Avowed Hands-on - Obsidian Didn’t Forget How to Make Great RPG
At gamescom, I was able to play an hour-long demo of Avowed and talk with Carrie Patel, the game's director. I bring news - this is a real RPG! Seems that Obsidian really knows what they're doing.
The main emotion that accompanied me while playing Avowed at gamescom was a sense of adventure. It wasn't immediately - the beginning was quite uneven, my character seemed too fast and somewhat weightless, add to that my general preference of TPP perspective in RPGs. But when I felt how smoothly my character climbs and jumps, when I discovered that even these first rooms give me options to solve things my way, something clicked.
I was checking the nooks and crannies of a ruined temple in search of a magical relic, and I picked it up from the altar - which of course woke up its guardian. I fought with hordes of skeletons, walked on roots over flooded corridors - and a strange feeling was sprouting in my head. I felt more like Indiana Jones than during the presentation of the game about Indiana Jones!
Pillars of Talking
My relationship with Pillars of Eternity so far can be summed up as "it's complicated". This is a phenomenal, original, deeply strange universe, which suffers mainly because its creators simply have to tell us absolutely everything about it; their love for their work literally pours out of them, and the player gets overwhelmed by waves of information about factions, battles, gods, civilizations, and geological formations. If someone, like me, has a habit of reading everything in RPGs, including item descriptions, there's a good chance that Pillars will break them of this habit.
The intriguing plot from the first game was crushed by this onslaught of unstoppable world-building; I couldn't bring myself to care about the fate of the characters, each of whom seemed to be more of a representation of a specific faction than a fully realized person. However, even though I didn't even approach the sequel - pirate themes don't appeal to me - the interest in the world of Eora remained.
It works out perfectly that in Avowed, the creators will no longer be able to torment us with walls of text describing every nook and cranny of this world - now they have to show it to us. And it all looks great!
Obsidian Entertainment
The part of the game shared with us at gamescom was set in a complex of temples carved into rock, seamlessly transitioning into caves (some flooded with water, in which we had to dive), some demolished laboratories full of bizarre, quasi-magical machinery, abandoned libraries, and gigantic statues. Everything is overgrown with lush green vegetation and colonies of fungi of various colors and shapes (fungi will appear in this game often and in quite unexpected places). Avowed delights the eye with beautiful landscapes and vivid colors, tempting with a mix of common and unusual fantasy elements.
Lore? Check
I bring news for the die-hard fans (yes, they exist, we even have one in our editorial office, greetings to Przemek) - the gods are not done with us yet. Mortals are also not done yet with the gods. While the initial goal of my mission in Avowed was to find the missing Aedyran expedition, following its trail I quickly came across Sargamis - a godlike with golden skin and the smooth voice of Matthew Mercer (which is nice, because the actor had already worked in the first PoE), who was very interested in the subject of godlikes and divinity in general. I learned that, e.g. one of the consequences of Eothas's activity in Deadfire was the disappearance of most godlikes from the world - when asked about this, Carrie Patel, the game's director, used the word "rapture", which suggests that their divine essence was somehow used, consumed. Since our hero himself (herself) is a godlike, this must have significance. Why are we alive? Why did Emperor of Aedyr choose us as the envoy? Does our god have his own plans for us - and who is he at all?
Obsidian Entertainment
I'm pleased that our hero gets a more personal motivation to follow the main plot quite quickly, because it seems that even though we will still be dealing with gods, plagues, and mystical secrets, the story itself could be more personal.
You don't need to be familiar with the lore of Pillars to play Avowed, although I imagine that a completely new player in this setting might feel lost. Fortunately, the option to gain additional information by selecting certain keywords in the dialogue, known from Tyranny, is returning here.
What about our Watcher?
If they were a godlike - like mine - it's quite possible that the events from Deadfire didn't end up the best for them. When asked about this, Carrie Patel laughed and replied that it's a matter of our personal headcanon - "if you think he sailed towards the setting sun, then that's how it is. Maybe Eothas protected him?
Quality, not quantity
Reduction of the scope is also visible in the number of companions - although I had the opportunity to meet one, there will ultimately only be four of them. It may seem like a small number, after all, in the first Pillars we had eleven and generally RPGs got us used to that the standard is to have at least six. On the other hand, I can't recall the name of any of the companions from the first game, so if this time the developers focused on quality, not quantity, we all stand to gain. And if I were to draw conclusions based on Kai, the first of our companions, that's how it will be.
