Avowed Discussion Thread

neogunhero

neogunhero

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Avowed is the latest first-person action RPG from legendary developers Obsidian Entertainment. You play as the Envoy, a godlike with superhuman powers who is tasked by the Aedyran Emperor with investigating a strange plague infesting the Living Lands called the Dreamscourge. The plague threatens to take over everything from the people, animals, plants, and the land itself. Along the way you will find out your soul is connected to the lands in ways you never knew possible. You also uncover the deep unrest of the locals who are being pushed out of their homes by the very empire you serve.

This thread is meant for discussion of all kinds relating to Avowed.
 
I'm about 6-7 hours into Avowed and so far it's been really great. It isn't overly ambitious but knows exactly what it wants to be and executes it very well. You're not going to find some industry changing game mechanics here. Instead, you will find very solid and fun combat, great lore and dialogue, interesting characters, and a sense of wonder and exploration that I haven't felt in quite a long time.

The combat plays like a mix of Skyrim and Elder Scrolls Online. You have an ability bar that you equip different powers into the slots, and mash on them along with your mouse button to use them. So ESO because of the ability bar, Skyrim because of the first person combat. The combat has a slight MMO feel to it, which I think works very nicely in this kind of game. It gives it more depth, allowing you to approach each fight differently, and make up your own class and loadout as you choose. Currently I am rocking a wand in my right hand and a grimoire in my left, shooting magic blasts out the wand and using the grimoire for four additional spells. There are many different grimoires with different spells, so currently I have two that I switch between. I am going for a spell and magic only build, with the backup bow and arrow in my secondary loadout in case I need it. The wand is ranged but doesn't go too far. My strategy right now is to use a freezing spell to root enemies in place then a lightning spell to chain electrocute them.

The story so far is very interesting. Sometimes when I play a new game with brand new lore I don't know, I try very hard to understand it and get invested. Often times that leads me to be overwhelmed with too much lore, or I simply just get bored and don't care, but that isn't the case with this game. Of course, with any new lore there is a lot of stuff thrown at you that you don't fully understand right off the bat, but over time things start to make more sense. I found it to be quite fun learning about the world and what is going on. I haven't played Pillars of Eternity, but I think Avowed eases you into it gently, so people like me can understand what's going on. There's the classic notes scattered around the world for you to read, local's conversating about their distaste for the Aedyran Empire, and other means of visual storytelling.

Perhaps my favorite thing about the game so far is the exploration. While not a true open world, each area is very large and intricately detailed. This is some of the best level design in a singleplayer action RPG lately. Everywhere you go there is treasure to be found. The game allows you to pull off some sick parkour moves and makes it very easy and accessible to do so, so traversing rooftops and alleyways is a breeze. If you're like me who spent most of their time in Deus Ex and Cyberpunk trying to find every single secret vent, alleyway, rooftop path, climbing every building, jumping from tall heights to land onto the building across the street, just generally trying to get into places you shouldn't be or find some secret stashed away in a locked apartment, you will absolutely love Avowed for all of those reasons.

So far, Avowed has been very great. As a lot of you here know, I've been in a deep gaming rut most of the year so far, so I am very happy to find something that I am genuinely invested in. Avowed doesn't try to break any molds, doesn't try to aim for the moon and fails short, no, it stays relatively conservative with its design choices and it's all the better for that. The best way I've heard someone describe Avowed is it's Skyrim for people who realize Skyrim is 14 years old and feels outdated by today's standards. While it's not a 1:1 comparison with Skyrim, it shares a lot of similarities and builds upon them for a modern audience.
 
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Performance Analysis (only based off gameplay, no real testing done)

RTX 2060 6GB, Ryzen 5700X, 32GB DDR4 3600MHz RAM, Windows 10

Playing on a mix of High/Medium. Shadow Quality, Global Illumination, and Reflections at Medium, while Texture, Shading, Draw Distance, Effects at High, and Ambient Occlusion at Ultra. RT off, DLSS Quality on.

