Adridactelo

Two new hires: Chad Elliott comes back as Art Outsource Manager - Animation. Previusly worked as Technical Animator at Turtle Rock. Christopher Daugherty as Associate Technical Artist. Worked on Halo Infinite as Technical Environment Artist. Seems like Obsidian has spent the last few months strengthening their animation team: Jason Diaz - Animation Director. Joseph L. Rubino - Cinematic Director. Chad Elliott - Art Outsource Manager - Animation. Derek Zivolich - Character Animator. Sam Khong - Animation Programmer.

Nothing official, but we can assume: Game Director - Chris Parker. Production Director - Dan Maas. Narrative Director - Lucien Soulban. If you want a more extensive list you should read this post:

Two new hires: Sam Khong - Animation Programmer. David Rose - Senior Combat Designer. He previously worked 5 years at Bungie so I don't know if he will join the Avowed team or TOW 2 one.

Some more: Kevin M. Lee - Senior System Designer (I'm not completely sure on this one) Nick Carver - Senior Technical Designer. Kyle Koenig - System Designer. Bobby Hernandez - Lead Concept Artist. Schwinn Masavisut - Concept Artist. MaKayla Hensley - Junior VFX Artist.

First, because Obsidian has been pretty open about their desire of making a Skyrim-like game on POE's universe: Obsidian CEO: “I’d love to turn Eternity into more like a Skyrim product” Then Chris Avellone said on Codex that after the Microsoft purchase Chris Parker could finally make his "shallow take" on Skyrim: Finally, several job offers suggested that Obsidian's new game would be an open-world, with day-night cycles and an emphasis on first person melee combat.

Doing different races in first person is extremely tricky. It's not just the height difference, they must adapt all the character animations (orlan's attacks cannot be the same as aumaua's), enemies animation, character models and equipment (aumaua have semi-webbed hands, so they should make different gauntlet models for them) the different interactions with the game-world... That's a lot of work and bugs. Skyrim's combat was questionable even on 2012. There are games that have recreated the FP melee combat quite well (Mordhau, Kingdom Come: Deliverance or Vermintide). Techland's Hellraid (the game, not the DLC) looked very promising in that regard IMO:

I mean, in animation the third person can be used for creatures, enemies and NPCs. The Combat Designer job description is much more relevant:

Bumping the thread because Megan Starks confirmed she's still working on TOW (surely writing the second DLC).

The Oddworld saga? They started with two platforms (Abe's Oddysee and Abe's Exoddus) and then did an FPS (Stranger's Wrath), although they all keep the Oddworld name in the title. I guess Rayman and Rabbids could count as well?

Repost from the other thread: Suddenly this would make so much sense (especially the rivers part):

I was looking at the trailer again and I noticed that for a few frames the moons of Eora can be seen. In Pillars of Eternity there is a book called The Moons of Eora that says:

Yes, I can definitely see this. Would explain why the game didn't have any narrative designer until five months ago. Do we know how many people could be working on Avowed right now?

QA usually participate when the game enters active production. According to Boyarsky, TOW was always around 70 developers, so in my assumption I've put ~ 80 to accommodate those workers. The same applies to The Forgotten Sanctum. I hadn't taken into account the cancelled projects tbh, but I suppose they wouldn't be made up of very large teams (probably about 5-10 each). I think it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that the Avowed team could be around 35-45 developers by then. This is interesting, as of June 2019 Obsidian had 200 employees of whom 70-80 were working at TOW. Grounded was in development (~ 15) and Josh Sawyer was starting his project (~ 5). Removing admin staff and such (~ 20) there were ~ 80 people working on other projects.

We could approximate by calculating the number of employees Obsidian had in December 2018 and how many of them were working on the known projects. At that time Obsidian was working on TOW (~ 80), finishing The Forgotten Sanctum (~ 30) and starting Grounded (~ 10). If Obsidian had around 190 employees then it leaves 70 developers working on something else.

I don't think Avowed has been in development for as long as Sponger says, but we know that Obsidian has been fantasizing about making "Skyrim in Eora" since at least 2016. Surely they've been collecting a ton of ideas for years and when Microsoft came out they saw an opportunity to make it real. As I said in the other thread I think the project started pre-production in mid/late-2018 since that's time when Mark DeGeorge moved from TOW to work on "a secret project". Well, and I still believe this isn't a coincidence.

I will take Sponger's information with a grain of salt. IIRC he works/knows someone who works for company close to InXile or something like that. When Resetera's moderators tried to verify his information said that while his source seemed reliable they couldn't check it out.

So Klobrille believes that this person is legit. Klobrille is a well known Xbox insider btw.

I think they said it takes places right after finishing the Monarch's critical path.

Gabriel Paramo - Senior Gameplay Programmer. Worked on Killer Instinct and Strider. Hoya Lee - Senior Lighting Artist. Previously worked on Destiny 2 and Modern Warfare. Jeff Chung - Senior Software Engineer. Zoe Nicole-Aprodite Smith - Junior Character Artist. From Zoe's artstation:

You could be right. I think he worked on the dialogue camera system in Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Wonder if Avowed will switch to a more dynamic system (visually speaking) than the seen in TOW. Maybe something closer to what we've seen in Cyberpunk 2077 where dialogues are like first-person cinematics.

Digital Foundry said in their last video that there's aliasing in the second part of the trailer, so it's likely that's a target-render made with Unreal Engine.

Oh, I thought I was working on Peril of Gorgon. That's great. Robert Nesler - Art Director. Dimitri Berman - Lead Character Artist. Can Etiskol - Senior Character Artist. Jason Diaz - Animation Director (?). Derek Zivolich - Character Animator. Eric Feinberg - Character Animator. Amor Santos - Senior Animator. Ones that I find interesting: Paul Burg - Senior Programmer. It has been in Obsidian for over a year and does not appear on TOW's credits. He developed the system for world interactions and population management in RDR2. Joseph L. Rubino - He was hired a few weeks ago as a Cinematic Director. It's interesting because he posted that he was responsible for the Forza Motorsport Trailer but didn't mention if he was working on Avowed. Martin Smith - Senior System Designer. He was Senior Designer on SWTOR for more than 6 years.

Thats right. Patel could join the project after finishing Peril on Gorgon as I think Brandon Adler may be directing the second expansion. I would love to see her working on this. Megan Stark was moved to another project right after finishing TOW and I think she is not involved on Peril on Gorgon so she may be writing for Avowed (?).

I think you are right. I was relying on the comments from a Gamespot video about TOW saying that Programming Director (Mark DeGeorge) had been moved to a new project in mid-2018. Was hoping that the big chunk of Obsidian would be working on this project already but yeah, I am with you that Avowed looks like a 2022 game. Do we know who is the Lead Desginer? The ones I know: Chris Parker - Game Director Jorge Salgado - Lead Area Designer (?) Lucien Soulban - Lead Narrative Designer Maxwell Matzenbacher - Senior Combat Designer.

Yes, but Avowed has been in development since mid-2018. I don't think they've been two years without someone planning the game's main story or some basic themes. But you may be right. The game seems far off.