The upcoming fantasy RPG Avowed faces some stiff competition in the genre, but this particular venture from Obsidian Entertainment has found an angle that makes it stand out. With a focus on first-person combat, Avowed joins games like The Elder Scrolls and Obsidian’s own The Outer Worlds and Fallout: New Vegas in combining decision-making and customization with a direct approach to action. From sword-slashing to spell-casting, Avowed covers all the basics that can be expected of fantasy fighting, but the game also goes a step beyond the typical expectations for fantasy RPG weaponry.
Although Avowed is a new title for Obsidian, the game builds on the legacy of the studio’s Pillars of Eternity isometric RPGs. Taking place in the same world of Eora, Avowed has the luxury of drawing from world-building that is already intricate and carefully realized. Eora strikes a balance between fantasy conventions and fresh concepts, speckling a world inhabited by humans, dwarves, elves, and more with magic and mystery both new and old. Technology is another feature that doesn’t stick completely to the classics, with some of the most aggressive advancements analogous to the Renaissance era mixing in with the more medieval aspects.
Related: Avowed Is Going To Give You What Elder Scrolls 6 Won’t
Other upcoming fantasy RPGs appear to shying away from firearms as well. Fable 2 and 3 added guns into the mix of a comically freewheeling franchise, but the upcoming Fable from Playground Games appears to be taking things back to medieval basics in an effort to stick to the script of the original game. Dragon’s Dogma 2 follows up on a predecessor focused on variety and experimentation in combat but takes the first game’s approach of opting for interesting variations on bows instead of guns. These games may be making the right choices for their respective settings, but their shared lack of interest in firearms (and the lack of a release date for Fable or Dragon’s Dogma) helps Avowed make its mark.
Lore isn’t the only explanation for other fantasy games avoiding firearms. Balancing magic alongside short- and long-range weapons can be a dizzying task of its own, and adding guns into the mix makes things significantly more complicated. Some individual weapons in RPGs should be stronger than others, but it’s better to make each overarching weapon type reasonably even with the rest, as players shouldn’t opt for one style of gameplay that they may not necessarily prefer just because it outperforms other possibilities. Thanks to Pillars of Eternity, however, Obsidian has already shown that the studio knows how to balance the attraction of firearms against the strength of more traditional weapons.
2023-06-18 14:30:04
Link from screenrant.com
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