Avowed Extended Gameplay Breakdown with Obsidian

- Games in this podcast range from E to M.

[XBOX SOUND]

- Hello, and welcome back to the official Xbox Podcast. My name is Tina Amini. I'm here with my fellow co-host, Jeff Rubenstein. But we also have two very, very special guests for this very special, relatively shorter podcast episode.

We have Carrie Patel here from Obsidian, as well as Gabe Paramo from Obsidian. Can you guys introduce yourselves just briefly, what you do at Obsidian and on Avowed?

- My name is Carrie Patel I've been at Obsidian for over 10 years now, and I'm the Game Director of Avowed.

- My name is Gabe Paramo. I'm the Gameplay Director, and I've been at Obsidian for about five years.

- Cool. Well, we'll delve into those roles a little bit.

- Yes.

- But first, we're actually recording this a little behind the scenes here, right before the Dev Direct goes live. Like, how does it feel like you're just about to share Avowed with the world?

- It's so exciting. I mean, I know the team has put so much hard work into this game, and we're going to get to see a little bit of that in some of the footage we're looking at today. And so it's really rewarding, knowing all the love and polish that's gone into this to finally get to show people where Avowed is headed.

TINA AMINI: It was very cool being down at Irvine, filming with you guys for Developer Direct. So I got to be behind the scenes, and it was very fun to see the office, to see everybody busy working, but also excited to present about the game.

And we're going to in just a minute, see actually some extended footage from the Developer Direct. So it's very exciting. But let's talk about Eora first, because we are in Eora. That's part of a world that you guys have built previously for the Pillars of Eternity universe.

So we know that that's very Obsidian-like, of course. But in Developer Direct, you both talked about Obsidian's pedigree and what makes Avowed a very Obsidian game. So what, aside from Eora and that context and building off of the Pillars universe, what would you both say makes it an Obsidian game?

- For me, it's really about our player-centric approach to roleplay. Our studio's motto is, Your Worlds, Your Way. And so the way we really approach choice and consequence and everything else, is just giving players opportunities to define who they are in this world, how they want to behave, like just what fantasy, what challenges they want to undertake.

And so 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, 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.

- Yeah, from the gameplay perspective, if you look at Grounded, Grounded is Your Worlds, Your Way. You get to build whatever world you want. In the context of Avowed, we've tried to lean into that with the gameplay mechanics and let the player through the loadout system--

--through what companions you can choose, through the abilities they can choose, their throwable that they can select, just what is the player want to do for combat and being able to support that in as many ways as possible.

- So in the Dev Direct, you kind of swooped through very quickly. There's a lot there to take in, so as Tina said, we have some extended footage here. And we're actually going to bust out our telestrators and we're going to pause and say, OK, well, what did we just see here.

So why don't we roll some of that footage, and let's get into it. All right, so tell us, where in the game is this area? How do you encounter it even?

CARRIE PATEL: So this is Shatter Scarp, which is the third region in the game. But what we're exploring here, is just one tiny little adventure space in one corner of the region.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And is this something you could even miss? Is this an optional area or something you're definitely going to hit?

CARRIE PATEL: It's absolutely missable. Discoverability and letting players be the authors of their own experiences, obviously very important to us. So, the content you're seeing here, the quest you're encountering, the little stories and nuggets of adventures you're finding, that's really for players who go out and seek it out.

TINA AMINI: So exploration gets rewarded, of course, and this is from my understanding, a side quest, too. So it's definitely something you can stumble on, decide to partake in or not. But I'm curious.

Who are these enemies? Because I feel like we just wandered into their territory, and it's just a family having a good old time and we're just killing them out of nowhere. So who are these enemies, and why do we hate them?

GABE PARAMO: Well, I don't think we hate them, actually.

[LAUGHTER]

They're fine. It's more that they just don't really-- there our Zorros. They're from Pillars of Eternity. They don't really speak a language that we can understand, but they're very territorial. So you've stepped on their space. They're trying to get back their territory in this area. And yeah, they're just going to take down whatever gets in their way.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Can I just call out, we've confirmed swimming, swimming as part of this game now?

GABE PARAMO: Yeah.

TINA AMINI: Confirmed. But speaking of enemies, as we're going through this area, I'm just curious what are the other types of enemies that you might encounter? And what is that difficulty progression look like? Because I know we're about midway through here, but perhaps later in the game, what does that look like?

