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I did this today

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/obsidian-plans-to-make-rpgs-for-100-years-by-not-trying-to-grow-aggressively-expand-our-team-size-or-make-super-profitable-games/ Here is a really good link from Obsidian around there vision of the company and how they plan to survive and ensure profitability in a reasonable way They have learnt lessons from the likes of Bioware and Veilguard and its sales failures and they plan to avoid that type of financial crisis for the company " They didn't call out any examples themselves, but the duo was clearly setting themselves apart from companies that pour enormous budgets into long and turbulent development cycles and then announce that the resulting game underperformed because it didn't immediately sell tens of millions of copies. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the most recent high-profile example of an expensive RPG that didn't meet its owner's sales expectations, and EA cut jobs at BioWare after the miss. "

5 hours into Avowed. Seems good. More linear than Skyrim, but still a bit open-worldy. Maybe Witcher 3 is a good comparison? Feels like the PC has too much special stuff thrown at them. You're the king's envoy, but also some kind of special godlike. Just either one could have made an interesting story. Only bug I've ran into so far is people's hair having that problem of springing down from default position when a new camera angle is loaded.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-reciprocal-tariffs-coming-thursday-2025-02-13/ Also, Trump doesn't know what VAT is, as he wrote on Truth Social. "For purposes of this United States Policy, we will consider Countries that use the VAT System, which is far more punitive than a Tariff, to be similar to that of a Tariff. Sending merchandise, product, or anything by any other name through another Country, for purposes of unfairly harming America, will not be accepted"

I disagree. K:CD2 and Avowed are tremendously different types of games. Sure, they are both RPG's, but that's about it. One goes for historical accuracy and tries to recreate a living breathing medieval world. You aren't a super soldier, your just the son of a blacksmith who can't hold his liquor and has lucked into some nobility. It relies on minigames and precise combat controls. Avowed is high fantasy set in a fairly alien world. It's weird and otherworldly. The combat revolves around fantastical powers. I don't know how that runs counter to the first 2 games. You were literally tangling with gods in the games. Avowed compares more to Skyrim in that regard, even though I dislike those comparisons as well. I can see what you are saying if you feel Avowed lacks the complexity of K:CD. On its surface, it does seem to be a simpler game when it comes to mechanics and extra stuff. I feel like Obsidian has made a concentrated effort to not overextend itself. I haven't played enough to see if there is more to it. It has cooking and crafting, but it isn't as crazy as other games. Anyways, I love that we have both of those games on the market. They are both great and play very differently.

I don't think I have seen an overwhelmingly positive review for Avowed. From what I have seen people invested in Eora, found a lot to enjoy in Avowed, while people not invested in the universe mostly found it underwhelming. So it seemed Avowed might have missed the marked in trying to bring in new audience, while the existing audience would likely prefer PoE3 to begin with. Eitherway, it seems that Obsidian is continuing playing it safe - which is disappointing. I was hoping that lesser player agency came with some unique upsides, and so far it doesn't seem to be the case. While Outer Worlds benefited from Bethesda creating a lot of goodwill for it with Fallout76, it seems K:CD2 created the opposite for Avowed. Which is a shame, A detailed, hardcore medieval adventure is kinda what first person PoE adaptation should be IMO. Fantastical powerfantasy, I think runs against the IP's nature. Alas Obsidian continues to pursue mainstream appeal with Outer Worlds and it seems, Avowed, producing simpler friction-free experiences. Still, looking forward to it. Based on what I have heard I should enjoy the game well enough.

In a word yes, though it'd depend of course on the request and specific situation. (Fundamentally, shifting the focus to US v China and parking US v Russia alters the balance of leverage for Russia <--> China as well, which certainly favours China markedly at the moment. Russia, now, would have difficulty refusing any half way reasonable Chinese request or agreement offer and, if it hurt the west, likely wouldn't particularly want to anyway. It'd still be highly unlikely Russia would go out of its way to help any anti Chinese western efforts, given recent history and with a realistic 'normalisation' to the US. If the US asked them to, say, close their borders to Chinese goods they wouldn't under any reasonable scenario. But you could certainly expect them to extract a price from China much as China has from Russia, and could get them to up the price by offering sanctions relief or release of currency reserves. Neither of those could be offered under a more Bidenesque approach)

Avowed - It's fantastic. It looks great. The intro area is really well done. I just reached the first city.

