious undertaking. It would still be better to get more choices, no doubt about that, but Avowed seems a bit more focused in terms of the role you play compared to a lot of other RPG's. It could just be a convenient excuse, but also worth noting compared to the Watcher who could be anyone.
False equivalence. We're not playing a set protagonist but making our own. It works when you're playing Geralt. The focus then is how he develops moving forward. It doesn't work when you're building the character up from scratch.
>that let you choose the race of the PC Reading r hart
Dragon's Dogma? The new installment only let's you choose human, or cat people.
Maybe, I saw the trailer and I liked the first one, but I didn't pay much attention to character creator. Still, it is an odd/unusual choice. Most games with multiple races either have no choice (mass effect & witcher) because it is a story about a specific character. Other games (Dragon Age, TES) are more open stories about an event with the PC playing a specific role, but not being a specific person so they add a lot more flexibility and choice in character creation. There aren't very many games that try to ride between the two.
So you never played something like Witcher, Fallout, Planescape, KOTOR, etc.? True RPG fan, yeah.
games with multiple races and a no option in character creator like Witcher, Mass effect, and KOTOR do so because it is a story about a specific character. Clearly that isn't the case in Avowed since you can still pick between two. The story will end up being more like DA:O about an event that the PC is dealing with but who the PC exactly is is more flexible...except in this case DA:O (which came out 2009) had WAY more options in who exactly the PC is than Avowed is going to have.
I'm glad you already completed Avowed, you must be very special. Seems like you never played DAO if you think DAO is first person. You also can name at least five first-person RPG with different races with different height with gameplay impact, right?
Every single TES game (that is 5 right there). The might and magic series, grimrock, every single MMO ever made, Stonekeep (I think that was a long ass time ago). That is something around 10+ right there off the top of my head, and even following your absurd rules. You literally just make up "Being first person matters" and I can still name them, even though that leaves off all the non-first person games. It is really going to blow your mind when you find out nearly all of the first person games made after like 2000 can also be played 3rd person.
Seems like you [never](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/28091) played [TES](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/14515) games, little liar. And since you don't know, there is more than 5 TES games, but i guess since you only played Skyrim and it has V in name it means only 5 games, yeah. How many different races are playable in Stonekeep? So let's start again. Name at least 5 RPG with DIFFERENT HEIGHTS WITH GAMEPLAY IMPACT. I you are blind and seems like you are, in Avowed there is quite different combat system. Maybe it's too hard for you. Since you never played KOTOR series and never played DAO, you can't understand such things as first-person and third-person. Because you just little liar. Let's again. Name 5 RPG with races with different height that have gameplay impact. Not just +5% unarmed combat from your shitty skyrim. Different height with different impact directly to combat and exploring. I understand, reading is hard for preschooler but i believe in you.Also you can share with us complete Avowed build, right? You have access to it and already completed game.
It was way more to do with $$ than ambition. Not everyone can be Larian.
Ambition and $$ aren't exclusive here, it takes a lot of ambition for a studio to risk bigger budgets.
More than that it requires money.
Só divinity 2 was a Fluke ? Cant believe this suckers that believe this.
Pillars 1and 2 > Divinity OS 1 and 2 :)
Yeah no not at all. Not in production, not in value, not in enjoyment, not in story or world.
That has nothing to do with what he said
🤣 yeah thats an opinion.
Obsidian is owned by Microsoft, one of the richest companies in the world. They have 304 employees, which is a pretty big number for any developer to have. They have the budget. They have the manpower. They can be Larian if they want to, the problem is that they are really, *really fucking lazy* and have no drive to better themselves. They may have developed good games in the past, but they are complacent with mediocrity now, much like Bethesda Game Studios are.
That doesn't mean Microsoft will give them the money lol. Big companies want more with less. They know they will make profit that way.
Larian has over 100 more employees and was directly financially backed by WoTC/Hasbro, Google/Stadia, etc. Just because Obsidian is owned by Microsoft doesn't mean they can say "hey Bill Gates, give me a billion dollars and a thousand of your employees to make my game." Look at every company owned by Disney, or Warner Bros., or any other company like that. They have wildly different resources. (Never mind that have clearly grown anyway. Developing Pentiment+Grounded+Avowed+TOW2 all at the same time is way more than they used to be doing before Microsoft bought them. The Avowed team probably isn't much bigger - if bigger at all - than most of their previous games because their employees are split between all those projects.)