GABE PARAMO: Well, we've shown off ogres and we've shown off big, scary looking bears.

TINA AMINI: Yep.

GABE PARAMO: But, yeah, we have our archetypes. So healers and brute melee characters, brute range, people that are trying to use magic, melee attacks. So yeah, just a bunch of variety of enemies that you can fight and have to use the gameplay mechanics in order to defeat, yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So there's a lot of stuff in the combat that actually I want to go back to, so if we can back that video up and go back to that first encounter.

- Speaking of gameplay mechanics.

- Exactly. There's-- I have some questions here. OK, so you're armed. I see you immediately, you pull out a sword and a shield. It looked like there was a parry move that the player uses here, right, well, it's coming up here in a second. And then you're also charging the shield. Tell us about this.

GABE PARAMO: Yeah. So what you're seeing here, is our dual wielding system. Basically, the player has two loadouts. And you can put something in your off hand and a weapon in your primary hand. And we allow the player to mix and match one-handed weapons.

And so right there what you're seeing, is your sword and board going into it and trying to close the gap in the distance and having the ability to parry with your shield and power attack with your sword.

- So there was a shielded enemy, and it felt like the sword and board stopped working. But then you also right there, you pull somebody in, a little, get over here. Talk to us about some of the different skills and abilities.

GABE PARAMO: Yeah, so that's one of our ranged units that basically is out in the distance. You're using it Into the Fray, which is the mechanic to allow you to pull the enemy closer to you.

Again, we have power attack. That's a blocker. That's essentially, your basic melee attacks are just not going to go through it. So you're going to have to use your power attack to be able to break their block.

TINA AMINI: Or you can swap to the wand if there's a shielded enemy. You're not getting through to them. So how often in the game do you find maybe yourselves through the experience.

I'm much more a magic player. I suspect I will be heading down more of the wanded path, but clearly there's diversity with enemies and diversity in how you need to approach them. So can you talk about how much you guys maybe in your play experiences have been swapping between them? What can we expect as players?

- We definitely try to have these mechanics that are common amongst most weapons. But at the same time, try to give the space across all the different weapon types. So if you're using the wand, there's a lot of homing going on there. There's a lot of, it's a magic damage it's going through their armor and stuff like that.

TINA AMINI: That's why I like it.

GABE PARAMO: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Versus again, using a melee weapon, where you're going to have to get closer to them, yeah.

- So a little bit personal style.

- Yes.

- A little bit like, what are the enemies you're actually dealing with in that moment, yeah.

- One of the great things about the system that Gabe's team has been building though, is it's very flexible. And it supports players mixing and matching between weapons, between ability trees. respecing is pretty easy for players who really want to try something different.

So when I'm playing, I kind of love to follow my sense of curiosity. And sometimes you'll find a new unique weapon with some pretty nice buffs on it. And maybe you'll decide to rock that for a while, even if it's not what you've been using previously.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So there is a skill tree in this game.

CARRIE PATEL: Yes.

GABE PARAMO: Yes, there is.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: OK, good, I love a good skill tree. So it's good to confirm that.

GABE PARAMO: One of the things we've done in terms of skills in the tree, is we've tried to, Pillars is classes. 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 kind of 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.

- Yeah.

- I love that.

- But there are definitely some pretty fun and wild combinations. Like you can do your traditional sword and board or play more of a magic wielder with a grimoire and a wand.

But you can also take a pistol and a shield and just charge around the battlefield and fight characters at medium distance. And you can use some of the different abilities that you're seeing in this play through to support that flexibility.

- And on that note, too, dueling wands. I've probably mentioned this last time we were in an interview together for Showcase Extended, that I was so excited about it. And when I was down at Irvine, the team was very generous to let me play a very early build. And I got to experience the dual wielding wands.

And it's so snappy and fun. It's exactly what I was thinking it would be. But I'm curious, because we're seeing a little bit of that now, where you have different spell casting effects on each. So I imagine there's probably some really incredible combos. Have you seen some special combos yourselves or maybe what testers have managed to pull off?

- Yeah, definitely. So with Into the Fray, you could use a fireball ability. That creates an AoE on the ground. And then pull the enemy into the fire.

- I love it.

