Avowed Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Summary

Avowed Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast: Detailed Summary

Episode Release Date: February 13, 2025

In this comprehensive review of Avowed, Obsidian Entertainment's highly anticipated RPG, the Kinda Funny Gamescast hosts delve deep into various aspects of the game, sharing their individual experiences, critiques, and commendations. Hosted by Snow Bike Mike, Paris Lilly, Blessing Adeoye Jr., Greg Miller, and Andy Cortez, the discussion offers a multifaceted analysis aimed at both avid RPG enthusiasts and casual gamers alike.

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1. Introduction to Avowed

Timestamp: [34:30]

Snow Bike Mike kicks off the main content by introducing the primary focus of the episode: an in-depth review of Avowed, set to release on February 18th. He highlights the game's accessibility through early access for premium edition holders and sets the stage for a thorough examination by the team.

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2. Individual Reviews

Paris Lilly's Perspective

Timestamp: [06:05] - [13:56]

Paris Lilly leads the conversation with an enthusiastic endorsement of Avowed, drawing parallels to classic RPGs like Oblivion. Having invested 52.2 hours into the game, Paris praises its expansive world and intricate lore, awarding it a 9.5 out of 10. She emphasizes the game's depth, comparing it to the nostalgic charm of 2006 RPGs, and commends Obsidian for delivering a "nerdy RPG" that resonates with longtime fans.

"Avowed gives me memories back to 2006 when Oblivion first came out from Bethesda." — Paris Lilly [06:14]

She further appreciates the game's encouragement of exploration and self-guided discovery, highlighting the rewarding nature of uncovering hidden treasures and lore without overt direction.

Blessing Adeoye Jr.'s Critique

Timestamp: [14:10] - [25:56]

In contrast, Blessing Adeoye Jr. provides a more measured review, completing 33 hours of gameplay and rating Avowed a 7.5 out of 10. Blessing acknowledges the game's strengths in combat and world-building but expresses reservations about the narrative and companion dynamics.

"The journey isn't doing it for me." — Blessing Adeoye Jr. [14:28]

Blessing points out issues such as repetitive combat scenarios and a lackluster main story that fails to fully engage. She criticizes the limited depth of companion interactions and the feeling that pivotal narrative moments lack meaningful payoff. Nonetheless, she recognizes the enjoyable aspects of combat mechanics and exploration, advocating for Avowed as a competent and fun RPG despite its shortcomings.

Greg Miller's Analysis

Timestamp: [14:10] - [20:10]

Greg Miller echoes Blessing's sentiments, offering his perspective after 31 hours of gameplay. He rates the game a 7 out of 10 and shares his frustrations with certain gameplay mechanics, such as the inability to parry effectively when dual-wielding weapons. Greg appreciates the creativity allowed in combat builds but laments the permanent nature of enchantments, which restricts experimentation.

"I wish resolve also said, I wish intellect and resolve really used for a lot of conversations." — Greg Miller [74:55]

Despite these critiques, Greg remains optimistic about the game's potential, expressing a desire to continue playing to uncover more of its depth and narrative nuances.

Andy Cortez's Observations

Timestamp: [20:18] - [31:14]

Andy Cortez contributes briefly to the review, sharing his tentative 7 out of 10 rating after dedicating 30 hours to Avowed. While still exploring, Andy notes similar frustrations with companion dynamics and narrative engagement but appreciates the combat's flexibility and the freedom it offers in character builds.

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3. Combat System Discussion

Timestamp: [34:30] - [58:04]

The conversation shifts to a detailed examination of Avowed's combat system. The hosts discuss the free-form combat mechanics, which allow players to dual-wield weapons and choose from various abilities across fighter, wizard, and stealth archer classes.

Blessing Adeoye Jr. highlights the repetitive nature of enemy encounters, despite enjoying the flexibility in weapon and ability selection.

"Combat is a lot of fun. Combat freedom and flexibility is awesome as hell." — Blessing Adeoye Jr. [56:22]

Greg Miller appreciates the ability to customize attacks, such as enchanting pistols for additional fire damage but criticizes the system's limitations regarding dual-wielding and parrying mechanics.

"I wish there was an option that just made left click attack with both and then right click still parry." — Greg Miller [51:56]

Paris Lilly and Snow Bike Mike commend the combat's dynamic interactions with the environment, such as using parkour and abilities like freezing enemies to gain tactical advantages.

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4. Character Customization

Timestamp: [34:30] - [48:37]

The hosts delve into Avowed's character creation system, discussing the limitations and possibilities it offers. While the system provides a degree of customization with sliders and options, some hosts express dissatisfaction with certain aesthetic choices, such as the "fungus eyebrows" and limited facial feature adjustments.

"I love that there's more options." — Greg Miller [41:43]

The ability to toggle between first-person and third-person perspectives is discussed, with mixed opinions on its integration. While the first-person view is praised for its immersive combat experience, the third-person mode is seen as less fluid and not as integral to the gameplay.

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5. Story and Companions

Timestamp: [34:30] - [62:06]

A significant portion of the review focuses on Avowed's narrative depth and companion interactions. Blessing Adeoye Jr. and Greg Miller both express disappointment in the lack of engaging storylines and meaningful relationships with companions. Blessing points out the superficial development of companions, leading to a disconnect that diminishes the overall storytelling experience.

"I found myself listless with Avowed was none of what Paris just talked about." — Blessing Adeoye Jr. [14:10]

However, Paris Lilly shares instances where companion choices impact the game’s outcome, suggesting that while the foundational narrative may be lacking, there are moments where player decisions influence the story's progression and relationships.

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6. Technical Aspects (Graphics and Performance)

Timestamp: [34:30] - [42:46]

The team addresses Avowed's technical performance, particularly its graphical fidelity and optimization. The game boasts stunning environments enhanced by ray tracing, offering visually impressive landscapes and dynamic lighting effects.

"The environments look stunning and amazing." — Greg Miller [42:38]

However, some technical issues are noted, such as non-functional Nvidia DLSS and AMD FSR options, which hinder performance improvements. Hosts also mention difficulties with frame rates and graphical glitches, impacting the overall experience.

"The enchantment table helps you kind of further upgrade it." — Greg Miller [51:26]

Despite these setbacks, the consensus is that Avowed's visual appeal is a strong point, contributing positively to immersion and exploration.

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7. Overall Impressions and Scores

Timestamp: [80:36] - [82:03]

As the discussion wraps up, each host provides their final thoughts and ratings for Avowed:

• Paris Lilly: 9.5/10 – Praises the game's depth, exploration, and adherence to classic RPG elements.

  "I thought this game was excellent. I really. It really resonated with me as a nerdy RPG." — Paris Lilly [80:48]

• Blessing Adeoye Jr.: 7.5/10 – Appreciates the combat and exploration but criticizes narrative and companion depth.

  "I gave it a 7.5. I didn't get the story and companionship I wanted out of it, but I had a great time playing it." — Blessing Adeoye Jr. [81:04]

• Greg Miller: 7/10 – Enjoys combat mechanics and graphical fidelity but is hindered by narrative and technical issues.