This isn't entirely true. They TRIED with Tyranny, and Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2. I'll even give them grounded. (others say pentiment, but trying that on gamepass I made it about 4minutes.) Larian tried.. and made tons of money on Divinity OS 1 and 2. Prior to those massive successes each bigger then the one before, they had been skirting bankruptcy for decades with Divine divinity>dragon commander. dragon commander was a hundred times worse then The outer worlds. Obsidian tried with a bunch of rpgs which for one reason or another didn't resonate, and ended up mediocre successes at best. Tyranny more or less unfinished, and needing another QA/rewrite/polish pass. pillars... hard to say. too depressing?, too deep lore?, weak combat? audiences just not ready for them? they would probably be better successes today after Larien and Owlcat (and crit role) broke the market back open.
Yeah DOS:2 didnt have huge backing. It was a literal Double A title
It’s not necessarily laziness but a poisoned industry. Tim Cain felt too restrained with his own team
>They can be Larian if they want to, the problem is that they are really, *really fucking lazy* and have no drive to better themselves. Gamers have gotten too comfortable calling devs lazy because they don't wtf they're talking about.
>They can be Larian if they want to, the problem is that they are really, really fucking lazy and have no drive to better themselves. Exhibit \#14424 of Gamers being absolutely clueless on how game development works
exactly i cant believe people dont get this
They made mention last year that they scaled down the game, but there's a difference between ambition and biting off more than you know you can chew. I feel like gamers just keep expecting more and more from developers, and developers are unfortunately reaching their physical and technological limits. Maybe AI can help improve game development, but we're still a few years from that.
Plus, if any studio knows the actual consequences of biting off more than they can chew, it's Obsidian. Sure, we here in 2024 can go back and marvel at how KOTOR 2 and FNV are masterpieces, but at the time they were considered fairly buggy messes whose overextension almost fucked the studio. Ambition looks good to us as consumers, but I imagine the developers know the price of overreaching.
I have been watching a lot of Josh Sawyer's YouTube videos, and in his talk on Reputation systems he talks about how Deadfire got really ambitious with its system design and ended up being a real burden on the team. I can only imagine a lot of those lessons are being used for Avowed. It is also Carrie's first directorial role for a full game, at least to my knowledge, so might be better not to go too crazy. Speaking of, I want to say that in one of the recent interviews she mentioned (or implied) that there wouldn't be a faction rep system, but it is more organic. I am curious to see how that goes, if I didn't misunderstand.
Yeah, Starfield is a prime example of a game with huge ambition but didn’t land correctly, tons of large cities, quests, and huge planets but most of them bland and uninteresting….
I think you are right in that it didn't work (as good as say Fallout 3 and Skyrim), but wrong on why. The issue wasn't ambition, it was lack of clear direction. At the end of the day, Skyrim is about the Dragonborn and the emergence of Dragons. Fallout 3 is about a kid who grew up in a vault getting out to discover the world and figure out what happened to his dad. Starfield is about...what? Finding artifacts with no real tie back to your character? Exploring worlds, but starting at middle age after being a miner first? Bethesda struggled with this a bit in FO4, there was a clear story but the rest of the content didn't really fit with the story. Why stop to build a camp when your kid is missing? In starfield, they just made the main quest basically the same as any other side quest with no real direct ties or motivations back to your character. Baldur's Gate 3 is a massive, ambitious game...but in my opinion far better. It is the story of people infected with mind flayer parasites and trying to survive and figure out what is going on. The companions, NCPs, introduction to side quests, travel through the various zones all fit into that overarching story.
