“Good enough for game pass”
Laura brings up some excellent points
- Obsidian shipped on time, after being acquired
- Obsidian already has outer worlds 2 in the works
- Obsidian gets the OW team back together
Avowed may not be a win on its own, but in the context of a MS studio it’s a win, and they cleared their plate to focus on OW2.
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I hope MSFT sees it like Laura does. However it does look like they’ve been kind and patient with Obsidian so far (pentiment, grounded, Avowed pivots from dark live service to rainbow RPG, and sequel to Outer Worlds, an ok release). They’re definitely happy with regularly shipped games of diverse genres and audiences for GamePass. In a way, a perfect studio for a subscription service.
Their other studios on the other hand, oofh.
- Rare: Ever wild (sea of thieves helps tho)
- Undead: State of Decay 3 (almost half a decade since announcement)
- Initiative: Perfect Dark (vertical slice looked good, but maybe that’s all they’ve made so far)
- Turn10: Forza Motorsport (reboot didn’t do anything it seems)
- 343/Halo studios: …
I really haven’t understood the reactions I’ve seen to the game. To me it’s a really tight, interwoven, streamlined action-RPG that checks so many boxes for me that other games haven’t tried to touch for years. 9/10 from me personally. It’s been wild seeing the incredibly lukewarm reaction everywhere else.
I’m with you, I’m having a blast, but I think the reactions are because of the idea that it would be a Skyrim type game and… It’s not really even trying to be that. Like you said, it’s an ARPG, the roleplaying is basically just dialogue and most of the game is really well done exploration and combat.
It’s $70 with minimal marketing
All well and good with the pyrrhic victories for obsidian but, after paying 70€ for Avowed and returning it because it is a bargain bin RPG at best, the only victory Obsidian achieved was shedding yet another supporter of them pre-acquisition (kickstarters included). I will likely ignore TOW2 till it is heavily diacounted and Obsidian has been moved to the unreliable developers pile. Looking at steam stats, size of team and estimated sales numbers, I’m not alone in this.
It appears Warhorse, Larian et al have something that was lost in US studios. Avowed had a 6y development cycle under the umbrella of one of the wealthiest companies in the world, there are exactly 0 excuses for it to be this meh.
As per interviews Awoved pivoted in 2021 from dark multiplayer to what it is now. What that tells us is that it could’ve been something like Suicide Squad/Gotham Knights/Veilguard, but they successfully pivoted in the end.
That’s 4y after the pivot and completely ignores the fact eora has been crafted, a lot of lore and worldbuilding already exists. They had 2y of production leading up to the pivot (assets et all) and, again, they are supported by one of the richest companies in the world. It’s not a bad game, it most certainly isn’t a good game, it’s just mediocre. Fine for gamepass I guess but 70€ for such a poor delivery is asking too much. 15-30€ would be more appropriate. Probably will give it another shot at that price in less than half a year.
Edit: lol, just saw the massive amount of outlets bringing that point of the pivot, NOW, that the game had a terrible reception… Even a blind man can see a marketing agency behind that attempt at shifting the narrative.
Respectfully disagree with your opinion but many reviewers seem to have raised similar points to you so I’m wondering if I’m an outlier for enjoying it so much.
I think it’s also an expectation game. When you pay 70€ for a game from a storied studio, after 6y of development and a massive marketing campaign one expects a certain level of quality and familiarity. Obsidian worlds are famously dynamic, from Outer worlds 1 (had different problems), POE all the way back to the genesis of the studio, including 3rd pty commissioned projects like New Vegas. I, like many other fans, expected the same dynamic world and engaging story, and we didn’t get that. The combat is fun, on a superficial level, it’s great, but I find Avowed lacking much like I find FFXVI lacking. The interactivity, mechanics and depth of the R in RPG is too small, it’s an action game. If I want an action game, I’m not spending 70€ for an obsidian game, there are far better studios out there for that genre.