  "I'm still thinking about it, but I gave it a 7 out of 10." — Greg Miller [81:27]

• Andy Cortez: 7/10 – Shares similar sentiments to Blessing and Greg, noting enjoyment in gameplay despite narrative shortcomings.

The hosts collectively recommend Avowed for fans of open-world RPGs who prioritize combat and exploration over narrative depth, while also acknowledging areas where Obsidian could enhance future iterations or expansions.

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8. Conclusion

Timestamp: [82:03]

Snow Bike Mike concludes the episode by reiterating the release date and encouraging listeners to share their own experiences with Avowed. The hosts express a general appreciation for Obsidian's efforts in creating a visually stunning and mechanically engaging RPG, while also voicing hopes for narrative improvements in potential future updates or DLCs.

"Thank you for watching the review here on today's Gamescast. Enjoy the stream after this and goodbye everyone." — Snow Bike Mike [82:03]

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Notable Quotes:

• "Avowed gives me memories back to 2006 when Oblivion first came out from Bethesda." — Paris Lilly [06:14]

• "The journey isn't doing it for me." — Blessing Adeoye Jr. [14:28]

• "I wish resolve also said, I wish intellect and resolve really used for a lot of conversations." — Greg Miller [74:55]

• "Combat freedom and flexibility is awesome as hell." — Blessing Adeoye Jr. [56:22]

• "I had to run around and no, I found it." — Greg Miller [72:49]

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This detailed review encapsulates the multifaceted discussions surrounding Avowed, providing listeners with a nuanced understanding of the game's strengths and areas for improvement. Whether you're considering diving into the game or are simply curious about the hosts' perspectives, this summary offers valuable insights gleaned from their extensive playthroughs.

Transcript

[Greg Miller]

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[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

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[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

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[Snow Bike Mike]

What'S up everybody and welcome to another kind of funny games cast for Thursday, February 13, 2025. I'm one of your show hosts, Snow Bike Mike. And today we brought out the Xbox screen very, very special broadcast. Paris, Lily, how are you doing today?

[Paris Lilly]

I am doing fantastic, sir. How are you doing?

[Snow Bike Mike]

I'm good, Paris. It's always great when I get to hang out and talk video games with you. Of course, I do have to kick it to our other two co hosts because they were, you know, whispering, they were murmuring, they were talking game showdown. For the past couple of weeks now, boys, you've been taking a beating from Tim. How we feeling as we get ready for tomorrow's game?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right where I want him. I got him right where I want him.

[Greg Miller]

It's just everything that needs to happen that happens for him, Mike. The dominoes are falling so perfectly for him. I'm sick of it. Right? I get the first question so that I get to go first and if it, you know, here, here's the thing, Mike. You know, Blessing loves doing like the everybody gets a question, everybody gets a category that's sort of geared towards them. The one that's geared towards me, Mike, is name a video. It was name an extraction shooter. There's a lot of video games out there.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You like Freedom Wars? What's the fighting game that that developer.

[Greg Miller]

Name an NPC inside of Crash Bandicoot that isn't Crash Bandicoot. It's like, dude, only Tim's gonna know that. But if I went first, I would have said Neocortex. Of course I didn't get to go first because I was in the lead because it was later.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Oh my God, you're playing. The game is right.

[Greg Miller]

Godamn, dude.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Well, boys, of course we have kind of funny game showdown every Friday here on the channel. Of course this is a lovely Thursday broadcast, but we are pre recording this avowed review a couple days early because we got schedules we got people moving.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Because Thursday night I'm hosting the DICE Awards 8pm Pacific with Stella over on IGN. Come check them out.

[Greg Miller]

Do you think I'm gonna win?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No, but I think I'm gonna get in trouble. One of the jokes is gonna get broken out. I'm gonna get a lot of trouble.

[Greg Miller]

Nice.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Hey, there you go. There's a heads up if live today. Of course, that's your reminder. Set your alarm for later tonight. Greg and Stella hosting the DICE Awards. Very, very fun. But this is pre recorded so please hold off on your super chats. Just get down in the comments below and have a fun time in the live chat with yourselves over on YouTube and of course on Twitch. And let's have a discussion about avowed. But don't forget that this is the kind of funny games cast. Each and every weekday we get together to talk about all the biggest reviews, previews and topics in the video game world. Live on YouTube, Twitch and of course on podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do here at Kind of Funny, don't forget about that brand new Kind of Funny membership that you can get available on patreon and on YouTube to get all of our shows ad free. You can watch them live as we record them, which we had a terrific Kind of Funny podcast earlier this week that I'm telling you, you got to.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Go back and watch the horniest piece of content I saw. The horniest episode ever is what they called it.

[Snow Bike Mike]

It went places.

[Greg Miller]

It's hilarious. It was a funny ass. Yeah, funny ass podcast.

[Snow Bike Mike]

I gotta make sure to remind you about all of that because it's so special. And of course you get your exclusive show. A very special piece of content by the one, the only Greg Miller. Greg Ways.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Hey everybody.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Of course I'm taking over today's Greg Way on Thursday so it's all about me. But Greg, maybe give us a quick run back throughout the week. What could people go back and click on and enjoy you talk?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

My gaming backlog, of course. You know what I mean. A whole bunch of different Benny stories. You know, I've cried a bunch on Greg Way. There's all sorts of stuff to go see.

[Snow Bike Mike]

I love crying lately. That's beautiful.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Not lately, no. I don't know if you saw me struggle on Games Daily. No games cast to say what the Greg Way for today as we're recording. Because I do them and they're gone. They go out. They go out the window. I give, I give you 20 minutes of my time. I answer the goddamn question.

[Greg Miller]

We live in the now.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Yes.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Me and Andy got to beat Tim. I gave showdown. All right.

[Greg Miller]

That's all I'm thinking about.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Of course some housekeeping for you. If I could fast forward time a rewind. I think today's kind of Funny Games daily. We'll probably be Talking about the PlayStation State of Play that happened on Wednesday that they're probably recapping on the Thursday morning. So keep an eye out for that one. And of course don't forget, today's afternoon stream after this will be Andy and Nick taking on Snow Bike Mike and Sniper Elite. That's right, the hunt is on.

[Greg Miller]

Oh no.

[Snow Bike Mike]

It's going to be a whole lot of fun. I've been playing a lot of Sniper Elite resistance.

[Greg Miller]

Oh great.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Cool.

[Greg Miller]

I one of the best. Definitely fair pudding for everybody involved. Let's play a game that only I've been playing.