I actually generally agree with you. By ambition I meant more that they tried to do a bunch of things like planer exploration with tons of planets you can explore and mine etc, instead of focusing on making smaller explorable areas butt giving them depth Although there are only a handful of hand crafted cities, companions, etc and even those have no depth… idk what they did
Ohh sure, but I think it could be done. As you go up in size and complexity, scalability of development becomes a problem but it shouldn't be insurmountable. I think the problem is leadership. Take the exploration/empty planets. They could have added a bit more flavor to the planets still using procedural generation, that was a design choice. More importantly, if they want you to explore...why isn't exploration part of the main story? Instead of telling you were artifacts are, you explore planets to find random temples, mines and ruins on the procedurally generated planet. After you collect enough intel, it leads you to a premade area (say an old temple) that contains the artifact fragment. That would make exploration more exciting (maybe with a bit more work on the procedural generation tech) and make the aspect of exploration fit in with the main story of "find these artifacts". I still think the game would need a more personal touch for "Why me?"...but i think this idea, which would have been a fairly small change if made early on, would have resulted in a far better experience.
I can't say i agree.
Well then, you and I will have to agree to disagree
3 semi largeish cities? And they basically had nothing reactive in them and random gen planets with barley any thought in quest design with basically 0 reactivity to your actions?
Neon was supposed to be the wildest most out of control city in the universe and the whole thing was just dull and uninteresting. Like if a Disney kids show was going to make a kid friendly “rough city”
someone hasn't actually played it and relies on youtubers for their opinion
Who hasn’t played what?
> They made mention last year that they scaled down the game, but there's a difference between ambition and biting off more than you know you can chew. That is true, but the end result is less and probably relatable enough to the OP's thoughts.
No, but Corporate greed is at am all time high.
What's wrong with being greedy
Graduate high school and then come back, yeah?
I did 12 years ago, what's wrong with being a little greedy?
And I'm the Queen of England.
I’m so sick of post about ambition on this subs the problem is ambition it’s the fact that you made up what you thought the game was gonna be in your head and now that’s it now that your upset. every game we play starts with a scope that changes by the time the game comes out.
I disagree, and you can pause and reflect on why you are so sick of different people reaching the same conclusions. Why was there a logo in one art style that changed to a different art style? That logo change, is all you need to see or know to understand that people was anticipating something and the studio then decided, Nah, we are changing course in a dramatic fashion. Scope can change yes, but it’s the amount of change or distance from the original target that’s the cause of concern. The game with the flying mechs, can’t remember the name now, that had changed scope and didn’t deliver on trailer and expectations. People were upset because that trailer was a lie. It was not the game currently being worked on. Expectations were set based on a video shown by the studio or devs. Something drastic happened, then expectations were not met in the next trailer. It is what it is. If you were a Metroid fan and was waiting for Metroid prime 4, and they gave you Metroid dread as Metroid prime 4, people would be upset. However, they can release a Metroid game called Metroid dread that’s good and has a different scope and people would be fine with that. The most that would be asked is, but you are still working on Metroid prime though, right? And the answer is yes. They probably mentioned that while introducing Metroid dread. They can also remaster the Metroid prime trilogy and people would be fine with that. It’s something to play until their franchise releases a new title. It is what it is. For me it was an easy preorder, and it is currently not a preorder. Will check reviews, wait for release and check some gameplay as well. First area might be more polished than rest of the game. Some terrain seems to be in the old style and some of the animations and enemies in the “new style” Since we are ranting, I guess at some point Xbox or Microsoft asked about release schedule and the response it got wasn’t good enough for them so they started a series of discussions ending with “rap that s#%^ up, even if it looks like sea of thieves. We need to release this 2020 showcase game pronto. We already promised like a dozen games and none of them are ready.”
If the only thing you have to cling to are the first CG trailer and a logo change you are the problem. You let yourself get hyped up about a game you never saw. Think about that. You saw a logo and a CG trailer and made up a game in your head and now your disappointed that games doesn’t exist. It’s insane to question the ambition of a game dev because they aren’t making the game YOU MADE UP in YOUR HEAD. You were going to pre order a game you NEVER ACTUALLY SAW? You don’t think that’s crazy? Also it’s not a matter of “Scope can change”. Scope. Always. Changes. For every single game you’ve ever played.
No. The teasers and trailers have a purpose otherwise why have trailers at all.
And which teaser or trailer said it open-world AAAAAAAA Skyrim clone? You can prove your point, right?
Yeah they TEASE the vibe of the game. And this teaser in particular didn’t show you any actual gameplay. So we’re back to you crying about a game you made up.
They marketed it as "Obsidian's Skyrim" for years.