- And they land, they get on fire.

- Devious.

- But in terms of the wands, what you're seeing there is sort of an enchanted wand, and there are potentially other elements that you can maybe find. But Pillars is really known for their unique weapons and the unique permutations of enchantments that you can kind of see on them, so yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So in this particular area, I did also get to play through this part. And first I realized, you need to take out the healer first, otherwise it's like going down an up escalator. You're not making a lot of progress.

TINA AMINI: That's a good way to put it.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: But this is where I found that you really start to put these things together. So you froze that larger enemy. So talk about some of these elements and how you can even use them outside of combat.

GABE PARAMO: Yeah, so, yeah, we have an elemental system where you can guys on fire. You can freeze them. You can shock them. We have objects in the world that the player can interact with. They're not just on weapons, they're not just on wands.

You might find something with a sword that has it. Certain abilities might cause elemental damage. Also, your companions themselves could have potentially some damage there.

- There was something when I had gotten a play where I wandered somewhere else and ran into an area that was gated off, and I was able actually to use that freeze to help to progress in the exploration.

- Yes, yeah. And so we have objects like that. We also have maybe being able to burn brambles. Yeah.

- Yeah, you can destroy barriers to find new areas to explore. You can freeze paths in the water to maybe reach ledges that you can't normally.

- Yeah.

- Lots of fun options there.

TINA AMINI: And a lot of what we saw, like we saw a Tanglefoot ability, for instance, which was really cool, because when you're freezing an enemy, you're totally freezing them. But when you're trapping them with the Tanglefoot ability, ranged attackers can still get you.

So there's a lot of nuance there that as a player, you have to consider. But also a lot that was built off of the Pillars of Eternity universe. Like, Tanglefoot is directly associated from those games. So I'm curious, how did you guys hone in on these abilities? What are the combos you were thinking about? Anything that you brought over and maybe changed or made new, too.

- Yeah, so for Tanglefoot, because in an action, first-person game, it's all about movement and trying to crowd control. For Tanglefoot, it's about also creating space. So we already had freezing. You're crowd controlling that way.

But with Tanglefoot, it's a little bit unique, where they're rooted, and so they don't move, but they can still do attacks. So it's about trying to find that balance where you're not overpowering the enemy. And there's again, choice and consequence for these mechanics, so that the player just doesn't like just stomp everybody all the time.

- Well, let's go back a little bit, because we got an opportunity to talk about that very Obsidian style. Depth and breadth of gameplay. I have watched the Developer Direct so many times, I've memorized all of your guys' lines. So that is directly lifted from there.

But there's another very Obsidian element to Avowed, which is branching dialogue and how you make choices within the story, too. And, Carrie, you alluded to some consequences potentially if you make one decision or another.

But it's again, very much like playing your own way. So can you talk about just how impactful those choices that you make are and that branching dialogue and how that can result in different paths for the player?

CARRIE PATEL: Absolutely. So again, for us, creating these choices, like the big ones that affect the outcome of a quest or the well-being of certain characters or communities, are just as important as the smaller choices that you make in navigating a dialogue and kind of in subtle ways, influencing your relationship with another character.

But all of it is really centered around letting the player be the main character in this setting. And so what we're seeing here, is the players, they've been exploring this grotto. They're finding the bodies of these dead soldiers and kind of picking up pieces of a story along the way.

And so here, they finally found a survivor. And talking through them about what happened and getting a little bit more information. So there is a moment that's going to come up after this, where the player can confront the guy who ran away and make it pretty impactful choice with him about how they decide to navigate that conversation.

And they can either-- it's very obvious that this guy was in over his head. And then they can either sympathize with him and console him a little bit, or challenge him for his cowardice and for the way he abandoned his unit. And the way the player navigates that conversation definitely has big consequences for how that encounter plays out.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So you mentioned your player being the main character, but they're not the solo character. We see in this conversation, Giatta and Kai, I want to say. Can you tell us about the relationship with companions, and how they interact, both in the story and in gameplay with the story?

CARRIE PATEL: Sure. So your companions are your traveling partners in your journey through the Living Lands. They all have deep ties to different regions of the Living Lands, and they all have their own personal reasons for wanting to ally with the player and help them resolve the big conflicts that you're encountering over the course of the game.