The game looks okay with these settings. You get the bit of mushiness from DLSS, with things in the distance looking blurry. Up close, things look good. Performance stays around 60FPS, dipping in some areas, and without DLSS I hover around 40FPS. Having to just deal with the visual quality to get better frames. I will try bringing everything down and turning off DLSS to see if the end result looks a bit crisper while maintaining good frames.

For a new game launch, I think the good performance and lack of major game breaking bugs is an honorable achievement. My GPU just doesn't meet the system requirements, so I'm only experiencing hardware bottlenecks. I've seen others play on better machines and the game runs so smoothly right off the bat. In a time where major game launches are a crapshoot, it's nice to see a new game perform near flawlessly.

I have not checked for GPU drivers prior to playing, that could help a bit. Also, I'm sure they are working on some performance related fixes, as the day-one patch notes indicated issues with memory leaks.
 
I have only played a little bit so far, but I'm enjoying it. I just reached the first city. I heard people complaining about the combat, but so far I'm liking it. I used the dagger they gave me at the beginning, and since I've been picking magic user attributes, I've been carrying a grimoire in my off hand, which gives me 4 new spells to go with the magic missile spell I have memorized. All I do is carry it in my off hand and then right click to pull up the spells and select 1 to 4 to cast. It's a very workable system.

This is not my kind of game anymore, but I plan on playing it with short play sessions, and hopefully it will grab me, and I'll finish it. So far so good.
 
ZedClampet said:
I have only played a little bit so far, but I'm enjoying it. I just reached the first city. I heard people complaining about the combat, but so far I'm liking it. I used the dagger they gave me at the beginning, and since I've been picking magic user attributes, I've been carrying a grimoire in my off hand, which gives me 4 new spells to go with the magic missile spell I have memorized. All I do is carry it in my off hand and then right click to pull up the spells and select 1 to 4 to cast. It's a very workable system.

This is not my kind of game anymore, but I plan on playing it with short play sessions, and hopefully it will grab me, and I'll finish it. So far so good.
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I have seen a lot of people say that as well, but I like it a lot. As a long time ESO player, I think the combat suites players like me more than people who's only reference point is Skyrim. The ability bar and grimoire having it's own abilities works seamlessly for me, making combat very smooth and fluid.

I would recommend turning the difficulty to Easy if you aren't looking to play it very seriously. The world is leveled, so it's easy to go off the beaten path and end up in a high level area and get demolished. I'm playing on Normal and have died a handful of times to some really hard fights I shouldn't have started in the first place.
 
neogunhero said:
I have seen a lot of people say that as well, but I like it a lot. As a long time ESO player, I think the combat suites players like me more than people who's only reference point is Skyrim. The ability bar and grimoire having it's own abilities works seamlessly for me, making combat very smooth and fluid.

I would recommend turning the difficulty to Easy if you aren't looking to play it very seriously. The world is leveled, so it's easy to go off the beaten path and end up in a high level area and get demolished. I'm playing on Normal and have died a handful of times to some really hard fights I shouldn't have started in the first place.
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That's a good suggestion, but I've been growing a little discontent with 'easy' lately and wanting a bit more challenge.

I'm glad I picked the magic path. Normally I don't, but I think it adds a lot to the game.
 
ZedClampet said:
That's a good suggestion, but I've been growing a little discontent with 'easy' lately and wanting a bit more challenge.

I'm glad I picked the magic path. Normally I don't, but I think it adds a lot to the game.
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I know what you mean. Sometimes it’s hard finding a balance between too hard and too easy.

I also agree with being a mage. I just think I’m done with the old sword and shield. I do that in so many other RPG’s that I wanted to try something different. So far been having a blast casting spells.
 
I have a good ~20 hours or so in the game and i havent even left Dawnshore. The exploration in this game is pretty good, maybe a little too small (im still in the first region), but i love all the hidden treasures everywhere which is quite a few.

I also like the upgrading system, i killed a bandit with an electrified handgun and just by upgrading it, its been my go-to weapon along with a fire sword and ice bow that i also upgraded by adding those abilities. Once i did this, combat became easier.

neogunhero said:
I also agree with being a mage. I just think I’m done with the old sword and shield. I do that in so many other RPG’s that I wanted to try something different. So far been having a blast casting spells.
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Im in the same boat, usually i do a bow or 2-handed weapon loadout in these games, but using magic and magic-infused weapons has made the combat so much easier, even on max difficulty.