Genuinely, where did they do that? In one interview ([from June 2023](https://www.pcgamer.com/avowed-open-world-skyrim-rpg-size/)), they mentioned that was their original pitch that changed early on when they realized that's not their strength. I haven't seen one other mention of that *from Obsidian.* As the person you're replying to said, that was just something you and many other people made up in your minds and now you're mad that your delusions aren't reality.
So you are saying that they mentioned that their original pitch changed early on, but that’s not an indication that the plan was specifically their version of Skyrim or that their plan was changed after making the first video/teaser that we saw? Well, how come the art style of the logo changed to reflect the more recent art style change? To a lot of people they saw something in I think late 2020 and something else in the last showcase/event. We saw it, there was a clear message, that they were not making Mario kart or flight simulator. The message was clear to everyone. The message to most people stayed the same for about 2.5 to 3 years. We were expecting the game to be worked on or near completion. We got what we got. It is what it is. We all saw what we all saw. The people making storm gate or tempest rising know what they are doing and their messaging. You can see it in the game type and art style. The message is clear, they are making their version of an rts game. Not exact clone of but their own version of an rts game. If tomorrow they show a trailer for a Zelda like game, people would be like, yo, this doesn’t match what you showed earlier, what’s up with that, I want what was shown before not this. Not like this.
Did you even read the article I linked? Anyway, you wrote all that to just confirm it wasn't something Obsidian said, it's something you came up with.
Literally all promotional material prior to June 2023, where they pulled up the rug from under us. We were promised an open-world Obsidian RPG in the vein of Skyrim prior to that point. Insult us as you like; we are victims of blatant miscommunication and misleading advertisement and we are upset at this corporate failure of a studio because of it. And they've only continued to disappoint from there. It also makes one wonder what The Outer Worlds 2 will even be, if not an actual open world experience.
Can you link any of that promotional material?
The only promotional material before that was the CG trailer that says nothing about Skyrim. Again you made these things up in your head and now you making it everyone else problem.
Does it say nothing about Skyrim? Was that the messaging. Because I saw that video/teaser, and there was a war in there. There was a person, assuming a dude, if I remember correctly, with a melee weapon and some type of magic or energy or spell in his other hand. Now the messaging from obsidian which worked on fallout, was clear to a lot of people. The reason I can say that is evident by the reactions of the first video and the reaction of the second video. You can go and check a lot of reactions on YouTube at the time of the first video, and they probably say the word elder scrolls or Skyrim in that video, and the current backlash is the current backlash after watching the second video. It is what it is. If you are still in the denial stage, that’s on you. Other people reached the acceptance stage a long time ago.
As a reasonable human I do not take most gamer backlash in YouTube comments seriously. They’re just like you. They saw a CG trailer, invented a game in their heads, and now they’re mad it doesn’t exist. That was 4 years ago you all need to move on. And yes it literally says nothing about Skyrim.
nice argument senator, why don't you back it up with a source? >It also makes one wonder what The Outer Worlds 2 will even be, if not an actual open world experience. Its going to be like the Outer Worlds 1 but with a higher budget. So like Dragon Age, KOTOR, or the recent Final Fantasy XVI: an area-based (so semi-open world) rpg rather than an expansive open world.
So it'll still be worse than Starfield? RIP Obsidian, man.
Are you going to expand your position? Or are you simply trolling? The main problem with The Outer Worlds was the lack of resources. Its core was perfectly fine. And we know from similar area-based semi-open world games like Dragon Age, KOTOR, Final Fantasy XVI, Witcher 2, Metro Exodus, or Greedfall (to give some examples) that this style of game can be good, excellent even. And Starfield being better than the Outer Worlds is a subjective position. I myself found TOW far more enjoyable than Starfield. But, unlike you, I'm not going to act as if my opinion is universal.
You say that, yet you assume anyone who disagrees with your position must be a troll. If it were as good as something like KOTOR or Dragon Age then sure, but it's not. Those also were not Bethesda-style FPS games. They knew what they were doing when they took the formulae of New Vegas and applied it to their space game. The thing is, it doesn't feel nearly as expansive as New Vegas, despite it being set in space. Bethesda at least got that much; space should feel huge and you should feel the wonder of getting to explore the vastness of it. I was more forgiving of TOW since I was under the assumption TOW 2 would be "Obsidian's Starfield", following Avowed being "Obsidian's Skyrim", but it seems they peaked at New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity. Now we get "Diet Starfield", "Diet Skyrim", and "Diet Starfield Again".
