Obsidian’s Avowed launched this week to a dull splat. You know, sort of like that sound when you accidentally spill yogurt on the floor. While billed as the next Skyrim, the game hasn’t even managed to beat Elder Scrolls V’s concurrent player count. No, not its all-time count, but the number of people who are still playing the 13-year-old game right now. Yikes.
Apparently there was a bunch of drama surrounding this game. As we know, it’s impossible for Western studios today to release a game without stirring up drama. To be honest, I haven’t been paying much attention to it. Though I do think the videos comparing Avowed’s physics and gameplay to Oblivion are quite hilarious. It shows just how much gaming has regressed in the past two decades despite graphical improvements.
A lot of people though still gave Obsidian the benefit of the doubt, because hey, it’s Obsidian. You know, the people who made gems like Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Fallout: New Vegas. (Two of my personal favourites.) Both of these are heralded as masterpieces in interactive storytelling. What everyone neglects to mention is that New Vegas is almost old enough to drive, and KOTOR2 is old enough to drink. Which seems to be a running theme for a lot of Western studios with any sort of notoriety. Pretty much all their best games are now well over a decade old. Yet they still rely on this nostalgia to sell new releases.
The problem is that all the people who made those games great are now long gone from those studios. Chris Avellone, the lead writer who created those narrative masterpieces, was pushed out in 2015. It’s been downhill from there. Obsidian has always made derivative games. Their secret sauce was their writing. With that gone, we started getting grade-A slop like Outer Worlds. A Fallout 4 clone that somehow managed to make Fallout 4 look like tour de force. Boring, slow-paced, clock full of unlikeable characters, with a generic “capitalism bad” storyline. Avowed seems to continue with this proud tradition created by the finest minds at Spacer’s Choice.
Gamers are starting to wise up though. It’s no longer enough to market a game on past prestige and ‘member berries alone. Something BioWare learned the hard way after releasing the bad Tumblr fan fiction that was Dragon Age: The Veilguard last autumn. Western studios are like that guy who peaked in high school, who’s still proudly wearing his varsity football ring, and still tells everyone how he once scored back-to-back touchdowns, two decades after graduation. Sorry Al, go help that fat lady try on shoes.
