Really excited to see how this turns out. I think I would have loved just a standard skyrim type rpg from obsidian, but this direction shift makes it even more appealing.
Yeah, I’m interested in a more linear experience honestly, I’m getting tired of open world games, I would love a refined version of Outer Worlds that’s set in a fantasy world. Having a linear experience with branching paths was a really enjoyable experience for me. I think it could give Obsidian the chance to craft way better worlds while telling epic stories as they are a fairly small dev team.
Agreed, Outer Worlds got a lot of grief for its length but I kind of liked the “30 hours and done” experience I had with it. It was pretty polished and enjoyable. It probably has something to do with the fact that I can’t just game for 8-12 hours like I used to when I was younger and didn’t have stuff to do, but I suspect I’m not the only person in that boat that grew up on F3, FNV, Oblivion & Skyrim.
Yeah, also with Avowed they have the chance to keep that 30ish hour experience while enhancing replayability compared to outer worlds. I would love to be able to start a character and know I can probably finish the playthrough in a week. My Skyrim characters can go on for months and halfway through I am wishing I could have a new character, but I also experience the sunken cost fallacy making me want to continue the save to the end.
I felt low-key burned by The Outer Worlds so I’m going to be more reserved about this one.
I also felt that way. It felt like the soul of an interesting Fallout style game shoved into the shell of something else. Maybe it was just the space setting, but I found none of the characters to be enjoyable and the parody of late stages capitalism that Spacer’s Choice was just fell flat.
Yeah, I feel that the issue is that they were trying to pull off the next New Vegas but with none of Bethesda’s backing. Furthermore, any actually good anti-capitalist critique was gonna get them in trouble with their Microsoft overlords. Not saying that was the issue but, why even go down that route, when if you actually did write something good, it was only gonna upset upstairs?
Honestly I do wish more game developers would try to aim anywhere near where Skyrim is though. It was hugely successful but neither a sequel, spiritual successor, or major competitor has been released in the interim. It’s like a winning formula that hardly anyone else has tried to crack.
I guess AAA companies are too afraid to even attempt replicating the Skyrim formula in depth. Hence why the Skyrim hype in the 2010’s led to (or at least was one of the reasons of) the boom of open world games. They thought stuffing a open world, random fetch quests and anything resembling an RPG level up and skill system was enough to create something like an Elder Scrolls game. Where Skyrim shines is in the little things, the details, the fact that you can move or pick a fork in a house or put a bucket on someone head and be able to steal anything in front of them, the lore and npcs, the OST. But something of this size takes time (I mean the development time for elder scrolls games is even a meme at this point), and unless you are confident in what you can create with this style, spending 5 years or more on one game that isn’t guarranted to be successful and profitable is a no-go for any decision maker in a AAA company, which are pretty much the only one that could finance a game like Skyrim.
Might be a thing where nobody can do Skyrim better than skyrim, y’know? It’s been released so many times and with so many damn mods that I’d imagine it’s close to impossible to close in on that market share. Why play a skyrim-lite when I can just play Skyrim?
Still very excited for this release. But I was dissapointed to see the art direction changed to a more cartoony style - the original teaser was more realistic and dark. It kinda just looks like fantasy Outer Worlds now.
I have no complaints about this. MS have the “BIG” RPG covered with Starfield. Let Obsidian, InExile and Playground play to their own strengths with theirs.