[Snow Bike Mike]

If you are a kind of funny member, don't forget today's Greg Way it's all about Mike. I'll be giving that to you today and later this afternoon you will get that live stream. So make sure to tune in. We want to thank those who support us over on Patreon, just like our Patreon producers for the month, Delaney Twining, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster and Karen Lindener. Thank you so much for your support and thank you to our sponsors that are brought to you today, like Rocket Money, Shady Rays and better Help. But we'll tell you all about them in just a little bit. Guys, let's get to it. Ladies and gentlemen and nbs, I have brought to you the three team members here at Kind of Funny who have jumped on and done the review for Avowed, which is today's topic of the show. We're gonna go through all three of you guys's reviews. We're going to talk about it in depth, of course. Avow developed by Obsidian Entertainment. Release dates of February 18th, but you can play early up to five days thanks to that premium edition if you jump in. So let's jump into your reviews, Paris, I'll kick it off with you. Why don't you give me amount of time you played and of course your overall review on the kind of funny scale and just jump right into it.

[Paris Lilly]

So before I give you time played and all the good things about a vow it's worth putting on.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

None of us know what the other person thinks. We haven't talked. I'm so excited here, Paris.

[Paris Lilly]

Yeah, I have no idea what anybody thinks about this. So Mike, you and I did a show called the X Cast, which was the best Xbox podcast ever in the history of video games and for many years. I would say that Obsidian would wind up being the most important acquisition that Xbox has made in their history. I would also say that I always wanted to see what a fully backed funded resources, everything my Microsoft and Xbox Obsidian could do with their own original ip. And that game is Avowed. We're here. And with that said, I have put 52.2 hours into a vowed across. It was like 30, it was 32.2 on Steam and, and 20 on Xbox. I played on, on the series X. I love this game. I, I like it a lot. This is that nerdy RPG that I wanted from Obsidian. This gives me Memories back to 2006 when oblivion first came out from Bethesda. If I had to put a score on this.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Have you rolled credits?

[Paris Lilly]

Oh yes, I've rolled credits. That's, that's the important part of here. I have completed a Vowed and if I had to put a score on this, I'm going to give it a 9.5. Yeah, that is how much I love this. And, and the funny thing is when I first started out I was like, man, maybe, maybe this is okay. I'm, I'm not because I don't know the Pillars Universe. I, I, this is my first trip to the living lands, right? I don't understand the characters, the factions, just everything that goes into this world and makes it unique. Again, you're playing as the envoy. You are sent by the emperor to the living lands. The Dream Scourge is this plague that's infecting the living lands and threatens everybody in this world. So it starts off as, as almost like a mystery to try and understand what this Dream Scourge is and what's going on. And then turns into other character related events. It turned into some faction events. There's a big twist that, that happens which we won't spoil here. But I would say by the time I got to the second region I was locked in. I was locked in on what this game was trying to do because there is so much here to consume if you choose. And I think that's an important thing here with Avowed that you could probably speed run through this if you really wanted to in about 20 hours. You're gonna miss so much if you do though. There is, there's so many layers to what they've created here with Avowed that I put in those 52 hours because I was exploring, finding shit that that was my main thing in this game. I was looking for stuff. I was. I just got that treasure map. I need to find out. Get the treasure. Where is this at? You. You get these totem fragments in the different regions that can help add to your. Your. Your stat abilities. Perks. You put it into your party camp. But you got to go find them, right? You might like one. I found completely by accident. There was this lagoon in. In Scatterborn, and I was like, oh, let me jump in there. Go down there. There's. It was like, all right. Now that you have this fragment, you need to go find something else to give you clues to find the rest of them, or you got to find them on their own. There's a totem stain. You got to find. That's just one little. Little piece of things that you can do in this game. I haven't even gotten to the combat. My God. At first.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Ah, yeah.

[Paris Lilly]

I get the sword.

[Greg Miller]

I get the shield.

[Paris Lilly]

I get the wand. I'll get the grimoire book. I'll just. I'll just run through this. And the great words of Charlie Murphy. Wrong. Wrong. You will hit. They will hit you with a difficulty check. They will hit you with a skill check. At a certain point in this game where it's like, because. Because you'll see certain quests that you can do. You'll see skulls on them, right? Once you get up to three skulls, that mean it's way above your level. At one point, everything was three skulls. I'm like, oh, my God. What do I do? How do I. I. I can't complete this. How's. How's this going to work? Turns out I needed to go find. I needed to get resources. I needed to find a better sword. I needed to find a better pistol. I needed to find a better grimoire book. I needed to upgrade them. I need to get better armor. Like, in other words, the game is telling me, don't rush. Enjoy the process of what you're doing right now, right? Enjoy the RPG ness of this. Talk to characters. Go off the beaten path, explore. Embrace this world. That map where everything's all blurred out, Go to that area. Who knows what the hell you might find there, right? Some of the best weapons and armor I got in this game. The game did not tell me. I just found them. And that's great. Or I found, like, I wound up my. My favorite loadout wind up being I was using the shock pistol along with the. With the grimoire. And I just. This pistol I got early on, and I just upgraded it all the way to legendary because I just wanted to keep it. I thought it was so great, but I needed to find all the resources in the world to be able to upgrade it to that level. Or I could have chose to not do it and flipped off to. To a different build. Like I like my secondary was the sword. I really liked that had some great perks on it. And then I kept flipping through different shields. But that was basically my. My main go to loadout once I figured things out was my primary was. Was my pistol and my grimoire so I could use my magic. And I would supplement that with the pistol. And then if I needed to do some close combat, you know, melee, you know, can hand combat, I would flip to my sword and my shield. Not to mention I have. I'm looking at my different abilities and as far as how am I all right, I need to put more, more into intelligence because I want to do this or I'm running out of stamina so I need to do that or oh, I got this. Just finally complete this totem and I get this perk. So I'm getting more, more essence on this. Like there's just so much, there's so much to do in this game if you choose to do it because a lot of it is so optional. They're not holding your hand. Do it. Sure you got your main quest stuff, sure you got the little exclamation point icon that you can pick up a side mission on, but then there's so much stuff that they're just. They're just not telling you to go do and you go, you go find it on yourself. Find it yourself. And you just feel rewarded for it by doing that. And there's bounties you can do. There's. There's just a lot. So I know I'm. I'm dominating the conversation because I'm dying to hear what. What Greg and Andy thinks about this game. But I connected with this so much. I would like I said probably about.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Around.

[Paris Lilly]

About hour 12 that I was just locked and loaded the rest of the way that I loved it. Hey to. To the end. So yes love that for me. I'm going to say for me and then I'll hand it off. I get why Xbox delayed it to February because this deserved its own time to shine. And I think a lot of people will be able to connect with this game now that it's coming out during this time period versus the madness that is the holiday versus because I think this is potentially their first 9 10. It makes it into the Kes game. Of the year discussion. Definitely will be in the RPG discussion.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Wow. What a way to kick off the year. Very exciting. A lot of hype and excitement from Paris and a lot of great praise there for the team over at Obsidian. Greg, it's your turn. I know you've rolled credits.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yes.

