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This week on Fully Ramblomatic, Yahtzee reviewed Avowed.
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This week on Fully Ramblomatic, Yahtzee reviewed Avowed.
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GamingTranscript
00:00Avowed, as well as being the sound people make if you punch them while they're telling
00:18you their favourite James Cameron franchise, is, oh, can it be true, games industry?
00:22An actual original IP with some decent financial backing?
00:25That's right, Yahtzee, but only if IP now stands for Integrated with Pillars of Eternity.
00:29Because Avowed is by Obsidian Entertainment and is set in the same universe as Pillars
00:32of Eternity, which is their generic fantasy we-want-to-make-Baldur's-Gate-but-don't-have-the-rights-to-Baldur's-Gate-anymore franchise.
00:37And I don't have much experience with it because isometric RPGs don't usually click for me,
00:41ironically.
00:42I put that down to my morbid phobia of floor textures.
00:44Avowed, thankfully, is a first person action RPG, so if it ever gets too much I can calm
00:47myself down with a nice ceiling.
00:49That's first person action western RPG as opposed to JRPG, if you need a refresher on
00:53the difference.
00:54JRPGs are about teenagers using the power of friendship to kill God, WRPGs are about
00:57grownups with unresolved traumatic backstories using the power of difficult moral choices
01:01to kill God.
01:02Or become God.
01:03Or talk God into shooting themselves in the head.
01:05So we start Avowed and predictably enough we open with a pretty standard character creator,
01:08except after you've chosen your skin tone, build and hairdo the game goes, right, now
01:12pick what hideous nightmarish mutation you want growing out of your fucking face.
01:15Er, could I just not have one of those, Avowed?
01:18I guess, but every NPC is going to be talking at you like you've got one and visibly holding
01:22back dry heaves, so you might as well pick something.
01:24Alright, I'll just go with a really unflattering moustache.
01:26We have to pick a horrible face disaster because we are a god-like, you see, a person
01:30with a direct line to a god that gives us special powers, and the ruler of the fantasy
01:33British Empire has called upon us to go to a distant untamed land where a mysterious
01:37madness-inducing disease is fucking up efforts to establish a colony and basically go British
01:41Empire all over the place, and we're the one best qualified for this task because the disease
01:44gives its victims fucked up faces and the Emperor figured we'd get along.
01:48Then our ship gets wrecked on the way to the island and we wake up on a beach, which is
01:51the standard RPG practice, isn't it, that's just the next step after choosing stat perks
01:55and penis length.
01:56It certainly is the word.
01:57The open world RPG that follows is as bog standard as it gets, you go through a series
02:01of enclosed maps with the obvious terrain themes, grasslands, forest, desert, lava world,
02:05go to the one town or part of each map that isn't infested with spiders, bears and skeletons
02:08and go around it hoovering up sidequests that all revolve around clearing other parts of
02:12the map of spiders, bears and skeletons.
02:14I hear some of my peers have been down on Avowed, which I assume is because given its
02:17heritage they were expecting something more sophisticated, something systems driven along
02:21Baldur's Gate or Kingdom Come Deliverance lines.
02:23That's not what Avowed is.
02:24You should expect a bit of an action RPG rather than a bit of RPG action.
02:28Avowed doesn't do systems for shit.
02:30There's no crime or reputation mechanic, you can barge straight into an NPC's house, shouldering
02:33past them in the doorway, fill your pockets with the entire contents of their cutlery
02:36drawer and no one will bat a fucking eye.
02:38You can't fight friendlies, no day-night cycles, no NPC schedules, ranged weapons all have
02:42infinite ammo, and on the whole the game makes no bones about the fact that the main thing
02:45you will be doing is combat.
02:46Ooh, can I roll a stealth character with high charisma for talking around problems?
02:50No you fucking can't.
02:51There is a selection of long heavy things, choose one, hold it by the stubby end and
02:55very insistently introduce the other end to everything you see like it's an unmarried
02:58daughter in her thirties.
02:59There is a stealth attack but it's not a guaranteed kill and enemies are always in groups so you'll
03:03be lucky to take down more than one of the dozy fuckers before the entire monster United
03:06Nations show up and motion to strongly condemn.
