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Obsidian’s Avowed is a game for the more indecisive or changeable RPG player, with no “enforced” classes and an emphasis on easily respeccing and experimenting with different combinations of weapons and abilities. Or at least, that’s my overall takeaway from a new Xbox podcast interview featuring game director Carrie Patel and gameplay director Gabe Paramo. In the video, the pair delve a little deeper into last week’s Xbox Developer Direct showcase and how the game compares to their previous Pillars of Eternity games, which are set in the same world.
The 25 minute video is heavy on the kind of gamer-coddling, world-revolves-around-you rhetoric which developers like Obsidian often deploy in a strange bid to suggest that their games are far less intriguing than they are. “With all of the content we design, whether it’s quests, companion relationships, or gameplay, which Gabe can talk to, we really try to create this player-shaped hole,” Patel observes at one point. “So that we’re always leaving room for players to really step in, drive the game and the story forward, and just define who they are in this setting.”
Call me an awful curmudgeon, but talk of being “the author of my own experience” leaves me cold, at least when it comes to narrative design. It makes me feel like I’m being asked to rejoice in the act of customising a giftbox. I don’t want to be a hole at the centre of the universe – I want the universe to push back, deny me things and impose a shape on me, so that there’s a genuine sense of stakes and an actual obligation to “play a role”. And I’m pretty sure Avowed’s quests and story will meet those criteria in practice, going by Obsidian’s prior creations, though I share Graham’s reservations about the Xbox Developer Direct demo questline being exceedingly overfamiliar. The stuff about being “player-centric” is just the usual dead-eyed marketing. Still, I do wish it would go away.
I’m more open to the “author your experience” rhetoric when it comes to mixing and mangling attack types and spells. In the video, Paramo offers a longer breakdown of the game’s first-person battling and progression. The key thing, again, is that there are no classes and the game sounds fairly permissive about respeccing and combining different tools in less obvious ways.
“Pillars has classes,” Paramo explains. “We wanted to be able to grab as many abilities from the trees as possible and categorize them a little bit differently, so that the player doesn’t feel like they’re locked into a single choice at the start of the game. They can kind of mix and match between different abilities. So you can get some, you can achieve some variety. You can choose to commit to being a fighter per se, but it’s not an enforced kind of class setup. And as Carrie said, you can respec if you don’t like the direction you went down.”
The weapon/ability combinations themselves don’t sound mind-blowing, but perhaps they’re just the tip of the iceberg. You can go in with the classic sword and shield, parrying attacks, or equip a pistol in place of your sword for a medium-range turtling playstyle. You can perform magic combos, planting a fire trap, then Scorpion-yanking a foe into it with Into The Fray ability. You can dual-wield wands, for maximum homing anti-armour damage. Companions bring their own playstyles: a tank with a taunt ability, for instance.
Some of the spells and abilities, like Tanglefoot, are familiar from Pillars of Eternity. It sounds like your approach will change rapidly, as you discover and equip new gear in the wilds. “Sometimes you’ll find a new unique weapon with some pretty nice buffs on it,” Patel comments. “And maybe you’ll decide to rock that for a while, even if it’s not what you’ve been using previously.”
There’s also a straightforward element system that spills over into exploration: the same frost magic that lets you turn attacking gremlins into icicles can be used to freeze water to stand on so you can jump to an overhanging cave. The environment itself is “open zone” with several paths through/around encounters, each zone being “comparable to Outer Worlds areas on the larger side”, according to Paramo.
All of which sounds… promising enough? I’m still waiting for Avowed’s Big Hook, beyond it being an Obsidian take on Skyrim with more of a story focus, but I can see myself losing a few hours pairing up wands, swords and so forth. How about you? If you’re still catching up on last week’s Xbox showcase, here are all the announcements in one place.