[Snow Bike Mike]

So why don't you give me your time, your review and let's jump into your thoughts.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Sure. Fantastic review from Paris and I think there's so much in there I agree with. It'll be interesting as we really get into the weeds and talk about this and sift through it. Right. I have also finished a vowed I beat it at the 33 hour mark, far less than Paris. And that I think it is because with the travel and the schedule and the stuff, it was at some point like, oh, we're getting pretty close to this review. I got to get moving. I got to. I'm going to pretty much from this point on just do main stuff. Right. My thoughts on Avowed. Right. It is a game that has a few great parts, but I don't think it adds up to a great experience. So for me, I give this a 7.5 out of 10. I'm saying this is right between a good and a great. And I think as anytime we talk about rpg, right. Your mileage is going to vary for a number of different reasons. And where I found myself listless with Avowed was none of what Paris just talked about. He's right. Combat is one of the great experiences. The world is one of those great places. Like I loved exploring the living lands and finding that crazy thing and going over there and oh my God, anytime I got into combat, I enjoyed it because I know I'm going to get good loot off these people that at least I can sell or of course break down because they have a really great crafting and upgrade system. That's a big part of this game. Where it lost me was that I found myself. You know, Paris talks about 12 hours in being locked in multiple hours in that realization of like, man, I don't like any of my companions. And this main quest isn't doing for me like the main quest. I don't think it's, you know, we talk all the time about RPGs, video games in general, but definitely these RPGs that you know how much I love. I love getting lost in world going that it's not about the journey, it's about the destination. I'm sorry, it's not about the destination, it's about the journey. And here was One of those situations where the journey isn't doing it for me. If they were like, you could just leave everybody at camp, I would have just left everybody camp. Like, I like their powers and like the thing, but I didn't enjoy the conversations with them. I didn't feel like I was deepening to it. You sit there, you know, like K in this game. Right. Voice actor is Garris from Mass Effect, who I, of course, I romance. I love Garrus Guy. Sorry, sorry, bad pronunciation on my part. Who I loved. Right. But here, hanging out with Kai, I was like. Like, you're pretty. By the book. Like, I feel like I know where your story's going. And then, shockingly, I knew where your story is going when we completed your companion quest and went through it. And then the other. There's four companions you get throughout the game. The other three didn't do it to various levels for me. And then. Yeah. The overall story, I think, falls into so many problems. Right. It comes at you on three fronts, right. @ least in my head of what the plot lines are. The dream scourge, like Paris has talked about, it's invading the living lands. Your emperor has sent you there as the envoy to figure out what's going on and try to stop it. Right. Then there's this steel garut line, right? Which is like this religious cult zealots that are working for your emperor, but also like, oh, like, you guys are like, you're doing your own thing here and that's a big problem. They have a really cool villain you've seen a few times there, right? Lord Lladwin or Ludwig, they got the, um, lot over the. Oh, it screws me up every time. But she's the skeleton face person with the glowing red eyes. I'm sure we'll get to it eventually again or whatever. I think a very much a traditional video game villain of like, whoa, you look awesome. I can't wait to do. We never do anything really cool with you. Nothing. Okay. By the end of this. Whatever. And then there's the fact that you're God. This is something we talk a lot about in our previews, right? You are touched by a God, so you have the fungus on your face as we've talked about a million times. Right. I faced my fears and kept it on the entire game this time around. Whatever. And that is your godlike ability. And what that means is another plot line I put there. So I think you have three plot lines there, and I think they all have an interesting scene, an interesting place but none of them throughout the thing kept me engaged. By the end, when they all wrapped up and credits rolled, I was like, this didn't have the payoff even to justify the thing here. And again, this is me personally, like, maybe you're going to jump in here. I can't wait to hear what you guys all think. Because, Mike, you've played too. Even though not as much what you are feeling with these companions if they're working for you. But for me, a great RPG and an amazing RPG for me needs to be. I am all in on the story. I love these characters. I love this world. I am fighting for a reason. And I found like, there's a very specific character who's important to this game that I won't interrupt or spoil. And that character talks to you a lot. And legitimately, I was. I'm trying to be. I'm playing as a good person. I'm doing a good thing. I'm, I'm, I. I'm trying to role play of like, I've been presented with this information. So now I'm moving this, which is different from where my character started. You need it. But this one, like, I was literally at the picking the dick option every time of Shut up. What are you talking about?

[Snow Bike Mike]

Shut.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What do you bought me? Yeah, exactly. And so it's like, like it wasn't. I was picking it because I was role playing the dick. I was over you talking to me about this and not giving me answers like, this isn't the whole thing. And then to get to the end and how that one paid off, I was like, this just didn't do it for me. And that isn't to then take away from the fact how much fun this game is to play. I am unaware. Paris, anybody who knows chime in if they're doing DLC for this. I'll be, oh, yeah, we're doing an expansion to Avowed. I want to jump in. I want to play Avowed. But it is that idea of like, that's the combat driving me and that's the world of it. When we get into the real weeds of it. I want to talk about combat because I do think combat is pretty repetitive. Like you get into some larger enemies that all of a sudden are doing a. They have a big health bar and maybe they're doing a different kind of attack, but otherwise you're doing. I. Andy looked at my screen today. Who in. Andy looked at my screen like day one. He's like, you've really been rocking the same weapon the entire game like, yep, 33 hours sort and board man. It's like how it was and I enjoyed it. But that meant I'm fighting the same lizards and the same fungus people over and over again the same way, which worked for me. And I like the incremental like Paris was talking about. I'm stronger. This is that I've got this new upgrade to my swords. But it is the same thing over and over again, which to me falls into that thing of just like this is a video game, which is not bad, but I think there's a few other examples for it. But I do want to pass the baton.

[Snow Bike Mike]

I like that. All right, well, Greg, at 7.5.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

7.5 right there.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Let's move on to you, Andy. Of course. How much time did you put in? What's your overall thoughts and give us that number?

[Greg Miller]

I don't know if I want to give it a number yet.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Give an asterisk number and that.

[Greg Miller]

Here's an asterisk number. I would give it a 7 out of 10.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

I. Early on, though, I was more around a six. Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

How many hours in are you?

[Greg Miller]

I'm about 30.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

Two. 31 maybe. And it's, you know, I was asking Greg and kind of comparing where we were and, you know, he told me I. If I mainlined it, I could kind of get towards the end and, you know, I don't know, maybe five hours or whatever somewhere in there. But I knew I wasn't like the main reviewer on here, so I just kind of wanted to put as much time into it as possible and explore a lot of the living lands and all these side quests. And I, I think my feelings are very similar. Similar to Greg's or. I don't love my NPCs, I don't love my squad mates and. And I hate doing the thing Mike, where. Oh, dude, you should watch this TV show, man. Like, you know, the first four seasons really rough and take a while, but season five is where it really gets going. It's like, dog, I don't want to invest that much time. And like, legitimately for me, this game didn't really start picking up until about hour 20.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Oh, wow.