Im still on the fence overall with the combat. It probably felt worse at first because i didnt have much and on max difficulty but now im taking down bounties from a distance while my partner (Kai) goes in for the close combat and his special also deals a lot of damage so i usually reserve that for the minibosses or targets.


neogunhero said:
Performance Analysis (only based off gameplay, no real testing done)

RTX 2060 6GB, Ryzen 5700X, 32GB DDR4 3600MHz RAM, Windows 10

Playing on a mix of High/Medium. Shadow Quality, Global Illumination, and Reflections at Medium, while Texture, Shading, Draw Distance, Effects at High, and Ambient Occlusion at Ultra. RT off, DLSS Quality on.

The game looks okay with these settings. You get the bit of mushiness from DLSS, with things in the distance looking blurry. Up close, things look good. Performance stays around 60FPS, dipping in some areas, and without DLSS I hover around 40FPS. Having to just deal with the visual quality to get better frames. I will try bringing everything down and turning off DLSS to see if the end result looks a bit crisper while maintaining good frames.
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Sounds about right with the settings. Im running a 4080super with a 12900k cpu, 3600mhz ddr5 on samsungs fastest SSD and i manage, at max settings, DLSS on quality, etc. etc. about 65-75 FPS (higher by maybe 10-20fps if indoors or looking up) at 3440x1440 and at 4k, its about 50-60fps at max settings, but if i bump it down to balanced (still max settings) it sits around 60 FPS. So i got some wiggle room if i want to get more frames, esp. 4k since that is just my tv. Lets not talk about that when running this game native though.



neogunhero said:
I have not checked for GPU drivers prior to playing, that could help a bit. Also, I'm sure they are working on some performance related fixes, as the day-one patch notes indicated issues with memory leaks.
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The latest driver by nvidia is for avowed, id grab it, it might help your system.

neogunhero said:
For a new game launch, I think the good performance and lack of major game breaking bugs is an honorable achievement. My GPU just doesn't meet the system requirements, so I'm only experiencing hardware bottlenecks. I've seen others play on better machines and the game runs so smoothly right off the bat. In a time where major game launches are a crapshoot, it's nice to see a new game perform near flawlessly.
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Yes, the game runs really well, im suprised, the last couple games ive played ran really well actually. Kingdomcome Deliverance 2 runs really well and i was afraid because the first one didnt at all. Been playing the Killing Floor 3 beta and that seems to be holding up well too even a month before the game is released.
 
neogunhero said:
I have not checked for GPU drivers prior to playing, that could help a bit. Also, I'm sure they are working on some performance related fixes, as the day-one patch notes indicated issues with memory leaks.
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At least they made it workable with older drivers. If they didn't, they'd have a thousand people writing negative reviews on Steam saying the game was broken.

By the way, after updating my driver the game tried to use my integrated graphics, so if you update and suddenly the game runs like crap, you might want to check that.

neogunhero said:
View: https://youtu.be/d8WTyv1DgHA?si=bkxwr1l2W9EGAwBu


Here’s me trying to hit a parkour line then ended up getting glitched. The movement system is very good, reminds me almost of CSGO.
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How many times did you try that? You seemed to have the course completely memorized. Or are you just a directional savant like Guido?
 
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As far as performance goes, I'm GPU bound with my hobbled laptop 3070 ti (TGP 135). This is fine because my CPU never gets hot running at about 35 percent.

Anyway, with everything on High plus ray tracing and DLSS on quality, I'm getting an average of 56 fps, which is actually better than I'm used to in AAA games, so that's great. I've noticed, however, that some things look blurry even when I turn DLSS off. Not sure what that's about.
 
Im about 5 hours in. Weird comparison maybe, but for me with the parkour and melee combat its giving me Dying Light vibes. I liked those games a lot so its meant as a compliment.

I think it was a great move to use the Eora setting for them. Must save so much work on the concept side of things and I always think it gives a setting a feeling of depth when its somewhere where stories have played out before.

