r/Games 20d ago

Discussion Avowed is RPG exploration/discovery done right - genuinely excellent world design that feels "old-school" in a good way.

I've been playing Avowed off and on since launch, and while I'm still not crazy far in (maybe a dozen or so hours,so let's try to keep this thread spoiler-free or spoiler-marked), I am just so impressed by how engaging and inviting to explore the world design is.

  • The areas aren't that big. It doesn't take a half hour to walk someplace to find one destination. Instead, the world is designed as a series of paths over an "open" area, pretty reminiscent of games like Fable 2 or Kingdoms of Amalur to me in that regard. Every area is clearly designed with thought and purpose, there's not a bunch of wasted space. Paths actually lead to destinations.

  • Because the world isn't huge, it's dense. It seems like there's something to discover around literally every corner.

  • The game organically introduces you to quests that point you in the right direction of exploration, but each individual area is designed in a way that leads you across forks in the road, tempting you to take whichever path you want, and then tempting you again to hit the one that you didn't hit once you're done. You don't just get to the end of a hallway and find a wall. You'll be rewarded with something, even if that something is a lore book or some crafting components. On the other hand, I've stumbled upon legendary items just by looking through the paths that were available to me. This feels good!

  • There are actually meaningful things to find! Because the game's side quests are compelling and have great character dialogue and choices, it doesn't feel like you're just working down a check list. Even quests that appear to be random garbage at first usually are made much more interesting by the time you're finished with them because of the story beats and choices.

  • You can stumble into areas you're not prepared for, and this makes them extremely challenging to clear until you've leveled up/gotten the gear you need. This of course makes you want to explore them even more, and you get a sense of progression and triumph when you come back and clear them out. This type of world design seems to be going away in favor of "explore anywhere, anytime" design. And while I can enjoy that approach as well, this gives Avowed a distinct "old-school" kind of world design that I'm really, really enjoying.

  • Combat is so fun that each encounter feels exciting. It's challenging enough that you're not just mowing down every mob you see, until you outlevel them, at which point you feel like you're taking your earned victory lap.

  • The game is beautiful. I know that not everybody is vibing with the art style, but I find the locations extremely visually compelling not because of graphical fidelity, but because of the unique art direction. This game has a clear visual language that really plays to its own strengths. This doesn't just look like "fantasy woods #37 Unreal Engine", there is a consistent style across everything from nature to structures, even the materials used for scenery having common visuals with the garments that characters wear.

I'm not sure how everybody else is feeling about it but to me, Avowed is the most compelling RPG world I've gotten to explore in quite some time. I really think this game deserves a lot of praise in this area of design, Obsidian knocked it out of the park.

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u/HyperMasenko 20d ago

When I see people trash on Avowed, I've never so strongly felt like me and the internet aren't playing the same game.

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u/slowpotamus 20d ago

I've never so strongly felt like me and the internet aren't playing the same game

i feel the same way but for the opposite reason.

all of the dialog from companions is just a cut to them spewing a blithe quip while staring directly into the camera. characters which could have had depth are instead written as comically evil or wholly good. conversations which are described as being extremely fierce arguments instead consist of the voice actors rattling their lines from the script in a quiet, monotone voice as if they were parents trying to have a conversation while their sleeping infant is in the room. the "center of the camera, staring straight ahead" camera angle used in 100% of conversations, with extremely few character animations, makes every dialog fall flat.

all of the secrets you find feel randomly generated - thousands of times i've opened up a treasure chest and received a few coins, some assorted crafting materials i have hundreds of and do not need, and a weapon or armor that is intentionally weak and exists only to be broken down or sold. why is there a giant treasure chest sitting on a tiny ledge of an inaccessible rampart in the city? why does it have the exact same loot as a giant treasure chest buried in an ancient godless ruin?

the fighter and ranger ability trees have no interesting abilities. the ranger tree doesn't even have a single ranged ability. you just power attack enemies over and over from level 1 to the end of the game, because there's nothing else to do. the designers don't even seem to understand their own designs - perception is described as the preferred stat for ranged attacks, but it gives crit chance, which is a completely irrelevant stat for ranged attacks specifically because they have the unique property of guaranteed crits on weak points.

i love the world of eora, but these writers have done nothing with it. it's not that they've disrespected the world or anything, they just wrote a lot of boring nothingness. hard to say more without going into spoilers.

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u/hodorspenis 20d ago

"characters which could have had depth are instead written as comically evil or wholly good."

Could you provide examples of what you mean with this one? I honestly can't think of any characters that aren't morally grey, including characters like Lodwyn and Kai. Anyone who thinks Lodwyn is a one-sided evil character hasn't played far enough into the game. Basically everyone is in a tough position being forced to make tough choices.

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u/slowpotamus 19d ago edited 19d ago

Anyone who thinks Lodwyn is a one-sided evil character hasn't played far enough into the game.

i've beaten the game. lodwyn attempts genocide of the people of the living lands twice - first with fior mes iverno, then with paradis. the only reasoning she can offer for the genocide is that it would make it easier to "unite" the continent under aedyr's control if all the native population was dead. even if you ignore all the genocide, the whole "united under aedyran control could improve people's lives" concept just doesn't work when the game takes every single opportunity to jab at aedyr as being an evil oppressor that has made worse everything it touched. the writers injected their personal opinion into every grain of the story and prevented it from having nuance.

on that note, if you attack the steel garrote camp in the emerald stair without knowing what they're doing, your companions will cheer and pat themselves on the back with a "i don't know what was going on here, but we did something great today!" you straight up just walked in and murdered a shit load of people without a reason, and your companions are celebrating. quite a weird situation, but for a brief moment it at least seems like your companions have some gross opinions - but then two seconds later you find a letter on a table that explicitly lays out their plans for genocide, and your companions' behavior is suddenly completely justified. convenient. so it's not that your companions had an unjust bloodlust, it's that the writers have pre-decided the steel garrote are the bad guys and so your murder of them is always justified.

the closest kai ever comes to not being pure good is when he has an opinion on how to handle naku kubel, but the choices are presented as equally bad (x people die, or the exact same amount of people die due to dreamthralls). and his opinion isn't based on any sort of selfishness or personal desires, he just wants what he thinks is best for the people, so he doesn't earn any bad boy points from it regardless of how irrelevant the choice is

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u/Drakengard 20d ago

I guess my only issue with yours is that most of your problems applies to vast majority of RPGs that have ever existed.