[Greg Miller]

Where I. And it. The, the, you know, on the flip side of that, it's a completely, I think a completely good and serviceable video game if you're, you know, it's. It's. My problem with it was I wasn't feeling like it was doing anything surprising. I went back to start streaming the Outer Worlds to kind of like all right. About coming out soon. What if we play the outer worlds to kind of see, you know, that where the lineage is and let's kind of get a flavor of what might be in store for us. And I wanted to keep going back to play outer worlds. I think that the characters in the story were. And also the tone, I think felt a lot more my style and more interesting. I guess I wanted more surprises. Like there's a. I was talking to Greg about this maybe, you know, several days ago. You can random side quests. There's like just bounties, right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

And you do these bounties to get XP and there.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's pretty much income too.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Good source of money. Good source of income. And I kept on, I, I kept on wanting to experience all of these bounties, like just normal. You're just doing it for the of it. But then like once I got to the end of them and I finished all the bounties, I was like, damn. I, you know, surprise me. I want to get to the end of I, I want to get to one of these bounty things and I'm gonna go kill them. And the person I'm going to go kill goes, well, don't kill me, dude. The person, the bounty master who sent you over here and I want like intrigue and go, oh shit, that person was crooked. The whole day surprised me. I wanted something like this game didn't do a whole lot to really make me go, oh shit, that's what we're doing. Awesome. I love that I didn't really start getting that until the 15 to 20 hour mark in the third land. Really? And the third land has a lot of characters and tonal changes and comedic stuff that reminded me a lot more of the outer worlds. And I'm like, man, I'm digging this more. But it took 20ish hours for me to get here. I obviously have been, you know, much more down on this game as I've been talking this whole time. But on the flip side, combat is a lot of fun. Combat freedom and flexibility is awesome as hell. I love that you are not stuck to your skill by any chance. You can always respect for a little bit of money. It's not the most expensive thing in the world, but the amount of different weapon slots and slotting in, you know.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Your main hand, you're offhand.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, the main hand and off it. By the end of it, I'm rocking Dual Pistols and it is like just so freaking fun to sort of have that level up and feel a lot More powerful. But for the start of it, I was dual dagger. And so I was just like spamming left click and right click and I'm, you know, doing all these cool stabbing sort of combos. And one of the daggers I have is a legendary fire one and the other one is a legendary ice one. So it's just like doing all this crazy. It just feels really cool and fun to play. But I, I agree with Greg that I, I wish there was a bit more variety in some of these boss fights. You know, you kind of start to know what they're doing after a while. And I wanted a bit more surprises there, but just taking on random camps, you know, I hit that difficulty wall early on and was like, damn, this game's like kind of hard in some spots and this is kind of like surprising right now. Do I want to drop the difficulty? But instead what I did was respect my character to have max resolve and then ended up talking my way out of a situation and then I respect back. And that was. And that was nice, right? And you know, I think I could have gone out and grinded more, but the more curious, like, game developer side of me was like, what. What will happen here? Unfortunately, it was kind of boring. It was just like, oh, oh, you, you know, the enemy just like, oh, you talked me out of this. Cool, you're good to go. I was hoping there was a bit more there, but I, I like the. The option that it is even there. I just was hoping that it kind of maybe led to more things. And a lot of that is, you know, Baldur's Gate 3 really spoiled us. And, you know, this is all. This was always meant to be a more truncated open world experience. You know, early on, early on they said, this is not going to be Skyrim. We are doing a much more smaller experience, which. And I love that for it and I do think the world is still really damn long.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I was gonna. And that's the one thing I think that they did to their credit. I mean, probably for the best undersell is like, it sounded like this game was gonna be, oh, It'd be a 20 hour RPG. It'll be in a. You know, and yeah, maybe if you mainlined, you would. But back to the difficulty spikes. Every time you go to a new land, the enemies you're going up again are a tier up. They have a different color armor and weapon. Right. So you need to be leveling at least for me, grinding it out to do it. And it is the thing of having rolled credits. There is no New game plus, right. You go back to the point of no return if you want to play on like jumping back into that world and looking at my maps. I have so much left to explore. There's so many questions. There's a quest log filled with things to do. Like, the game is really, really, really big. Even though they tried to undersell that it was going to be so big. But one thing I do want to say, and we're. Oh, sorry, Perry, can I say one thing?

[Paris Lilly]

No, no, Finch.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I do want to jump in and probably dissected later is I had a similar thing where in the run up to this when I was like, man, I really want to play to out. I rerolled and started a new outer worlds. And it was like, man, was I too harsh in this game back then because I enjoyed it fine, but I thought it was too small or whatever and blah blah, playing enjoy and then jumping this. I was so like, where are the characters that were in outer worlds? Not literally, but I mean like the actual. Hey, look at this. Definitive. And this, this guy's wacky. And this thing. And like, even in outer worlds, the first time you talk to a guy like, yeah, it's my ship or you just take an identity, it's like, that was all so cool and quirky. Whereas this, I think, you know, blessing said it more succinctly than I did. But like, for when I talk about this, it's like Avowed is treading very well worn territory. And I don't think it's doing much with the material that every other fantasy RPG is doing.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. And that's why I don't feel like until that third world is where I started getting dialogue and writing and character moments that I, that I enjoyed a lot more that were just entertaining to me from not only, you know, doing sort of a corny joke here and there that made me laugh, but character twists and stuff with side characters. I'm like, oh, that's really cool. And I wish I. I was having that this whole time, the whole past 20 hours. But it's still like a lot of fun to play. I do love the kind of quality of life stuff where you immediately have Transmogrify. Yes, you can transmog any of your items.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Would be nice to have a library. I don't want to carry the thing with me to choose the. The transmog. I'd rather be able to store it in a closet or whatever. Or once I collect it, like Diablo.

[Greg Miller]

I just have it sending stuff to your stash at Any moment is great. Breaking down stuff at any moment is great. You don't have to be back at a camp or in front of a. You know, a lot of the.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Hold on.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But I want to talk about all this because there's like. But then you do have to go to camp for certain things. But Paris had to say something.

[Snow Bike Mike]

I. We're going to go in depth in just a moment. Paris, why don't you wrap us up here on this first part of it is just.

[Paris Lilly]

Again, I had no idea what either one of you thought. So. So it's fascinating to hear the. The different opinions in here which. Which are all valid. I totally get it. But that's why I even said in. In the opening, it's like there's layers to this. Because, Greg, you even said you rolled credits. You go back to the point of no return and there's still all this map that you had. Have not seen and quests that you have not done. And I think what I did during my playthrough was I was trying to do everything, so I wanted to see all of it. And I think that just enhanced my experience because I had encounters that the game did not tell me go here to do this. I found it on my own and I felt rewarded as a result. So the game encourages you, doesn't encourage you. How am I trying to say this? The game isn't telling you to. Isn't holding your hand to go to certain. Certain checkpoints. Right. You're encouraged to go explore and I'm.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right there with you. To keep. To be clear, just so I'm. My. My reputation is unbesmirched. I. That's how I play open world RPGs. And that's how I played the first however many areas and hours where I was like, what is over there? Let's go do that. And even doing that and finding side stuff and doing it was like, oh man, there's still so much more for me to go chase. And I love this game. Does a great job of incentivizing you to go off the beaten path. Hey, here's a bramble you can burn. Oh yeah, burn that. What am I getting? Oh, treasure chest in there. Here are these weird little things you need to electrify. And if you do three of them, you'll open up that door. But you don't have to. So you could blow past it. You got to come like, no, the game does a great job of all that. But like, to my point of, you can also.