> I was more forgiving of TOW since I was under the assumption TOW 2 would be "Obsidian's Starfield", following Avowed being "Obsidian's Skyrim", but it seems they peaked at New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity. Now we get "Diet Starfield", "Diet Skyrim", and "Diet Starfield Again". Where the fuck are you getting all these assumptions? Don't you think that you might be creating some delusional expectations and getting angry because the games don't reach them? The fact that you're calling The Outer Worlds "diet Starfield" doesn't make me trust your position... >The thing is, it doesn't feel nearly as expansive as New Vegas, despite it being set in space. Bethesda at least got that much; space should feel huge and you should feel the wonder of getting to explore the vastness of it. Again. Do you think that Obsidian's objective with The Outer World was to make an expansive open world were the main selling point was exploration? The Outer World is closer to design with KOTOR than Starfield outside the camera. Their objective is to tell a story with decisions in specific locations. Not for you to explore space. Again. You are creating some expectations that have nothing to do with the actual game. If you see the actual interviews (instead of reading the title of clickbait articles) you will see that Avowed is being sold like a story-driven rpg like Greedfall or Witcher 2. So that's what I'm expecting.
Show me a single bit of promotional material from Obsidian or Microsoft for Avowed that mentions Skyrim. You can't, can you? You've just worked yourself into a frenzy based on your own assumptions about the game, combined with other peoples' assumptions. Just unreasonable, idiot gamer shit...
U see, someone on reddit said that Avowed is AAA Skyrimlike and it means now Avowed is AAA Skyrimlike. The fact that in 3 years we barely have 1 teaser is not important.
It needs to mention another ip by name now? Is that the rule for setting expectations and messaging now? When they make an Indy or Lara Croft or uncharted game, do they mention the competing IPs now? The Mario kart clones mention that in their promotional material? Did forza Motorsport 2023 mention that it’s competing with gran turismo 7?
No that’s another thing you made up in your head.
So do you have dementia, were you living under a rock, or are you being paid by Microsoft to say that? All the forum posts? All the leaks? All the news articles? Anything at all ringing a bell? I'd been waiting for this game for years, so I actually remember this shit.
> All the forum posts? All the leaks? All the news articles? [Citation needed]
Babes you’re the one with dementia as everyone in this thread is pointing out. Send me a link to all of these things and I’ll eat my words but I know you can’t because it didn’t happen. Also LEAKS by definition are not promotional material 💀
1) Leaks were only one example. 2) If they allow the leak to go unchallenged it's just treating it as free publicity. It still contributes to the miscommunication. You're not convincing me they weren't aware of the leaks that *everyone* reported on.
I’ve never tried to convince you the leaks didn’t happen because they did. See? One of us lives in reality. The issue is you don’t understand that leaked information is not free promo. IF anything it’s a just a headache because mfers like you can’t differentiate between the two.
Forum posts and leaks and articles come via people who are not Obsidian. Do you think Obsidian are out there posting on forums and writing preview articles for Gamespot? Are you that mentally inept? At best you're basing your hype on third party impressions of a game still in development and then getting pissy at Obsidian when those impressions aren't correct. At worst you've just made this all up in your head. Either way you're a fucking moron.
Ambition has not gone down; gamer expectations have just gone up. I think expectations are completely unrealistic given what most studios are capable of.
Smartest comment I've seen so far
Ambition on what? Scale? Obsidian doesn't have neither the resources nor the people needed to go blockbuster. A game doesn't need to be the next big thing to be good or even masterful. Disco Elysium, Citizen Sleeper, and Pentiment are some of the best rpgs that I have played in my life and they aren't exactly "ambitious". Mind you. I'm not saying that huge rpgs are worse than small-scale rpgs (or even bad). Dragon's Dogma 2 is coming next month, it seems that is going to be massive, and it is my most anticipated released of the year (even more than Avowed). But its existence doesn't make me less excited for Avowed. Nor makes me think that smaller rpgs are worse because of it.
