One thing I was hoping for and we did not get was more hardware announcements. Specifically, permanent price cuts to the Series X and S, a digital only Series X, and the 1TB model of the Series S being $300 rather than $350.

Huge missed opportunity, IMO. They should have a great holiday this year in terms of software, it feels like a mistake to not back that up with more competitively positioned hardware

Lowkey hope they keep this double show format, instead of the main attraction taking up a good chunk of the show it get's it's own showing afterwards.

Holy hell this was impressive. 

I'll post my thoughts soon! For now, I'll spam others thoughts.

No, don't delete it, a lot of effort in your post and it would be a waste.

That was fast! 

This! @droid I appreciate your posts pimp, never delete your shit. Real tawk.

A bit mixed feelings about the show. Plenty of new games but few really interesting ones.

That said, Starfield looks much, much better I could've imagined. It'll be massive!

Exclusive: Avowed Started as Obsidian's Skyrim, But Evolved to Focus on Depth Over Breadth, 'Where Obsidian Really Shines'

When Avowed was first announced with a CGI trailer back in 2020, the headlines and discussions that it sparked all pointed to one specific game: Skyrim. Even though the teaser didn't give away much, the similarities were clear. First-person view; a sword in the right hand, a spell in the left. Surely this was Obsidian's take on an enormous Bethesda-style RPG?

And yes, it turns out that was the plan—at least at first. "Originally we were pitching, in essence, our Skyrim," confirms Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart in an exclusive interview with PC Gamer.

But that is not what Avowed, as it currently exists, is going to be. "I think over the course of time as we worked on it… Bethesda makes an awesome Skyrim. Mojang makes an awesome Minecraft, and Turn10 makes awesome racing games," says Urquhart, referencing a handful of Obsidian's sister studios at Microsoft. "What we do is we make our awesome RPGs, right?"

The feeling, then, was that Obsidian were better served not following Bethesda's example of a grand, open world, but instead staying true to what an Obsidian game should be. "That's when we backed up and said again: What are we good at? What's our lane?" That core, for Urquhart, is Obsidian's dedication to storytelling. "Outer Worlds is the greatest, latest example of that, and even Pillars. Pillars is less linear than Outer Worlds, but it's still a game that has you go through a story. And [Pillars of Eternity] 2 was even less linear, but still again you have this core story as you're going."

For Avowed, the focus is going to be specifically on your companions, and how their story relates to the driving narrative of the game. "We could go off and create an 8km x 8km open world and then deal with all the consequences of that—because that makes it a different style game. But we want to tell more confined stories that the player can experience with their companions, and then move from part of the world to part of the world. And, like I said, in the end, that's us."

"Every game development process for every title is this chain of ideation, iteration and polish," says Avowed director Carrie Patel, reflecting on how the scope of Avowed has changed over the years. "Sometimes you realize the way you're building, it is not quite living up to the experience you want to create. And so, in iteration and refinement, you say, 'Well, how do we create the experience that we want to deliver to players, and particularly as a studio? How do we deliver on what we're really good at specifically?'

"I think where Obsidian really shines as an RPG maker is with this really evocative nuanced world building, stories that are more focused on depth and breadth, and really thoughtful quest design that rewards experimentation and exploration from players—that gives them a sense of agency. And that gives them a meaningful set of options with how they interact with the world and characters."

The upshot, then, is that Avowed won't be as large, open and freeform as an Elder Scrolls game, but maybe that's for the best? Given the enduring popularity of the studio's RPGs over the years, staying true to that spirit feels like a sensible choice. "As we looked at the Avowed we're building, we wanted to make sure that we were really fulfilling those strengths and creating something that felt like a true Obsidian RPG," says Patel.

Exclusive: Avowed started as Obsidian's Skyrim, but evolved to focus on depth over breadth, 'where Obsidian really shines' | PC Gamer

I feel like I'm going mad with Avowed, I see the graphical complaints and Imo it looks good? I swear it feels like people have never played an Obsidian game before, they've never been known for amazing graphics, even so those graphics looked fine to me and The Living Lands is literally described as a vibrant and weird place with all sorts of weird fauna and flora.

Where Obsidian excels is their RPG mechanics, u'know, the thing that is actually important in an RPG, Lol. I don't give a shit if it isn't the best looking game in the world but it's going to be a brilliant Obsidian RPG, I have no interest in Fallout because I find it absolutely fucking ugly but I loved New Vegas because of Obsidian's writing.

Rant over.

Exclusive: Obsidian Breaks 3-Year Silence to Spill The Secrets of Avowed, Its Next Big RPG

For just a moment, Avowed looks like any other fantasy RPG—swords and shields, shiny armor and helmets with those funny little nose guards. Then the dual-wielded flintlock pistols show up. And the fungus-infected bear. And the Willy Wonka-ass mushrooms. Obsidian was once the RPG studio that played in other developers' sandboxes, but with Avowed it's getting to paint the world it created for Pillars of Eternity on a far bigger canvas—one in which you're, well, kind of the asshole.

Okay okay, that's not quite fair—you don't have to be an asshole. But you do have to be an outsider, Avowed director Carrie Patel told me in an exclusive interview ahead of Avowed's reveal on Sunday.