[Greg Miller]

You can also use ice grenades to make platforms to walk in the water. I wish there was a bit more of that. I wish there was like more reasons to use that. But the I I think I've only not done about three side quests. Like I've I'm pretty much like 100 ing all of it so far. And I had two bounties not pop for me the one that I texted you about and then another one where.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I have one right now too that is like, oh, we'll pick up the trophy from the guy. And I'm like the guy's dead and there's nothing I don't.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, I had that happen to me twice so far with with two different ones in different worlds. Or like I went back. I'm like, I don't. This item isn't on the ground. That's that that sort of stinks. So you know that that happens with games that haven't been out yet. You get bugs now and then.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But snow myself Michael, how much about have you played and what do you.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Think of about Greg? I've played five hours of a vowed I've had a nice intro into it. I've had some questions on the story side of things that have not entertained me in certain ways, but I am excited to play more thanks to the combat and we're going to talk about more of that because we're going to go in depth on the game right after a word from our sponsors.

[Andy Cortez]

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[Snow Bike Mike]

Of course, we have now jumped in with the initial scores from everyone. We've gotten your thoughts. Now let's go a little bit deeper. With all four of us here now, I can kind of add to it with my Hours played. But I want to kind of know. Greg, I'll let you choose. Where do you want to go? Because when I think of. Of course of Vow, I think of city, and I think of RPGs. I think a story. I think of combat, the world. Right. I have some extras from the community questions. I have extras about Andy, of course, playing outer worlds and kind of that comparison, which I'm excited to hear from you. But where do you want to start this conversation?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I want to talk about scale and scope a bit. Okay. All right. We talked about, like, I think they underplayed how big this game was. But I think what's interesting in many ways is when you bump up against the fact of, oh, like, this is the video game. This is about the video game. Right. And what I mean by that is what we talked a little bit about here of, okay, here's. There's so much to do, but it is repetition. You are fighting these lizards. You are fighting these fungus people. You are. And that's video games. Right. I think the environments look beautiful, but then once you've learned the environment you're in, it kind of can look the same over and over again. Right. One of the things I thought was an interesting move was what we were talking about there. Of like, okay, you can break stuff down whenever you want to. You can send it to your stash, do whatever, but then to have meaningful conversations, you have to go back to your camp. Right. Okay, I get it. It's kind of like the Normandy, right? When we were playing Mass Effect and we're having these things, you'd go back to the Normandy between your things to shoot around, you'd have to do it there. But since we don't have to go to camp necessarily, it was a weird choice to do that. In the same way, I think it's a weird choice that as you go through this game, you find things like I was talking about, hey, here's some brambles, and it puts up the burn logo. Because, of course, if you have an instrument that would burn, you could do it. Or if one of your teammates will be able to burn in the same way, one of your teammates will be able to dispel this illusion. So you can see a treasure chest or a door. This companion can shoot lightning. Right. You have abilities to get around this with grimoires or whatever. But for my build, there were certain powers I didn't have. So then it was this weird one of, okay, you're. There's four companions you can have. You go out with two At a time. So you're out as a trio all the time. Right. So if I run in, if I'm out in the world and I run into, oh, I need to be able to dispel this illusion, which is one of my companions powers. But I don't have her on the team. Rather than me be able to just have a narrative thing of, since she's there, I can use this device to shoot it.

[Greg Miller]

I would then have to Dragon Age fucking.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I would have to go from where I open app fast travel back to the camp through a loading screen. Not long, but a loading screen. Get there, don't even talk to anybody, Click on the portal to leave. Basically change the party and say, leave. Not from where I am now, but leave to back where I was. So it's this weird crutch to fast travel all the way back there, switch people out and fast travel like a.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Town portal in Diablo to be able to come back to where you were.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. And it was just a deal where it was like, especially when you're late in the game and you are so powerful and I'm still, still grinding off weapons and trying to power these things up. So I need resources. But there were times where I was like, I'm on a run. Oh, fuck a dispel. I'm never coming back. You know, it's not worth it. I don't want to do that. I want to continue on what I'm doing. I'm so close, I feel like to finishing this quest. I want to go do that.

[Greg Miller]

Well, that's the thing that Mike didn't like in Dragon Age where, you know, in Dragon Age, all of your NPCs have these abilities to open up new world or new paths and things like that in a multitude of different ways. But because they become your friend, you kind of absorb their power through your. Through that. And so, you know, Mike made the point of. Yeah, but then, you know, here you are, you've worked your whole life to get this rock power or whatever, and then now you just kind of have it. It's like, oh, I don't need you. You go back to the base. So, like, I see the lore reasons why they wouldn't want to allow that. But from the ease of where we've seen them kind of cut a lot of corners for sort of quality of life things. That does make sense. Or it's like, why didn't they just allow you to do that there?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That'd be some narrative clutch of crutch able to radio back and say, I'm doing this. And they zoom through your eyes or some. Harris, you shook your finger though, when I was talking about. What were you going to say?

[Paris Lilly]

Well, because it goes back to what I said again, like you. You mentioned. Oh, well, I'm just want to hurry up and go there. So you don't want to go back. I again, my own personal opinion. I think this is a game that you slow play. You don't rush to the finish line. And we're obviously review. We've had it for two weeks. I get it. People want to get it, get it done. But I think for people that are watching this and they're going to go pick it up, don't feel like you need to rush to the finish line and say, first, I finished it first. I did it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I hate it.

[Paris Lilly]

It's like, no.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And I. But I think what I'm literally talking about is I'm enjoying the quest I'm on and I want to finish the quest. So I don't want to stay. I don't want to break up what I'm doing right now to shoot back, to do this, to get another branch.

[Paris Lilly]

I don't disagree. I don't disagree. And that's my point. My point is you finish that quest that you're on, you make. And again, this is where you can get nerdy with it. Write it down, notebook, whatever, and go, hey, I want to make sure I go back to this thing that I saw, because I did that a lot. Whereas I may not have necessarily had the companion I needed to open that door, the illusion or whatever at the time. But I'm like, there's something there now.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Another thing, I'm gonna come back to this. Another thing about this is that I think the loot's always there again, you're always on this grind to break stuff down, get stuff, sell stuff, have ready to go. But one of my things was like, okay, I'm gonna blow past this room that might have a treasure chest in it, because I'm gonna be able to pick it up in the next thing. I'm getting a lot of it. And also there's. It's a weird thing where you're incentivized because it'll make you stronger in the long run. But there's so much that I'm not incentivized for this chest. But in the same breath too. One of my main complaints, and this is just me being me, but like, I love playing dress up in these games. I love looking cool. I never looked cool in this game. None of the armor is cool in this game. So again, when it was like, well, I've been leveling this thing I'm wearing up forever. Like, I can transmog to make it look like I'm in something that looks fine, but I'm 20 hours in now. Plus, and I know that I don't like any of the styles here, so why even worry about what's in the chest?

