Eternity Avowed - Obsidian's first person action-RPG in the Pillars of Eternity setting - coming Fall 2024

[IHaveHugeNick]

Frankly I'd rather fuck a bear than angry lesbians from TOW.

 

[roguefrog]

Not being able to fuck them doesn't mean they won't be horny.

Sure, except I expect they will keep that shit to themselves, as true incels (not souls) who have no possible chance of getting laid during the full duration of the RPG.

 

[Roguey]

One thing I'm glad to hear is no horny companion NPCs. I thought after BG3 that would trend.

BG3 was released six months ago and this has been in development for years. It'll take a while before we'll see RPGs obviously influenced by it.

 

[Viata]

I hope not. But then again, devs always get the worse part from other rpgs.

 

[Butter]

One thing I'm glad to hear is no horny companion NPCs. I thought after BG3 that would trend.

BG3 was released six months ago and this has been in development for years. It'll take a while before we'll see RPGs obviously influenced by it.

Weren't there memes about Shadowheart as soon as the game released in EA?

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

le epic battles against like two enemies on screen at any given moment

 

[Tyranicon]

One thing I'm glad to hear is no horny companion NPCs. I thought after BG3 that would trend.

BG3 was released six months ago and this has been in development for years. It'll take a while before we'll see RPGs obviously influenced by it.

 

[Quillon]

One thing I'm glad to hear is no horny companion NPCs. I thought after BG3 that would trend.

BG3 was released six months ago and this has been in development for years. It'll take a while before we'll see RPGs obviously influenced by it.

What is there to get influenced by BG3 specifically? BG3 = DAO + DOS games and those were around for much longer + BG3 EA was around.

 

[Tenebris]

One thing I'm glad to hear is no horny companion NPCs. I thought after BG3 that would trend.

BG3 was released six months ago and this has been in development for years. It'll take a while before we'll see RPGs obviously influenced by it.

What is there to get influenced by BG3 specifically? BG3 = DAO + DOS games and those were around for much longer + BG3 EA was around.

I hope you enjoy rpgs with a heavy focus on voice acting and romance because that's what we'll be getting.

 

[Quillon]

I hope you enjoy rpgs with a heavy focus on voice acting and romance because that's what we'll be getting.

What we have been getting for 20 years.

 

[Tenebris]

And now we'll get 20 more. Fun.

 

[roguefrog]

What is there to get influenced by BG3 specifically?

Mostly expensive triple A stuff, which does make it harder to copy.

Like fully voiced and mo-capped cutscenes for everything. Even when a simple text bark would have been better, quicker, and cheaper (see all those superfluous fully named NPCs in Baldur's Gate proper that trigger a cutscene to only speak one line of dialog)

More resources poured into romances of course. Although I don't think Obsidian will actually ever do them fully. They've seem to always have been critical of player character romances. (even though PoE2 technically has romance options, they're easily ignored/skippable)

Possibly the multiplayer component.

I agree it's too early to tell though unless they decided to do another hard pivot after the first pivot away from an "open-world" Bethesda game.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

One thing I'm glad to hear is no horny companion NPCs. I thought after BG3 that would trend.

BG3 was released six months ago and this has been in development for years. It'll take a while before we'll see RPGs obviously influenced by it.

What is there to get influenced by BG3 specifically? BG3 = DAO + DOS games and those were around for much longer + BG3 EA was around.

Lessons developers should learn from Baldur's Gate 3:

• Tactical, turn-based combat sells
• An RPG should have at least a semblance of exploration
• A considerable amount of interactivity with the world can be accomplished, even in a game with turn-based combat
• Quests can have various Choices & Consequences associated with them, and there can also be consequences for player actions outside quests
• RPGs can have a fairly non-linear structure

Lessons developers will learn from Baldur's Gate 3:

• Sex sells, especially with viral marketing
• Aside from a single player-generated character, the party members should be pre-generated and have ludicrously convoluted backstories
• Vast amounts of money should be spent on voice-acting and motion-capture, especially for those pre-generated companions
• Embrace the worst fantasy setting possible
• Players don't care about basing your game on a poor ruleset, such as "D&D 5th edition"

Only the voice-acting / motion-capture lesson bears an enormous cost, and moreso for the latter than the former; consider that Bethesda Softworks already shifted to full voice-acting with the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in 2006.

 

[Shaki]

Lessons developers will learn from Baldur's Gate 3:

• Sex sells, especially with viral marketing
• Aside from a single player-generated character, the party members should be pre-generated and have ludicrously convoluted backstories
• Vast amounts of money should be spent on voice-acting and motion-capture, especially for those pre-generated companions
• Embrace the worst fantasy setting possible
• Players don't care about basing your game on a poor ruleset, such as "D&D 5th edition"

Why wouldn't they? These are literally the main reasons why BG3 sold so well.

 

[lukaszek]

Why wouldn't they? These are literally the main reasons why BG3 sold so well.

i think its word of mouth actually. There were people outside of codex that were praising this game to me while it was still in ea

 

[Shaki]

Why wouldn't they? These are literally the main reasons why BG3 sold so well.

i think its word of mouth actually. There were people outside of codex that were praising this game to me while it was still in ea

The bearsex and shit like that going viral was the initial thing that boosted it to mainstream, I had people who don't play games talk to me about it because they saw it on tiktok. Streamers picked it up, etc.