As the game begins, your character arrives in a remote corner of the world of Eora called the Living Lands as an envoy of the Aedyr Empire, where you've been sent to investigate a mysterious plague. "Not everybody in the Living Lands is super thrilled to have an imperial presence in this far-flung land," she said. "So adventure ensues."

It's been a long three years since Avowed first appeared during a Microsoft livestream, promising a first-person RPG from Obsidian Entertainment. Since then Obsidian has released Grounded, an ant-scale survival game, and Pentiment, a 16th century murder mystery. Both were hits, but it's about damn time for another RPG, and Avowed's trailer says 2024 is the year. Its first appearance was just CG hinting at a game, but this time we've seen the real thing, and Obsidian was ready to talk about it.

CEO Feargus Urquhart told me that in scope Avowed is more akin to Obsidian's past RPGs like The Outer Worlds in size than it is a sprawling open world a la Skyrim, though that was actually Obsidian's initial pitch. When the developers sat down and focused on what Obsidian does best—stories and companions, in particular—the more compact scale came naturally.

"As someone who's come through development as a narrative designer, companions are a huge part of the experience and draw for me both as a player and as a developer," Carrie Patel said. "One thing we wanted to do with Avowed was make sure the companions felt really integral to the story. In some games they're optionally recruitable, but in Avowed they're deeply tied to the story, tied to your party… we really wanted to create this sense that you're in this big wild frontier, you're going on this adventure of discovery, and you have this small but tight knit crew with you. The sense you're adventuring through the wilds together, sharing in the discovery and the danger. These people are just as much a part of your story as the larger events that you're getting in the middle of."

The way you interact with other characters in Avowed will be similar to The Outer Worlds, where your dialogue options reflect the tone you want to want to use. "We try to hit a sweet spot when we're writing dialogue options where we invest enough personality for those options to be fun and interesting, but also leave enough space around them so that the player can really invest whatever headcanon they built for their character into that option," she said.

Patel wouldn't spill much about Avowed's story, but did give me some of the basics on what form of RPG to expect from Avowed: 

• You have an established role as the imperial envoy, but your "personality, appearance, and philosophy and vibe you bring to that role is up to you as a player to decide"
• You can play as a human or an elf, but not other races
• It's purely singleplayer—no co-op
• The world is lightly systemic: think water and lightning interactions, but not the ol' bucket-on-the-head trick
• You'll have two companions with you at a time, with their own combat specialties and, of course, personalities
• There are several ability trees to progress through, and you won't be locked to a particular class or playstyle
• You will level up, but the focus is on unlocking abilities rather than putting points into stats to grow stronger

Early in development, when Obsidian decided to prioritize a story "more focused on depth than breadth," the first-person combat ended up benefitting, too. Patel said that it was an example of a piece of Avowed that was surprisingly fun in their first vertical slice, a time when the team has to decide on what to commit more resources to and what to scale back on. Combat became a key focus, which should be music to the ears of every Elder Scrolls player who's always found the sword-swinging a bit wimpy. "Our combat has come along really, really well, and the bones have been there since the beginning," she said. 

Patel cited a lot of time spent tuning the feel of swinging a sword vs. a mace vs. an axe to make combat feel right, but the options available to players seem like the more significant element at play here. You're free to dual-wield weapons, wield both magic and melee simultaneously, and as in Pillars of Eternity, there are some old timey guns available. When I brought up how bored I am of game loot with imperceptible stat differences from one sword to another, she said that's been on their mind, too. 

"The way we've tried to approach that is erring on the side of fewer but meaningful upgrades. If you're upgrading your weapon from one tier to the next, you should feel the difference. If it's a small number change next to your item name, that's not going to feel as meaningful as going through an upgrade process, trying your weapon again and realizing it's doing a lot more damage. Fewer but more meaningful upgrade tiers."

From today's trailer, magic looks like it could be the bit of Avowed that really gives it its own fantasy flair. There's some excellent hand animation at work when the envoy draws runes in the air to conjure a fireball and later lifts a pulsing void skyward, sending a pile of guards orbiting weightlessly around it. I want a whole lot more of that, and I'm excited that I can mix magic with melee without being railroaded into a class. 

We've seen only two minutes of Avowed, and I imagine Microsoft and Obsidian won't be talking about it too much more until Starfield is done with the spotlight. Once we do, I expect Obsidian's characters to start getting all the attention. When I asked Patel what she hadn't been able to do with the isometric Pillars RPGs that she's excited to do in Avowed, she brought it back to the companions without hesitating. 

"In most of our games companions have been optional, which I think offers a wonderful degree of choice to players, but it means there's a limit to how deeply you can tie them into the core story. With Avowed we decided companions are going to be core. They're going to be part of the experience. And that means we can invest so much more in them and tie them much more closely, and personally, to the events and the parts of the world the player is encountering."

And can they die? 

This time there was a pause. "You'll have to see," Patel said. Until 2024, then.

Exclusive: Obsidian Breaks 3-Year Silence to Spill The Secrets of Avowed, Its Next Big RPG | PC Gamer