I know it’s #firstworldproblems but it really left a sour taste in my mouth to have yet another obsidian game feel like a cash in of the obsidian name roster than a genuine attempt at making a good game. If one takes Laura’s “victory” story and is less generous (she’s a personal relationship of people on the team) Obsidian has shipped underwhelming games because MS wants to ship asap, rather than cooking to an acceptable level of quality.
I have really being enjoying it, granted, I didn’t actually buy it. Just playing through Game Pass. I was definitely watching for it and started checking it out Day 1.
Is it GotY? Nah, but there haven’t been many recent games that I’ve enjoyedn as much.
It’s $70. There has been little appetite for $60 games as of late, but from what it sounds like Avowed at least has $70 bucks worth of time and stuff. Whereas many $60 titles aren’t worth their sale prices–its not a high bar.
A $40 or less Avowed on sale next year will do well I predict.
I’m really enjoying it so far. I haven’t had much time, so I’m not very far in.
My only complaint is that I’m playing on a launch Series X and it crashes to the home screen constantly. I set it to autosave frequently, and it doesn’t take long to boot back up, so I just keep trudging through, but it really is frustrating.
I will admit I haven’t watched the video (I’m going to when I get home) but I thought Avowed was doing pretty well?
A number of major podcasts and outlets are signing its praises. It has some divisive scores for sure, but I’ve certainly anecdotally heard way more praise than criticism from games media, and friends of mine who are playing.
Obsidian have been on a pretty decent roll for quite some time. Avowed is exactly what Gamepass was seeking to support - smaller focused games, and it ain’t even that small. 30-50 hours from what I’m hearing.
I’m not even a massive fan of the genre, or the studio, but I don’t really get the negativity surrounding the game. Seems pretty successful by most metrics to me.
It’s fun. Has its clear limitations, so it’s not as broad as many rpgs, but what it does do, it pulls off well. The “gamers” being mad about the pronoun picker is the source of a lot of the derision as far as I can tell.
Have they released numbers yet? Surely it has sold pretty well, the word of mouth must be decent.
It “reached” almost 5 million players. They do not break down how many of those are purchased copies versus Game Pass subscribers. Here’s a handy trick that I’ve heard from devs though: your range for how many people purchased the game is somewhere between 20x and 70x the number of reviews it has. Most end up around 55; for the biggest successes like Elden Ring, it ends up being closer to 20. So about 363k copies sold on Steam, probably; reviews tend to come after someone’s done playing a game, after all.
Gamepass numbers are unknown, but steam had a peak of like 19k players. Estimates on ownership is around 200k units.
Monster Hunter Wilds had 1.3m peak, unknown sales estimate because it is too new. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, 256k peak, over 2m sales estimate.
Understand that is all PC Steam stats.
Avowed may only be a financial success thanks to gamepass because nobody is buying it.
I know I didn’t buy it; playing with my subscription. I wonder if MS keeps these titles at 70 to try to push people to subscribe to gamepass rather than choosing more competitive pricing
Hi-Fi Rush was $30 and Hellblade II was $50. I don’t know how they determine what each game ought to be worth, because Hi-Fi Rush was too low at $30, and Redfall was too high at $70.
They are wanting to raise new game prices to $90-100 because prices haven’t kept up with inflation and dev costs, which will push more people to game streaming or subscription services.
Avowed could have been $30 and still sold the same because a $30 game is priced like a mediocre or shit game when you are talking open world ARPGs not made in Asia or offered as early access. I don’t even think the nothingburger controversy did anything to the sales of meaning, it just doesn’t seem like an interesting game from the announcement trailer to the launch trailer. The coolest thing in the trailers was the magic and that is a pretty disappointing aspect of the game.
I agree with you, before this post, I was under the impression that Avowed has been a win.