03:08All in all, as RPGs go it's a very stripped down one.
03:11There's a grand total of four party members, none of whom are up for snogging, and aren't
03:14interesting enough characters to get me in the mood for it anyway, they all just sort
03:16of invite themselves into the party at regular intervals in the plot.
03:19Which is your favourite, the facetious one?
03:21The very facetious one?
03:22The not-facetious one?
03:23Or the very not-facetious one?
03:25The story generally isn't much to write home about unless your parents are particularly
03:28interested in generic fantasy plots because their doctor told them to keep their heart
03:31rates down.
03:32One of the main villains looks like Skeletor, for fuck's sake, so if you take the inevitable
03:34option to side with them then I don't know what to tell you, frankly.
03:37Except that you probably didn't put enough points into your paying attentions stat.
03:40I do like the range of dialogue options the protagonist is given.
03:43You can be humble, you can throw your weight around as the Emperor's envoy, you can be
03:46a surly asshole who tells everyone to piss off, there's also a ton of unique dialogue
03:49for what background you picked, which is nice, but none of it changes anything, really.
03:53There's not much in the way of speech checks, unless you count making sure not to click
03:55on the option that says, actually I've decided you smell weird, open brackets, attack, close
03:59brackets.
04:00So there's no escaping having to do a lot of the aforementioned sticking-the-knobbly-end-of-things-into-unending-supplies-of-monsters,
04:05but you know what?
04:06Fucking good.
04:07Expectations for open world RPGs have been set too high these days.
04:09I don't fucking care if a quest giver moves from their designated standing spot to go
04:13brush their teeth twice a day, realistic or immersive though that might be.
04:16I care that I can fucking find them when I'm ready to hand in the seventeen pairs of
04:19soiled kobold sanitary pads they asked for.
04:22Do-anything-actions-have-consequences-real-living-world bullshit is overrated, there is virtue in keeping
04:27focused on one thing, and Avowed isn't trying to be anything but a combat game.
04:30Yes, following quest markers in ascending order of projected difficulty to fight repetitive
04:33clusters of gormless tits like a massively over-involved join-the-dots puzzle can feel
04:37a bit World of Warcraft-y at times, but it's a pretty world to explore with lots of fun
04:41discoveries to be made.
04:42And most importantly, whether you're blatting a lizardman with a mace hard enough to make
04:45him turn somersaults or using a bolt action rifle to blow the jaw off a skeleton who was
04:49told this was going to be a melee fight, lol, the combat is fun.
04:52And that is the factor that made me keep playing Avowed and keep looking forward to each session.
04:56I didn't mind the obligation to keep crafting weapon upgrades because it was fun to feel
04:59the difference in power when a weapon got up to exceptional rather than shithouse quality.
05:03I didn't mind that your party members are useless in fights because the lack of classes
05:06or obligation to specialise means you can pretty much one man bandit with a mace in
05:10one hand, pistol in the other, and magic wand sellotaped to your inner thigh.
05:13Towards the end of the game, a quest rewarded me with a magic mace that restored my health
05:16whenever I swung it, and not by a crumb like a third of the health bar at a time.
05:20I can't imagine this will escape a nerf in future updates, unless the intention was to
05:24make all the endgame combat about as challenging as picking the pubes out of my teeth, but
05:28I was still having fun.
05:29In an era where the souls-like genre continues to rub up against the tropic of fuckabout,
05:32it's refreshing for a game to let me be overpowered and tear up its insides like a medieval childbirth
05:37assistance device.
05:38I mean, we are supposed to be the avatar of God, why not let us go full-on Jesus versus
05:41the moneylenders?
05:42Well, there's other stuff I could complain about in Avowed.
05:44I hate that I could only upgrade my stuff while at camp, so if I was just shy of resources
05:48I have to break camp, gather what I need, then immediately camp again, risking my party
05:51members worrying I've got narcolepsy.
05:53But at the end of the day you can't argue with a strong primary gameplay loop.
05:56Well, you can.
05:57You could say, fuck you, strong primary gameplay loop, stop reminding me of the trauma I suffered
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