I didn't expect to like Kai so quickly. The blue-skinned, yellow-eyed aumaua with sharp, shark-like teeth quickly stopped being a "starting companion" and became my friend, who always had something to add. Of course, a lot of credit for this goes to another fantastic voice actor - Brandon Keener, whom we all know and love from his role as Garrus in the Mass Effect trilogy, although this "Vakarian vibe" was not entirely planned. When asked about the character of Kai, Carrie Patel said that it is rather a combination of many factors:
We were not strictly inspired by Garrus. When designing the party, we knew it was good to have a character with such a sober, commonsense perspective, someone you can rely on, someone you just want to grab a beer with. It was a very pleasant surprise when Brandon Keener showed up at the casting. We knew right away that this is it! He can maintain that vibe, that sarcastic sense of humor.
However, what's also fantastic about Kai is that when you spend more time with him, get to know him better, find out what he left behind, what he's running from - you'll be able to see that there's also a lot of regret and such deeply human sensitivity in him.
Obsidian Entertainment
Continuing the topic of companions, I also learned that situations known from PoE 2 will return, in which members of our party establish various relationships not only with the player's character, but also with each other. Carrie announced that a rich "party banter" system has been prepared, which we will hear while resting in the camp; our companions are also supposed to interject their remarks into our conversations and comment - sometimes in a very decisive manner - on our decisions. It seems that we will have to make choices that will have a significant impact on our companions and the groups from which they originate. All this gives hope that we will finally truly feel that we are surrounded by a group of personalities united by a common cause, rather than just cardboard cut-out templates.
The remaining members of our party are played by Anjali Bhimani (who players may recognize from Critical Role, as well as Symmetra from Overwatch), Scott Whyte (the voice of Rathma from Diablo IV), and Mara Junot (Ikora Rey from Destiny 2 and Alleria Windrunner from World of Warcraft).
Of course, our companions not only provide us with advice and commentary, but also help during combat and outside of it. By pressing LT, we open a radial menu, with the help of which we can, among other things, order a companion to attack a specified target or use a skill. This last one also comes in handy outside of combat, e.g. Kai's fiery volley set fire to the cobwebs blocking my path; if I had a different build, I could probably do it myself, but the skills of our companions will certainly expand our tactical options.
Combat is not Avowed's strongest point
Speaking of builds, in the demo we could choose out of the three, and although the character development system in Avowed is classless, the developers have adapted them to roughly correspond to the classic archetypes of barbarian, mage, and rogue-archer. I, driven by the feeling that a fight in such a form would be the easiest to master, chose the barbarian - and I regret it a bit. While occasional stealth and ambush sequences can be fun, when it came to open combat, my reservations only grew, because although there has clearly been a huge progress since those unfortunate first materials, it still lacks the feeling that my swings with a two-handed weapon have any tangible impact on opponents other than shortening their life bar. I also don't understand why the fight with the mini-boss was designed in such a way that after defeating the accompanying smaller mobs, we immediately have to deal with another wave of them (the first-person perspective definitely does not make it easier to control the situation around us). There is still room for improvement here and I'm glad that the developers got a few extra months to polish such things.
Obsidian Entertainment
It's a shame that I didn't have time to test the remaining builds, but I preferred to spend the given hour to see as much of the plot as possible - and I was pleasantly surprised, because my "barbaric" traits also translated into the dialogue options given to me (as well as those that were blocked, because my character lacked intelligence). However, even such a character, not particularly blessed with intellect, was able to lead a dialogue in various directions, and even change the course of a quest solely by choosing a sensible response. For those who can't get rid of the bad taste after the first trailer that made it look like Skyrim, I reassure you - it really is an RPG! Obsidian still handles exploration and plot better than combat, but I have a feeling that fans might forgive them for that.
Are these mushrooms edible?
I mentioned earlier that I played on a ready-made build - this means that unfortunately I didn't have a chance to try out the character creator, but a quick glance at the equipment screen revealed that... my character has mushrooms growing on their head. And I was delighted! I'm glad that the creators openly embrace the weirdness of their universe, in which we have more interesting options than just elves in five flavors. I don't know which god has blessed me with mushrooms growing on the face of my character - we will probably find out in the main storyline - but I asked Claire how far our options go in customizing the appearance of our character.
Of course, we have the option to customize all typical appearance features - many hairstyles, skin colors, decorations. But our character is a godlike and we wanted to emphasize that, because it is deeply rooted in our lore. So of course you will be able to choose these godlike features - some will be very ostentatious, dramatic, like those mushrooms you mentioned, but players will also be able to opt for more subtle variants. There is even an option for players who are attached to a certain specific character appearance - they can "hide" these godlike features, although this is purely visual. Others will still recognize that our character is a godlike.
Obsidian is planning a separate showcase dedicated to character creation soon, so we will learn more details shortly.
Faith restored
Avowed surprised me. This is indeed an RPG that can captivate with well-written dialogues and a fascinating world in which we can finally be, not just read about it. Of course, an hour of gameplay is not enough to fully form an opinion, but it's enough to rekindle faith in the fact that Obsidian indeed knows what they are doing.
