MrBrown

Story seemed worse in Avowed's 3rd area. The big NPCs didn't make much sense. I guess I'll see where it goes from this.

Wow, OP really has a hard-on for Mr. Sawyer. I agree with a lot of what you wrote, though.

I recently watched a video by Tim Cain about his games, and he had this chart (millions of units, not $): So, if just going 1st person jump up sales by that much for Avowed compared to PoE as it did for Outer Worlds, quite unlikely they'll do more isometric. (Outer Worlds had a 10x budget too though, he has more charts in the video).

I don't think you'll be disappointed on the first part, on the long term at least. And yeah, that lady at the palisade was a massive info dump. No one else is that obvious. Kai is also a big info dumper, but at least it's kinda reasonable he chats about stuff. But he does join you really easily, I think they could have made you work for that a bit more.

Most of the breakables that have something in them show a visual effect through them, so it's easy to spot. You can ignore the rest, it's just some money. It kinda works, because the PC is completely new to the area, and most people don't like the Aedyrs. I felt the plot started working better about halfway through the 1st map, when you started having actual choices about stuff.

If the community doesn't buy the product, they don't deserve it. Developers need to eat too.

Playing Avowed makes me want to replay the PoE games. Not that Avowed is bad, I just get nostalgic for them.

I think the color palette in Avowed is fine. There's lots of colors, but they're a bit drab, so it's not the psychedelic environment of Outer Worlds.

17 hours into Avowed. finished the first gameplay area. Felt like writing something. (Not sure how many areas total, they mention 4 settlements, so maybe 4+?) Generally, I feel it's good, but not great. That might still change, of course. + Story. I kinda feel like I know where the story is going, but we'll see. It certainly advanced a great deal in the first area. So far seems to fit in the universe well enough. + There's lots of decisions you can make about stuff. Quests resolutions, story etc. No idea how much meat there actually is behind those decisions yet, since I only played once. There seem to be two main dimensions you make decisions around, whether you want strict or more lax rule in the Living Lands, and about the fantasy stuff going on. Maybe it'll get more complicated in the end, dunno. + Exploration: Lots of parkour, but because the town layouts are realistic, it's fun enough. By default the game highlights treasure with both visual and audio clues, and the game is basically designed around it, ie. there's stuff you're very unlikely to find if you don't have the cues on. But due to the itemization (below), it doesn't matter much if you miss treasure. + Combat is fun. Very explosive, probably even if you weren't throwing around fireballs. I'm playing a pure wizard, wands and spellbooks and so on. I use the book of elements and book of greater elements, so it's fireballs and chain lightning etc. Bit of a glass cannon, I win most combats by killing stuff before they get in my face. I lose when there's too many coming for different directions. Thankfully the first companion you find has taunt abilities, so that helps a lot. Enemy AI often prioritizes the PC, and ranged enemies don't seem to ever miss, so that's hard for my wizard. Aiming AoE spells is hard unless you have the high ground. - Itemization. Because you're only equipping a single character and there's a upgrade/crafting system, 95% of what you find is materials to upgrade your items, so it isn't very interesting. - The starting area has only 2 companions, so it's either them or none at all. At least I didn't find either annoying. - Encounter design isn't very varied. First area has basically 4-5 different enemy groups, so it's always a mix of them, even if there doesn't seem to be any reason why Xaurips, spiders and bears are hanging together. It gets repetitive. Hopefully there's different enemies in future areas.

I had it take about an hour in other games, something like 15min for Avowed. I guess it just happens.

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.

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.

I think some people who are more about ownership of their character might be scared by having mushrooms on your face.

Is that a good thing? Didn't they do the NWN:EE, which I think went over well.