So they're your allies, in some ways your advisors, your local guides, and they provide a lot of additional commentary and context that reveals something both about their character, but also about the corner of the world that you're exploring.

And Kai, in particular, has a pretty deep history with Shatter Scarp, that comes out a little bit over the course of this quest, as he starts to see how the region and the people have changed in his absence, and maybe where he let them down. But obviously, they're also your allies in battle, and that's something that Gabe can speak to.

- Yeah. So for the companions, we wanted to make sure that they had their role in the combat systems. And so again, like I talked about, Kai can help you with the burning brambles, and Giatta is healing.

And so Kai is kind of your tank. He has an ability that's called taunt. Or it's not called taunt, but it's a taunt. A taunt allows you to basically make the enemy take aggression from them and start to focus on Kai. And then Giatta can have the ability to heal your party. So, yeah, just they have impact in combat, as well.

- Should we assume there will be other companions throughout the game as well?

- Yes. You'll meet a couple more. Kai and Giatta are just two of them.

- OK. I just know Obsidian, known for some pretty great companions.

- Yes, exactly. I was going to say the same thing. Yeah, exactly, it's certainly an expectation. But you mentioned Shatter Scarp. I'm already like really sad for Kai and I already want to console him, because I feel like there's some history to uncover there.

But what is Shatter Scarp? That's obviously where we are in this mission in this extended footage that we've been seeing from Developer Direct. What is the context of Shatter Scarp that we should know?

CARRIE PATEL: Yeah. So as you can see, it's a very arid environment. A lot of the locals who have settled here are originally from Rauti, which returning Pillars players will recognize as this very fun, but somewhat militaristic culture, which Kai originally comes from as well.

So you've got this very hardy little settlement on the cliffs overlooking the coast called Third Born. But what the player encounters here, is a ramp-up in tensions between their people, the Aedyr Empire, and the locals. Again, here primarily settled around tie-ins. As everybody trying to negotiate some conflicts that are taking place and starting to grow in the Living Lands,

You're also seeing the stronger effects of something called the Dream Scourge, which is this spiritual plague that you've been sent here to investigate. And just to add into that mix, we've also got an arch mage, who is taking up one corner of the map and created her own little frozen labyrinth there.

So there are a lot of different characters, a lot of different tensions to navigate and that the player is going to get to encounter here.

- Carrie, stop, you're saying too much.

[LAUGHTER]

- So we're noticing just with the player there mantling their way through, it's a very vertical area, and there was actually one part of the footage where they looked down and there's enemies there. And they choose not to engage.

So if you could just talk about the size of this area and just like how that affords the ability to choose even just what to engage with and what not to.

- Your literal path.

- Yes.

- Yeah, so it's like, it's open zone. So comparable to outer worlds areas on the larger side. And multiple paths essentially, to be able to tackle combat situations.

TINA AMINI: Or avoid them.

- Or avoid them, yeah, exactly.

- Yeah, but yeah, I mean, this area is entirely discoverable, which means it's also entirely missable. I really want to give a shout out to Tyler McCombs, who's the area designer who set up the little grotto we're exploring.

As you mentioned, there's a wonderful sense of verticality. Just a lot of wonderful nooks and crannies to explore. And that's something that we really wanted to take advantage of, and also set up, as Gabe mentioned, really fun combat encounters around, that let you either just jump in, charge right in, or take a more tactical and measured approach.

And you see that even in this first combat that you encounter when you dive through that skull's mouth and you come up out of the water. Our playtester here takes the rightmost path, which is the sneaky one. But you can also just Leroy Jenkins your way up the middle and just jump right into the fray.

- I love that. Well, we got so much additional detail in this podcast. Really appreciate you both joining us. But before we wrap up, we have just a couple more questions, too.

Developer Direct is like an interesting show for us, because we hand over complete reins to you, the developers, wanting to give you all an opportunity to talk about the craft, the very Obsidian craft, in your guys' case, that goes into the game and how the team thinks about things when you're putting things together.

So I'm just curious to hear a little bit more about that kind of team culture. And also, both of your roles. Like, how do they integrate? What does a creative director do? What is a gameplay director do? And what's your day to day working together like to bring this game together to life?

- Want to start?

- Sure. So, yeah, as the game director on the project, I'm responsible for setting out the vision and helping to guide the team in all of our different efforts towards that, and make sure that we're really building a cohesive and exciting player experience.