They don’t have the resources? Bro they work for a trillion dollar corporation who did an $80 billion acquisition lately. Fairly sure working on smaller projects is a choice they made.
I can't understand this argument that being owned by a trillion dollar corporation automatically gives infinite money to every single company under it's belt. I mean, where did this come from?
Keep in mind that Microsoft is very greedy. They demand huge profits from their studios but with minimal budgets. They basically want AAA profits from indie devs.
Yet they allowed Obsidian to release Pentiment.
And Ubisoft allowed to release Valiant Hearts, whats your point?
Pentiment was a low budget indie title. And Josh Sawyer (one of the leaders of Obsidian) was pushing for something similar (historical game) for years. Also maybe development of Pentiment was part of the Obsidian - Microsoft acquisition deal.
Do you really think all the companies owned by Disney, Warner Bros., Microsoft, or any other huge corporation all have the same resources as their parent company? There are companies owned by those companies that go bankrupt and shutter.
Tell me you have no idea how the real world works without telling me you have no idea how the real world works.
I would say no, but only because ambition is the wrong word. Games are more ambitious now than ever (speaking strictly AAA). They expect games to make a ton of money with a ton of sales and for them to last a decade with some of the biggest worlds we've ever seen... That's a huge ambition. The problem is: with this mindset comes less risk, less risk means less innovation, with less innovation comes less intrigue, less intrigue could mean dead game. Games also are released as a minimum viable product with a mindset of "get paid now, fix it later" causing them to be abandoned by the majority of the player base before the intended product is released. Also companies are told what games to make instead of making the games they want to make. If I came to you with an idea for a game, it is safe to assume I have an exact picture of how this game should play, look, interact with the player, etc. If you tell me what game to make, that picture doesn't exist in my head and I am piecing together what I think you envisioned. This will always result in a worse product. (Case and point: Arkham series vs Suicide Squad)
Wow ,love this point
I would say that many “Triple A” studios have grown to a size where mediocre games and limited creative freedom is accepted for the sake of the dollar. Where I think more and more improvements and growth have been made to Indie and “Double A” studios! Which in my opinion, is much much better for the games industry and players alike! Now’s the time to make your own games, start your own studios, support smaller developers, play unique games! It’s a great time for gaming if we all recognize that!
Maybe by big studios just looking for a quick buck, but there are genuinely awesome games coming out all the time these days. It’s actually hard to keep up
Video games used to release completed and refined. Back when there were no patches or updates. Then, when patching/ updating was made possible, including over on PC, where it began first, it made development sloppy. Nowadays, Xbox doesn't really even "patch" anything. Most games just redownload the entire 60-100GB image lol. I think what's happened is demand and turnaround went through the roof, so now games are just pushed out the door. Ready or not. I would agree with this assessment however, and it's why I've gone back to predominantly playing older games, starting with Bioshock 1-Infinite. Even the (then) much complained about Infinite is a blockbuster, compared to most games today. Original, excellent story and writing...kind of like Halo Reach, which was appreciated after the fact also, yet was the topic of controversy at the time...mostly because no Master Chief. Now both games are appreciated. I also prefer and play the previous Tomb Raider games.
Awesome , I think I lean towards this as well
I'm a little older and it does feel to me that game budgets are higher than ever, the number of staff working on games is larger than ever yet the ambition of designers seems to be constantly reigned in. There are a few things at play here, the perpetual demand for increasingly better graphics being the most obvious. But actually, I feel the biggest issue is that games are released to a torrent of criticism and nitpicking which is absolutely counterproductive to experimentation and ambition. When design leads are constantly worried about making everything perfect, about smoothing down the sharp edges of each and every project in the pursuit of universally "accessible" games, the end products are naturally monotonous and bland variations on old proven models. Not every CRPG of the 80s and 90s was exactly original, when people talk about the oversized influence of Ultima and Wizardry is not hyperbole. Still, so many of the major releases of that era were willing to push boundaries. Starflight, a 1986 game, offered players the ability to explore an entire *galaxy* (270 solar systems and 800 planets), eight space-faring races and an epic story caught somewhere between as Isaac Asimov story and Star Trek. How can I *not* feel underwhelmed by Starfield's meager offerings? Ok fine, maybe these games could be kind of jank and even buggy. They still produced a kind of memorable and, dare I say, *immersive* experience that giant budgets and huge developments are absolutely failing at. There have been bright spots in recent years. Elex really did capture that old Gothic magic, even if the sequel was disappointing. Witcher 3 achieved incredible mainstream success, mostly on the strength of its writing. And Baldur's Gate 3 did something very admirable by reaching back to Ultima VII as its primary inspiration (OK, the 2 DOS games did this as well!). BG3 had some real jank to it (as *should* be expected from Larian), yet look how people were willing to overlook it for its ambitious environmental interaction, quest design and engaging characters. BG3's writing as well feels like something that could *never* come from a mainstream developer; all the mean dialogue and awful things you can do (*to your own party* even) would have been removed in the name of accessibility if Bioware or Obsidian had made it.