Let’s hope we get some numbers soon.
if steam is any indication i would not call it a success: https://steamdb.info/app/2457220/charts/#max
Which part of “concurrent players on Steam” makes it a metric that determines if the game was a success?
not sure if the question is serious but anyway: stalker 2 was also on gamepass and had 120k concurrent users on steam while avowed had 20k.
It’s not a good unit of measurement to determine if the game was successful. Longer games will have higher concurrent players, pound for pound, just because those people are kept online longer. Its success would be determined by copies sold, not concurrent users. Elden Ring did not only sell half as many copies as Black Myth: Wukong, but it had half the concurrent players on Steam.
Game Pass is not captured publicly for Avowed or STALKER 2, and it’s possible that people were more aware of one’s presence on the store than the other, or that they were more confident that they knew what STALKER 2 was than that they knew what Avowed was, and so would be more interested in checking it out on Game Pass. With publicly available information, we can’t determine what Avowed needs to be successful. I can guesstimate that it sold about 368k copies (55 x 6700 reviews) at $70 a piece (it has a higher tiered $90 version that people bought too, but then you get into muddy waters with currency conversions from non-US territories, which is more complicated than I know how to estimate), which would mean it brought in over $25M, before Steam’s cut, in two weeks. I can also guesstimate that the game cost them less than $70M to make, which it doesn’t strictly need to make back in sales (though it very well may over its long tail), because this is a Microsoft-owned game that’s available on Game Pass, the way that Microsoft would very much prefer you to play their games.
That $70M that I just made up as a sort of educated guess could have easily had its development budget spread across The Outer Worlds 2 or even Grounded, reducing the overall cost of all of those games by sharing tech and developers in such a way that they’re getting more mileage out of each dollar spent. Plus, if they decide to make Pillars of Eternity III, they’ve now got a bunch of assets already built that could be reused yet again. Obsidian’s status as a multi project studio is sadly an oddball in the industry at this level of production value, which is a damn shame, but it’s more sustainable for all sorts of reasons, to the point that even if this project is a failure, it could be kept afloat by the other irons they have in the fire.
tl;dr All that to say that Steam charts are data that are good for some things but are bad at measuring this game’s success.
while i do agree with your reasoning i still think a 6x difference in concurrent players on steam says something about a game - especially on launch day/weekend. if a game is a big success it’s a big success everywhere but then since avowed’s budget was probably not as overblown as other current titles’ budgets it might not be all too bad.
I do think it’s reasonable to assume that STALKER 2 sold, in all likelihood, far more copies than Avowed. But for anything other than multiplayer games that rely on retention and monopolizing all of your time, I’d say Steam charts are a bad way to try to get an apples to apples comparison. Number of reviews has been the metric that I always hear devs using as a point of comparison. It still won’t be a very accurate picture of how many copies it sold until you get far enough out that enough of the game’s players have had time to finish the game, since that’s when they’re most likely to leave a review, but while I doubt Avowed’s <7k reviews will catch up to STALKER 2’s 82k by June, it doesn’t mean Avowed is unsuccessful just because STALKER 2 was more successful.
it’s not really an indication considering it’s a gamepass title
Its also available on battle net where they keep advertising it to me 😡.
May be diluted by that too.
ITS WOKE
What you are hearing is Microsoft sponsored cope. Anyone, having two neurons to rub together, who enjoyed past Obsidian games is overwhelmingly disappointed at how little interactivity the world has, how limited your interactions are and how insipid it is. If this is what gamepass is bringing to the table then it will inevitably fail because at this level of quality for first party it’s competing with mobile games on a much more accessible platform.
Edited to be more precise
I disagree, I’ve been enjoying it so far. I still think OW beats it out of the water though.
I’ve played most of Obsidian’s catalog at this point, and this game rules.
Good for you I guess, i too would have preferred to enjoy it. Sadly, too blasé to enjoy effortless mediocre stuff.
“Anyone who enjoyed past Obsidian games is overwhelmingly disappointed” just isn’t true, so don’t speak for others.
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