And both the joy and the challenge of that is RPGs are so feature-rich and so content-rich. We have so many different systems supporting our combat, our exploration. And then there's the way we build quests, the way we seed them through the world, the way we try to nudge players towards them without being too heavy-handed about it.

And so I'm always trying to-- we're always trying to balance how these elements work together to, again, create an experience that's cohesive and consistent, but also allow room for surprises and nuance and fun, and not get so, so precious about the dogma of what we're building that we don't allow for those expressions of creativity and those things that we as developers love to create, and we know players are going to love to find.

GABE PARAMO: Yeah, as my role as gameplay director, I'm trying to direct a team that's kind of more revolved around a conversations, exploration, and combat. That's kind of the big overseen parts of the game.

And just working with Carrie to just make sure that we're following our Pillars--

- If you will.

- Yeah, exactly.

- No pun intended.

- Yeah, exactly. Following our Pillars and having little back and forth fights right about whether the blockers should be holding a shield or the blocker should be holding a spear.

- You were absolutely right, by the way.

- Yeah, so, so, yeah. But yeah, just making sure that we're working together to be able to get the gameplay features that are fun. Make sure it fits in the lore, make sure it fits part of the world.

Make sure we're not doing anything that's maybe doesn't fit within the Obsidian brand, like things that are-- mechanics that are too binary and a little bit more, less black and white, and a little bit more like how our RPG players would like them to be. So, yeah.

- One of the great things about our studio culture, is so many of us are RPG fans. And I feel like one of the real strengths of being a mid-sized developer is, we are just large enough to be ambitious with the gameplay and the content we build. But also small enough that we can still be nimble. And again, still allow people to take big swings.

And the Leviathan Hollow that we see in this play-through is a really great example of that. Originally, it was scoped to be much smaller. And again, we found that the area designer, Tyler, who was working on that, had a schedule, things were going great--

--and so his producer and his lead kind of looked at the schedule and said, yeah, if you want, you've got time to make something more out of this. And we've got an excellent showpiece here that again, is a wonderful combination of strong planning and coordination on the production side, to be sure, but also just some really great initiative from the team.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So something I've been wondering since Avowed was first revealed a few years back with that teaser, and that is, what can we glean from the title? When I think of like avowed, you can vow revenge, you could be avowed enemies.

It feels very personal. I'm just curious, like what we can take away from the title as we-- I want more right now. But this is all we're going to get today. But just what we be thinking about here?

- So, I won't say too much this time, Gabe, but yeah, as the player character, you're the envoy. So you're a representative of the Aedyr Empire You are the personal representative of the emperor himself. And you're sent here on this mission to investigate the spiritual plague.

So on the one hand, you're avowed to the emperor and the empire that you serve, but while you're in the Living Lands, you might discover another unique connection to something else that's very close to you. So this game is very much about choosing your loyalties and choosing what matters most to you. And that's all I'll say about this.

- All right. Well, I know what matters most to me, is getting to play this game. And we'll talk more about that. But we will hear a little bit more, because coming up, I want to say this Sunday, Carrie, you're going to be on Drop Frames with JP and Cohh and Ezekiel. So make sure you tune into that. Anything else before we let you go, though, that you want to talk about?

- I just can't wait for players to jump into the Living Lands for themselves and explore all that it has to offer. Again, one of the big delights of being a developer on a game like this, is creating so much for players to find. And knowing that not everybody's going to seek it out and not everybody's going to find it, but knowing that the players who do, are really going to enjoy the secrets they discover.

- I know that we've talked about a lot of stuff, but it's still just--

- Just a slice.

- It's just a slice.

- Yeah.

- I want to.

- I know. Yes, absolutely. And we did get an opportunity to dive in a little bit deeper. So thank you both again so much for coming out and being able to talk to us. But, yes, it is such a small slice of it, so I'm excited to see more.

And we did announce in Developer Direct that the game is coming out fall 2024, so it won't be too long before we'll all be able to do so. And otherwise, we will see you for a regularly scheduled episode of the podcast with a regular length of a podcast later this week. So you get two in one week. So please enjoy that, and thank you again, Carrie and Gabe.

- Thank you for having us.

[XBOX SOUND]