Then later people who picked it up, actually liked it because of the 5 "wrong lessons" Zed mentioned. If you go on any BG3 fan space like their subreddit, things like: romances (sex), production values, companion stories, shallow and extremely easy to pick up system, woke setting, are the main reasons why normies enjoyed it.

 

[Quillon]

One thing I'm glad to hear is no horny companion NPCs. I thought after BG3 that would trend.

BG3 was released six months ago and this has been in development for years. It'll take a while before we'll see RPGs obviously influenced by it.

What is there to get influenced by BG3 specifically? BG3 = DAO + DOS games and those were around for much longer + BG3 EA was around.

Lessons developers should learn from Baldur's Gate 3:

• Tactical, turn-based combat sells
• An RPG should have at least a semblance of exploration
• A considerable amount of interactivity with the world can be accomplished, even in a game with turn-based combat
• Quests can have various Choices & Consequences associated with them, and there can also be consequences for player actions outside quests
• RPGs can have a fairly non-linear structure

Lessons developers will learn from Baldur's Gate 3:

• Sex sells, especially with viral marketing
• Aside from a single player-generated character, the party members should be pre-generated and have ludicrously convoluted backstories
• Vast amounts of money should be spent on voice-acting and motion-capture, especially for those pre-generated companions
• Embrace the worst fantasy setting possible
• Players don't care about basing your game on a poor ruleset, such as "D&D 5th edition"

Only the voice-acting / motion-capture lesson bears an enormous cost, and moreso for the latter than the former; consider that Bethesda Softworks already shifted to full voice-acting with the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in 2006.

Yes but all those points were apparent before BG3. "should learn" section is all DOS stuff, "will learn" section is almost all bioware stuff, and many other gayms had 1 or several of those "qualities". My point was that devs didn't have only 6 months to get influenced by BG3, they had many years.

 

[roguefrog]

An RPG should have at least a semblance of exploration

Exploration in BG3? The first map had everything piled practically on top of each other...the crash site being right next to a druid camp which was a stones throw from an orc occupied town with the gate to the orc camp just a short distance away... It would have made more sense to create separate maps and travel time between areas (you must gather your party before venturing forth) But this design tracts with Larian's map design from the DOS games. One big Disneyland map with multiple unique locations right next to each other with virtually no travel time.

 

[Old Hans]

Exploration in BG3? The first map had everything piled practically on top of each other

I know its meant to be a condensed version of a larger area, but it feels so weird that the goblins cant locate the hidden grove which is practically across the street from the selune temple

 

[luj1]

i just realized what this shit makes me think off - grimrock, kek, same production values

Perhaps the same production VALUES, but even Grimrock had a better production STANDARD

Also don't forget that Grimrock literally caused a mini resurgence of RT blobbers, meanwhile this will cause nothing

 

[Tyranicon]

[*]Embrace the worst fantasy setting possible

Aha! Here's where you're wrong, because you need to be licensed from WotC to use FR!

Imagine, being litigious over something as generic and boring as Forgotten Realms/Toril/Faerun/whatever.

-looks at Avowed and Eora-

Worldbuilding was a mistake.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

i just realized what this shit makes me think off - grimrock, kek, same production values

Perhaps the same production VALUES, but even Grimrock had a better production STANDARD

Also don't forget that Grimrock literally caused a mini resurgence of RT blobbers, meanwhile this will cause nothing

It did not. What caused was a faux "i'm a hardcore crpg player" moment because the graphics were pretty, the fact that grimrock 2 did absolutely nothing proves that people bought the game because it made them look cool.

 

[Viata]

people bought the game because it made them look cool

There was a good explanation back then, but it sums up to:
People wanted to play old bloobers like Eye of the Beholder and Dungeon Master because crpg fans tend to praise those games but they DON'T want to play old games themselves (it's also how we still see people asking for remaster/remake of old games so they can ~finally~ play it). They want to play modern version of those games and when Grimrock was released, there came their chance and they bought the game (which is why Grimrock 1 sold quite well), but then they learned that they don't like the genre and so most of them didn't finish the game and had no interest in Grimrock 2 (which sold badly compared to 1).

 

[thesecret1]

Imagine, being litigious over something as generic and boring as Forgotten Realms/Toril/Faerun/whatever.

That's where you're wrong too. FR isn't just generic and boring, it is actively shit and ruining whatever it touches. A generic boring fantasy would have you fight Big Bad Evil Guy and his evil minions. FR will spin you a tale about how NOT ALL MINIONS are evil, and the mustache-twirling cartoon villain will make a pass on the player prior to the bossfight.

 

[Tyranicon]

Imagine, being litigious over something as generic and boring as Forgotten Realms/Toril/Faerun/whatever.

That's where you're wrong too. FR isn't just generic and boring, it is actively shit and ruining whatever it touches. A generic boring fantasy would have you fight Big Bad Evil Guy and his evil minions. FR will spin you a tale about how NOT ALL MINIONS are evil, and the mustache-twirling cartoon villain will make a pass on the player prior to the bossfight.

I dont entirely disagree, but that's more on the writers/management than the setting.

We are not very far at all from the times when all [x] are evil and should be destroyed.

The weirdest thing they did was applying modern culture war topics to literal fantasy monsters.

this is your daily reminder that they retconned drow to be mostly good, and the evil ones are a minority