Yo, where is it @Aarik D? 😊 Congrats to no.1 on Steam btw.!

So Trump signed a new executive order that funding will be cut for all schools that mandate the COVID vaccine. Sounds terrible, right? It's outrageous! Until you find out that no school mandates the COVID vaccine and it's all just hot air. https://www.immunize.org/official-guidance/state-policies/vaccine-requirements/covid-child-school-2024/

Anyone else having issues using 'like' feature? for some reason I am getting this error from time to time:

Apparently DOGE has fantastic security. https://www.theverge.com/news/612865/doge-government-website-database-security-open

Seems there's only two kind of reviews for Avowed: "Super awesome!!" and "worst game ever" -- will probably play it via GamePass once it is out.

Huh. Well done Obsidian.

Yes its biggest fault for me was the repetition of dungeon design , it was lazy But I enjoyed the narrative and how it involved over years and I liked the companions and Romance arcs. Especially Isabela

Please provide a detailed review of this game as you progress similar to how you review other games I really want this game to succeed and we can assess sales numbers later because we wont know that now

I had that text too, it took something like 3-5 mins for me. After that it started the game, and compiled shaders for about 15mins.

I made my character pretty light on the shroominess. You can also choose to hide it, but for purposes of the story, people need to be able to tell you are godlike. I'm sure a few people will be turned off by it. But there's also dumb people turned off by a pronoun option, so you can't please everyone.

I was able to log in and load posts etc just fine today, so that's a good sign re: forum performance capabilities. Although the game hasn't wide released yet. The reviewers and those who paid for early access, I think. = In other news, while generally speaking I keep to a decent food regimen, day to day, and have kept my weight low and level etc, excess sugar snacks is still a constant "addiction" I fight against all the time - and sometimes lose. 1st couple years I did really well. (edit: still off/don't need insulin tho) The past couple years I've done "all right." Death by Costco's Kirkland macadamia-nut, chocolate/caramel clusters has more appeal all the time.

Eeeexcuuuuse me. Are you trying to label me with the xy gender... I was just making some fun. Happy that the forum is getting some foot traffic and new blood. Hopefully we get some interesting new trolls, because the good ones left and the ones we have I'm afraid aren't trolling. For starters they need to move from AWS and get them some of that free Azure goodness. That's what I find puzzling. Like not even a discount?

Only if you want there to be. Note I never story-finished the game but I did explore/move around the last big "open" section so I did get pretty far. It's more of a stealth game in many cases and you can avoid or sneak-deal with enemies most of the time (not always but often). Or if you really want to, you can charge in or do something non-stealthy and attract a lot of enemies for chaos. It's up to you. Generally speaking trying to take on lots of enemies at once is often not a great idea, partly because of certain mechanics but also just spatial jank sometimes. There's some "boss" fights of course.

The fact the forum is still running and hasn't crashed means it is doing better than previous releases.

I haven't played a ton, but there is a super easy combat mode that you can set separate of the puzzles. So you can set the puzzles to regular or hard, but breeze through the stealth and combat stuff. So it might be worth a try.

As of the last few months, over an additional 1.5k apparently February is already on the way to make that even more awesome imho

Real Men and Women.

Everyone's persisting in talking about some big new RPG being released in a few days. Awowed or Ewoked or something. But there's going to be a NWN2 enhanced edition! Party like it's 2006:

Oh, come on! It wasn't that bad. I actually liked DA2. The repetitious areas thing was very annoying, yes, but the game overall was okay--good, even. The story was interesting as were most of the companion characters.

https://buddycarter.house.gov/uploadedfiles/redwhitebluelandact.pdf "To authorize the President to enter into negotiations to acquire Greenland and to rename Greenland as ‘‘Red,White, and Blueland’’. Sherman didn't burn enough.

From the trade show last month. Bad lighting in the hall. As an architect I feel offended by how bad the lighting was. Even worse attendance. Complete waste of money.

No GOG? Just them dodgy American sites