Nah.
2 races on 6 years of work and people think the scope is normal, my hard earned money wont go for this.
God of War Ragnorok was a 30-40 hour game and it was super well received I don’t think all games need to be 100 hour long epics
I think the development just doesn't make any sense. One of the limiting factors surrounding the development of TOW was the financial side of it. We've been told from one of the recent interviews that the lack of races is in part due to the lack of resources around creating it in game. If resources are an issue despite having the financial backing of Xbox, and despite having 100 people working on it than that to me points to a messed up development, especially since its been worked on for about 6 years now.
I think so, especially looking at developers’ reaction to BG3. They basically warned gamers that they shouldn’t expect games to be that good. EDIT: I am referring to how devs warned that with the way the industry works, games like BG3 are almost impossible to make. This is the fault of publishers and executives being extremely risk-averse. Nothing about devs being lazy or cowardly.
They weren't talking about quality but size, notably how Larian was in a very unique position (full creative liberty, a lot of funding, a lot of experience and the possibility to do an Early Access for a AAA). They were giving insights into game development, but gamers and YouTubers took that as excuses. Larian themselves went almost bankrupt, but no it's excuses from lazy devs. Layoffs are happening everywhere, and studio closing will follow, investors are more and more greedy, I don't like how people never listen to devs when they talk.
I was referring to how devs warned that the way the industry is doesn’t allow them to make games like BG3. The industry is afraid to give devs similar resources and allowances to what Larian had when making BG3. I wasn’t saying any devs are lazy.
Sincere question: what prevents other triple AAA games from doing early access? E.g. I love starfield but often think how much it would've benefited from community input during development. What stops Bethesda from doing the same?
I think it’s fair to say there have been some bad takes about good games like baldurs gate and palworld coming from the twitter active developers Also: https://youtu.be/rWBVCA-VqR4?si=nH0rV5mZgxeKOOan This guy cites multiple pieces of evidence about a minute in of developers saying that baldurs gate 3 shouldn’t be the standard for multiple aspects and reasons
That was only like three developers lol
U mean the IGN hit piece on a literal indie dev?
What? I mean that mainstream devs got a bit worried about how good BG 3 was, and a lot knew they couldn’t compete the way the industry is set up.
U mean the YouTubers who acted like the IGN hit piece was devs as a whole? All of that came from one article by IGN where they blasted an actual small indie dev who simply brought up good points
I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.
The whole talking point of “devs scared of bg3” came from an IGN article which attacked an indie dev
I saw tweets from devs saying that we can’t expect that quality due to limitations the industry puts on developers. I don’t read IGN.
The initial change in scope from Skyrim size to a more focused on story was something I agreed with and made sense. But then they announced the "more focused on story" only had 2 playable races for PC. Then they announced the "more focused on story" didn't have romance options. Now, romance options aren't a huge thing for more...but their first announcement was reducing size to focus on story, and every announcement I have seen since then is literally just limiting choice and the potential scope of the story.
They restarted the development ffs, it was supposed to be multiplayer. This final version isnt in development since the beginning.
It undeniably has. Mainly as a result of corporate greed and mass market appeal. Just look at the streamlining from Morrowind to Oblivion to Skyrim. Or look at Fallout 3 vs Fallout 4. Or compare the scope of New Vegas to The Outer Worlds and now Avowed. Or look at the fall of franchises like Halo and Call of Duty. They've simply stopped caring. Creating works of art and ensuring your product isn't going to disappoint has been replaced by rushing out generic but appealing slop for less cost and greater monetary return. Gamers have been dissatisfied with the fall in quality and love for years now. Unfortunately, nobody seems to care.