[Greg Miller]

You really wish you could re edit your character.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. You don't have that ability.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

So change your hair and your face.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Once you, Once you look the way you look, that's how you are, you know? And, and here's the thing again. Talk to. Talk to the death for many years at this point, Mike, the mustache and beard combinations, let him know. Dear Obsidian, dear all game developers, we need a disconnected beard and mustache. That. And when you, when that option is presented, it's always a goddamn Shakespearean.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Yeah, yeah, no, I don't want to curl up. I don't want to curl up.

[Greg Miller]

I don't want that. Just, just, just this, you know, just this. Monster Hunter Wilds, they give you two facial beard options, right? So you could do a mustache and then you could do a beard. And then check this out, Mike. I had just a chin strap because they didn't have like my style thing.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

But I use the makeup in the game. I. And I use freckles to give myself the ch. Like, just great customization. Again, your first person, you can't really see your character, but still, I was.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Really deflated as I made generic jabroni 42. As you know, I don't go too in depth. And then immediately the first two people I meet, I'm like, wow, we look exactly the same. I immediately was like, well, there goes the error sales on this one.

[Greg Miller]

Otherwise I do think the character creator is like, fine. I enjoy sliders. I. I prefer the ability to, you know, playing Baldur's Gate 3 recently, I was like, really disappointed by the character creator because I played it with Alana the other day and it was like, man, you're just picking from six different heads. That sucks.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

You know, like playing this, playing monster in the wilds, like, let me move the eyeballs, Let me move the eyes up and down. I have a much larger forward because I got the receding hairline. Let me make my forehead larger, you know, Like, I enjoy that. So I think overall the character creator was like, definitely above average. I would still say, even though I don't love the look of a lot of The. The characters, where, the environments. When I'm running on full Epic, you know, Paris could probably attest to this. You got the 4090s rocking pairs. Got a 50 90. Like the game. You know, running this game with ray tracing, the environments look awesome. But here's the thing.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I got 4096. I had to read about the Blade 18 laptop, and they lynched me. So I can play it on the road, but I got it too.

[Paris Lilly]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Thank you, Razor.

[Greg Miller]

Thank you, Razor. I got Greg's thing kind of humming, you know what I mean? I was watching him play. I was like, man, let's get you to 60 frames per second. You know what I mean? But the game doesn't have. It has the options for AMDs, FSR, and Nvidia DLSS, and neither of those were functional. And maybe it's a bug, maybe. But I did a lot of things where I'm, like, changing them and I'm like, nothing's happening visually. And I'm looking at my frame rate and the GPU utilization. Nothing's changing here. The only thing that was working on this build that we have is a temporal anti aliasing, which just, like it takes. You can run your game at like, 85 resolution. So it's a tiny little bit blurrier, but it helps the game run a little bit better. But again, the game running with ray tracing looks. The environments look stunning and amazing. All the lights, like shadow casting. It looks really awesome in a lot of moments.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Yeah, I really enjoyed a lot of the environments that I was seeing in the early part of the game. Yeah, Very colorful. Really?

[Paris Lilly]

Yeah.

[Snow Bike Mike]

When they say the living lands, you feel that when you run around and you see the different areas. Quick question before we get off of character creator. The godlike look, of course, you can turn that on or off. I turned it off. Did you find any looks or, you know, pieces that would go on your head that you enjoyed? Yeah, because I thought Greg had a nice one that I was like, oh, that looked cool. But everything else, I didn't find anything that I loved.

[Greg Miller]

I chose the one that I just looked like a. A pretty little fairy boy. You know, I had a. I got like the. Above, my eyebrows, just like a tiny bit of that sort of, like, purple sort of fungus look. But. And then. And then I have, like, little pink sparkles. I'm just a little pretty boy. Yeah, I like that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I'm slacking to assets. A screenshot I just took with my phone on my computer screen, because that's how cool I am.

[Greg Miller]

Paris, what did you go with.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

God. Likewise.

[Paris Lilly]

Yeah. It's similar to yours bringing hairstyles into the sea. I wanted the Angela Davis afro, and the one that I did didn't like my. I'll have to post it. You could post it on here, too. But my character looks. It's terrible. It's not good.

[Greg Miller]

We're going to power through this.

[Paris Lilly]

We're just going to play the game. So, to your point, I wish we could go back and edit our characters after we're done, because in the creator character, I was like, oh, this looks good. And then I'm in cutscenes and I'm like, I like this. You know what I mean? So it's fine. Yeah, I did leave godlike on, though. I didn't turn it off.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. I still couldn't do, like, the godlike where it was like, your eyebrows are mushrooms or your hair's a mushroom. So I did this thing that looks like a fungus. Like, she's. She's turning into Groot.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Oh, that's good.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I called her Isley for, you know, Pamela. Poison Ivy. Right. Gave her some green hair on the red there. Put that in there. Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

She looks like we have millennia at home, Andy. Oh, sure.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Yeah, of course.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

See, I think she looks like Batwoman, too, to a degree.

[Snow Bike Mike]

You know, I want to bring in some of the community because I was looking at the avowed hype cast that Greg and Paris did earlier. I was reading through some of the comments to see if anybody brought up some questions. And of course, you do see your character quite often in this game. But there is a first and third person mode. The chat wanted to know, can you toggle that on with just a button press, or is that. You have to go into the menu three, baby.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You can toggle it on enough.

[Greg Miller]

The U button on keyboard.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Get out of here, dork.

[Snow Bike Mike]

I like that. Did you use that often?

[Greg Miller]

No.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No, I mean, either once in a while when I'd be, like, traversing the living lands, just running through the deserts, I'd be like, all right, let's look over there. But, like, in combat, like, it's clearly meant to be first person. It feels great. I'm not even that big first person guy, but, like, yeah, combat feels great. It looks great. It was just, like, the way to go.

[Greg Miller]

I think they did a great job of still making it look as convincing as possible that this game, you know, could fully be played third person. And it totally can be, but just, like, the way the character moves and stuff, it's like, this is Supposed to be a first person shooter. The way whenever you go to the third person and you kind of see, like, the way the. The character kind of, like, twists their. Their waist and stuff, it's like, doesn't look like it was built from the ground up with this in mind. And first person is still so good anyway, that I just, like, resorted to that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

If it were a lot better, I could see maybe going for that, But I still enjoyed first person a lot.

[Snow Bike Mike]

You know, let's dive into the combat.

[Greg Miller]

Sure.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Because that was a big thing.

[Paris Lilly]

Real quick.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Oh, yeah, real quick.

[Paris Lilly]

Greg, I. I'd select you my character.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Oh, let's take a look at Paris's character.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, my God.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Combat. Not a good sign. When Greg says yes.

[Greg Miller]

You don't want to hear it. Oh, my God.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

For my computer.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Of course. If you're watching live, you'll be able to see this. If you are listening, come on over. You get to see these guys, these creations they've made.

[Greg Miller]

Hey, boy. Don't you know I got something going? I'm sending to assets as well, Bear.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Oh, we're sending everything over.