I picked the Frontiersman type origin so I figured I would roleplay just a bit as a ranger type. Ive got a pistol and a sword and Im putting points into Dex and Perception. Im still finding the combat fun so far, but seems its pretty easy to respec if I get bored and then I can try out some magic or a hybrid build.

Game runs really smooth on RTX 4070, mostly epic apart from shadows and refelections on DLSS Quality with FG on.
 
The first 3 negative reviews I checked on metacritic mentioned DEI, ugly characters and said the W word. I didnt look any further than that.

Looking further it seems the same kind of nonsense as you go down, repeating the same talking points. Steam reviews are mostly positive, but the negative ones have some fair points to it and appear mostly genuine.

This isnt a AAA budget game as we know it and they are selling it for $70, but thats only a problem if you have a PS5 because Gamepass is 11.99 a month.
 
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Kaamos_Llama said:
The first 3 negative reviews I checked on metacritic mentioned DEI, ugly characters and said the W word. I didnt look any further than that.

Looking further it seems the same kind of nonsense as you go down, repeating the same talking points. Steam reviews are mostly positive, but the negative ones have some fair points to it and appear mostly genuine.

This isnt a AAA budget game as we know it and they are selling it for $70, but thats only a problem if you have a PS5 because Gamepass is 11.99 a month.
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I looked at about 30 negative reviews on Steam and none of them mentioned DEI. They are mad about the price, and they are saying the world is boring, that the NPCs aren't like Morrowind NPCs and that everything just feels mediocre. Overall, it sounds very much like everyone is just in a bad mood. They don't, for the most part, explain any of their negatives except the price one. But it sounds very much like most of them are just venting.
 
ZedClampet said:
I looked at about 30 negative reviews on Steam and none of them mentioned DEI. They are mad about the price, and they are saying the world is boring, that the NPCs aren't like Morrowind NPCs and that everything just feels mediocre. Overall, it sounds very much like everyone is just in a bad mood. They don't, for the most part, explain any of their negatives except the price one. But it sounds very much like most of them are just venting.
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Seems the people on Steam are mostly upset that it isnt a massive open world RPG with immersive sim elements. I can see that if you paid full price for it and were expecting something on the scope of Skyrim, but if you were expecting that you should probably have been paying more attention to what you were buying full price.

It's the same kind of scope as Outer Worlds, wide open levels with decent exploration. Although I didnt really like Outer Worlds, I like that here they havent just tried to make the dialogue Marvelized, they made traversal fun and fast and the combat system is also working for me so far. Crafting seems pretty simplified, and some of the side quests are pretty side questy.

Ive kind of missed this kind of thing tbh, I feel like I could 100% explore the game without giving up a year of my life to do it and that feels nice.
 
The amount of hate this game has been getting is kind of astonishing. Gamers are an insufferable lot, that I know, but this time around particularly they seem enraged for a variety of reasons. I did see some mention W word and the like, but mostly just been seeing people trash talking the game without even trying it themselves. Saying things like "this looks ugly", "this looks mid", "boring AF game", but that is the extent of their comments. Every game deserves some criticism, but only from those who have experienced it themselves. It kind of infuriates me that this is how people choose to communicate now. You can't give any form of meaningful critique if you have not tried it yourself. It's rare that you can judge an entire game just based off watching some videos. Notoriously bad games like that Golem game are examples of that. Avowed has a lot of good going for it, and it's a very well-made game, so for people to trash talk it without playing it just boggles me, but then again it is nothing new. Just seem to notice it way more than usual with this particular game.
 
Kaamos_Llama said:
The first 3 negative reviews I checked on metacritic mentioned DEI, ugly characters and said the W word. I didnt look any further than that.

Looking further it seems the same kind of nonsense as you go down, repeating the same talking points. Steam reviews are mostly positive, but the negative ones have some fair points to it and appear mostly genuine.

This isnt a AAA budget game as we know it and they are selling it for $70, but thats only a problem if you have a PS5 because Gamepass is 11.99 a month.
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metacritic is where you go to do political review bombing without having to actually buy the game. It's useless and insufferable.
 
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