Comment on Is anyone else playing Avowed? What are your thoughts so far?
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 6 days agoTo each their own, but Bethesda’s games are all too often criticized for having breadth but not depth, and as time has gone on, I’ve agreed with that more and more. Avowed is scoped smaller than an Elder Scrolls, by a lot, but its depth appears to be in its combat.
k1ck455kc@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
I guess it depends on what kind of depth youre looking for. Depth of lore, attributes and upgrades? Skyrim has plenty. Depth of gameplay? Things get a little more murky.
I will agree that Elder Scrolls games have never had combat be their strongest feature and that is definitely what Obsidian focused on with Avowed to make it stand out.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I think attributes and upgrades tie back into gameplay, but we also all ended up playing stealth archers, and even if you never put stats into something that made things like lockpicking easier, it kind of didn’t matter, because the minigame wasn’t difficult and lockpicks are cheap. I think Bethesda’s games at least up to Skyrim have been great evolutions of the medium, but it also feels like, for all the work they put into their systems, they never got anywhere close to what Larian has built since Skyrim’s release.
k1ck455kc@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
I mean, yeah, the systems in skyrim werent deep, but at least they were there and somewhat entertaining. You just hold a button to “lockpick” in Avowed. Personally I never used bows in skyrim, always enchanted weapons and destruction.
Larian Should have built more intricate rpg systems since then and they have, Skyrim is a decade and a half old. The caveat is that they have done so by abandoning active combat gameplay. Theyre combat systems are fun, they just arent engaging like Avowed or even Skyrim. Again to each their own, im sure many rpg players dont care one bit about active/realistic combat simulation.
Again with Avowed, it is a brand new game and compared to its only direct competitor(14yo skyrim) it feels lacking in every way except when you hit something with a weapon.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I think what I’m getting at is that, from my perspective, the only thing that’s really in Skyrim’s favor compared to Avowed is how big it is, because if I wanted satisfying RPG systems or such, I’d find them elsewhere. I enjoy both real time and turn based games, and nothing about Larian’s RPG systems require them to be turn based, so it would be nice to see more of those kinds of systems in games like Bethesda’s going forward, but given how Starfield turned out, I doubt we will. Bethesda gives all of their NPCs schedules, there’s physics at play, and NPCs will care if you steal their stuff, but those systems never seem to manifest in anything more interesting than putting a bucket on someone’s head so they can’t see you thieving, so I’m not really missing anything in Avowed when those systems are absent.