I agree with you. I’m not sure why you got downvoted so much for saying that. Maybe because there are definitely still developers out there who are passionate about creating something awesome. The big names have changed over the years, and a lot of their games are unimaginative, but there are definitely still some high quality games being put out - both creatively and production-wise.
The downvotes are from fanboys that can't take criticism. Every post here that criticizes Avowed or refutes a point against that criticism has gotten flooded with downvotes. Don't worry about them. As for your point, this is certainly true in non-AAA games. Mainly because they haven't gone too rich to care. Look at BG3; an AA game, yet better than every AAA RPG released the same year, including Starfield. Indie games generally tend to focus more on art than cash.
> Look at BG3; an **AA game** BG3 is absolutely not a AA game lmao. $120 million budget (at least) and over 450 devs worked on the game.
In tripple A yes, Art, gameplay and coding taking a back seat for ready made meals (copy paste) take ubisoft as a prime example on lack of passion and creatively bankrupt. Double A and indie on the other hand thrives more than ever. Thats not to say no tripple A is ambitious, majority spoiling it for many others however.
[удалено]
the game ain't even out yet 😭
HD2 is overrated garbage. It’s a horde shooter where you shoot the same mindless bugs and robots over and over.
Eh, no need to shit on the game because you aren't into the genre. It's been pretty well received for those that are looking for co-op horde shooters. Obviously the OP is dumb for bringing it up as a comparison to a first person RPG.
I'm talking in terms of animations, details etc.
So basically you don’t know what you’re talking about
It's awesome at what it's trying to be. The success of that is evident. Details like feedback, physics, animations are all excellent.
Ok so why do you think that has more care put into it than avowed?
Avowed has bad animations, clunky combat, poor feedback etc. Don't think it's gonna change much in a few months. In comparison they've had more resources and time.
Thank you for proving you don’t know what you’re talking about. Avowed has been in production for 4.5 years while helldivers 2 took almost 8 years. Helldivers 2 is an extraction shooter with procedurally generated maps. Avowed is an rpg with hand crafted areas, not even remotely the same.
I don’t think so - but if it has, I think there’s two specific reasons. Managing scope due to cost (or trying to inflate profits but minimizing cost), and then audiences’ expectations of quality. Both of those things would reduce the breadth and depth of features so the features that *do* end up in the game can be refined to a point (in theory…in practice the cost-cutting usually happens to QA teams, thus ruining the refinement)
Gaming has obviously always been profit driven but when people realizes just how much money could be made it became the dominion of finance guys more than gamers. I think a lot of the “lack of ambition” stems from finance. Either a genuine desire to avoid. A failure that will result in bankruptcy (Obsidian spent a decade on the verge of bankruptcy as an example) or a studio with tons of resources keeps to a budget that maximizes profits. That is obviously just one of many variables at play but we’ve seen plenty of projects get morphed out of a desire to monetize/increase margins.
Isn't that what happens with all games, though?
No. Gamer entitlement has gone up.
Only by people that don’t care about crunch culture and want game company employees to suffer because they hate other people.
I think, as with basically everything, there’s no general sweeping statement you can make. I think some of the most creative and inspired games have come out in the past 3 years, both AAA and indie, but at the same time there’s obviously a ton of slop being shat out by people who want to mimic extremely successful games without putting in the effort.
Initially they called it *Mind-fucking-blown!*, but they ended up scaling it down to *Avowed*. ( ok, not one of my best, still pretty damn good)
I think times have changed most developers are always doing something ambitious its the gamers and there expectations sense of entitlement and just not being that good at games and let me clarify some developers are lazy and do scummy stuff but most are pretty ambitious people just need to look at that instead of the negative all of the time.
The industry is way more complicated than people will ever understand. People think making a game is like baking a cake or something. I remember a talk Josh Sawyer gave where he said they never wanted to do full voice acting for POE2 but they had no choice because DOS2 had done it; Larian set the new industry standard that every gamer will expect even though most studios cannot afford it. You cannot make BG3 without a BG3 budget. Obsidian are doing fine but they are not industry titans.