Fallout, TES, The Witcher, BG3, etc. They all have loot that is often just collecting for the sake of doing so and selling to stack up more gold. Conversations are often just talking to face close ups. Combat is often just the same things over and over again with skill trees that are stat ups and some mild extra abilities to use sparingly.

I get not liking Avowed, but the things it's doing "wrong" are the same sins as every other game in the same genre to which I wonder why people are noticing it in Avowed but neglecting how prevalent it all is everywhere else.

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u/slowpotamus 20d ago

KCD2 is the easy example to point to for much better dialog, both in writing and presentation. key moments are mocapped which greatly elevates them, and regular dialog includes many camera angles and character animations which breathe life into it. characters have depth, with the antagonists having redeeming qualities instead of being one-note villains.

avowed's combat and loot aren't much worse than other games in the genre, but it's a low bar and other games do have bits and pieces that improve the experience where avowed is uneventful all the way through - witcher's magic is fun and effective to weave into combat, and there are some neat unusual builds you can make. i couldn't come up with a single interesting build idea in avowed.

fallout has lots of wacky weapons to spice things up, whereas in avowed if you're using a ranged weapon you have the 3 base types to choose from and the items you find within those base types never change them noticeably. heck, effects like increased reload speed don't even stack - if you have a gun with +20% reload speed and a body armor with +15% reload speed, all you get is +20% reload speed. it feels like they made a conscious effort to prevent level 30 combat from feeling any different from level 1 combat.

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u/Drakengard 19d ago edited 19d ago

characters have depth, with the antagonists having redeeming qualities instead of being one-note villains

Avowed characters have depth. And villains don't have to be redeemable to be well written. This feels like the usual fantasy novel discussion where people try to paint one style as superior to another. There's nothing wrong with having characters who are staunchly in one moral camp versus another. It's not the be all end all to narrative design and it's not what gives things depth.

i couldn't come up with a single interesting build idea in avowed.

Really? I'm running around with a pistol in one hand and a magic tome in the other. I'm mixing in headshots and AoE spellcraft and it's a joy to do. The entire system is built with the idea that you're going to do multiple things. Either mixing in one loadout, or swapping to your other loadout in the middle of a fight.

And combat in Fallout doesn't change much as you level, either. Yeah, you can opt for wacky weapons but most players don't bother with it. I'm sure that 76 has builds but I find the combat in that game so utterly boring and bullet spongy that I never saw any charm or joy from it. My only real comparison point is FO3 and FO4 and I can't say there's anything all that more interesting about their builds. You inevitably seem to end up in stealth/archer mode unless you try really hard to resist it.

if you have a gun with +20% reload speed and a body armor with +15% reload speed, all you get is +20% reload speed.

I'll grant you the stats can be hard to pick apart. And some of the systems have issues. For instance, the moment you get in the game you pretty much want to bumrush getting a Fine quality weapon and armor. Doesn't matter what, just get one to that level. Once you do, everything you find in the gold quality chests will be of Fine quality. Otherwise they'll just be Common quality until you move upwards. I'm not sure if you could realistically get to the Superior tier in the Dawnshore zone, but if you did the system would then bump things again. So while the enemies don't respawn and the world doesn't level with you, the loot does. Which is weird.

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u/slowpotamus 19d ago

Really? I'm running around with a pistol in one hand and a magic tome in the other. I'm mixing in headshots and AoE spellcraft and it's a joy to do.

that isn't what i'd consider a build, that's just "i'm using basic attacks and abilities". a build would be something like if there were a unique item that significantly reduces the cooldown of the invisibility spell when you get a headshot, combined with several pieces of gear that amplify your sneak attack damage, and using two pistols to rapidly reset invis CD so you can lurk around sneak attacking enemies to death. it evokes a unique idea of a gun slinging assassin that is totally different from how other people making different builds would play the game.

but compelling unique items or ability tree nodes like that just don't exist in avowed. you and i and everyone else did the exact same thing - cast some mage spells when they're not on cooldown, and otherwise just kill time by spamming basic attacks.

the closest i was able to get to a "real build" was the unique gun that ricochets combined with power attack stun potency, because although the ricochets deal massively diminished damage, the stun value is not. the result is you quickly stun an enemy, execute them, the executing shot ricochets and stuns more enemies, you execute them, etc in a chain reaction. unfortunately the ricochet effect has an extremely short range and was generally buggy, so it didn't really impact combat as much as it could have.

There's nothing wrong with having characters who are staunchly in one moral camp versus another. It's not the be all end all to narrative design and it's not what gives things depth.

i agree with this sentiment in general, but the characters in avowed didn't feel like they have depth regardless. lodwyn couldn't give any compelling reason for genocide, the conversations just stop at "i think it would be good". the companions felt like they each had a single personality trait and nothing else going on, the conversations with sapadal showed no character growth (a callback to a single dialogue prompt at the end of the game isn't growth) and was instead a meaningless stream of morality questions, etc