[Greg Miller]

Okay.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Well, you get to see everybody.

[Greg Miller]

You get to see my pretty boy with a mustache. Silver hair. Got some. I just. I just, you know, I just look so. I'm just a little pretty fairy. Mike, you look like.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You look like Tony Howard Stark. Howard Stark. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can see that again.

[Greg Miller]

You give me a. A second facial, you know, hair option. My. I would give myself a beard.

[Snow Bike Mike]

I love that for you.

[Paris Lilly]

God.

[Greg Miller]

Beautiful.

[Snow Bike Mike]

So there's Andy right there.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

See the mushroom eyebrows I can't do.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, really?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I love the mushroom. It makes my skin crawl, literally.

[Greg Miller]

Now, the first one.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Show me Paris.

[Greg Miller]

I think the first default. The first default option you get, it look, like when you said that made your skin crawl, I had the same feeling seeing. I think maybe one of the first options where I was like, oh, did something, like, cut into my face? Because there are, like, deep gashes into your face, but it's really like your skin is kind of growing out around it is terrifying.

[Paris Lilly]

Yeah, Bring it up.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, you did the hair fungus as well.

[Paris Lilly]

Yeah. Way too much plastic surgery, by the way. Look at those eyes and lips. What was that?

[Greg Miller]

So. So Paris chose the face fungus as well as the hair. I did not choose the hair fungus.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

I only did, like, the eyebrow thing.

[Snow Bike Mike]

I turned it all off. Said I just want to be. Mike.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Let's jump into the combat to have some fun. Of course. Combat. You guys brought up in your reviews being a big factor here. We really talked about the free form combat here in Avowed, which is you have two loadouts which you get to choose, you know, up to two weapons in each or one weapon in each hand. To have two weapons per loadout. You have the freedom of choosing different abilities and leveling up those skills in the different fighter class, the wizard class, kind of the stealth archer class. So let's talk about where you guys went with your builds. What did you like, what did you not like about having the two loadouts that you had?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

So I went sword and board. So I went. I originally was like, I'm going to be dual daggers. I was running dual daggers and I was running bow and arrow in the back and on my secondary one. Right. Eventually though, got this sword that was on fire and had flame damage on it. I was like, this is pretty cool. And then of course had a, picked up a shield and I was like, oh, you know, dual daggers is nice, but it gets in the way of pairing. It gets in the way of blocking, stuff like that. Right. You still can dodge, but you can't parry with it. Which you could, but not is easier.

[Greg Miller]

Which I feel like is something that could be fixed and I wish it was personally could be elevated because I, I like the pairing in this game. Like, you know, I, I initially thought, oh, you're only going to be able to pair if you have a shield, right? And you get that sort of shield bash, knock them back. And it feels good. It sort of slows down. Enemies get stunned. The feedback you get visually and, and audibly audio, it's awesome. It feels good to do. Right. But I, I have a dagger that whenever you parry and I was able to further upgrade this dagger not only just to make it stronger, but then you can go to the. In your home enchantment table. In the, the enchantment table. And the enchantment table helps you kind of further upgrade it. Although it's permanent. So if you upgrade a thing and you maybe click something you didn't like. As much freedom as this game gives you, once you enchant something it's enchanted, you cannot disenchant it and take it back, which kind of sucks. It's like it tells you this is a permanent thing. Kind of a bummer with how free and sort of experimental the rest of the combat can be. But I would this thing, I enchanted it to wherever if I parried somebody, the person that I was parrying would get crazy fire damage that would like, you know, damage over time sort of thing. And I loved doing that. But as soon as I equipped another dagger, I no longer had a parry. Which just doesn't make sense to me because it's.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Because it's the same button, right?

[Greg Miller]

It's the same button, right. So if you only have one dagger in your hand, your left click is attack and your right click is to parry. But if you put two daggers in each hand, then each click is each hand attack. Right. And I, I still wish that like I wish there was an option that just made left click attack with both and then right click still parry. Because it just doesn't make sense that I can. If I'm only holding one knife, I can parry with that one knife, but if I have two, I can't parry with that one knife. Still. It doesn't.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Just would like to use the solder button or something like that. Yeah, just a second option just doesn't.

[Greg Miller]

Make sense to me. So I wish that that option was there. But since it's not there, I did switch back to sword with one when I'm doing melee stuff, just a one handed sword and I could parry. And then the other option was I have dual pistols. And so if you charge, if you hold down the attack button with the gun, it will charge and take a bit more stamina off, but then it'll like do a much tough, much stronger shot. And having both of those and charging both of those, it feels awesome. I feel so powerful and ridiculous.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The one thing though that I found playing is I eventually was never using my secondary. Like I wasn't switching weapons.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, I switch all the time. I switched so much that I upgraded the ability that gave me a faster quick swap so when I shoot I could switch to my melee stuff. And I upgraded it so far that not only do I swap my weapons faster, but when my guns are not equipped, they reload. That's nice and it's awesome. And, and I. So that's how much I am kind of using that. Paris, what war were you rocking?

[Paris Lilly]

So you, you mentioned this way earlier, which is another quality of life feature in here. The economy to respect is pretty, pretty reasonable. So you're almost encouraged to respect and find what works for you. So I ultimately fell into kind of this weird hybrid of fighter range and wizard abilities that, that I used. So that like I was saying before, my, my main go to was my grimoire book and I was using a pistol that, that had the shock perk to it. My secondary was a sword that I wind up enchanting and I had this poison perk on it, and along with giving me a boost in stamina, and I think. And I think even my shield wind up giving me a boost, in essence, as. As I'm upgrading it up. And I found that that balance of I was going back and forth, depending on and also utilizing my companions as well and their abilities. Abilities against certain. Certain enemies. Like, all right, I'm gonna take. And I was screw her name up, but Yatsley, right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Paris Lilly]

Yes. Lee like her.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That.

[Paris Lilly]

That essence bomb that she'll drop on people.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I'm very cool.

[Paris Lilly]

Constantly using that with her. Kai, I would take advantage of. Of his range pistol that he'd be able to use if I was using.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

For me, I was using his Hulk smash, where he was like, fly.

[Paris Lilly]

Yeah, yeah, you can do that too.

[Greg Miller]

Upgraded that one to the point where he gets. The more enemies that are around. Not only is it a larger AOE thing that hits, but the more enemies that are around that he does hit, he gets more. More and more health back. Really love that one. Keep going.

[Paris Lilly]

Yeah. No, no, no, no. I was just gonna say, like, with Giada, she's like the healer. So I bring her in, like, especially earlier on when I was really getting my butt kicked in combat, use her to constantly try and heal. She has that barrier that she can put around people, stuff like that. Maris is probably the one I use the least. Me too, as a companion. But I loved his root, especially if you upgraded it, his root ability, because it also had a poison effect to it as well, or bleeding effect as well, if you upgraded it really like that. So. So you could take some in a horde of enemies and get them stationary, and then they're immediately bleeding, and then you can attack them using other. Other different ways. But another thing which I kind of alluded to was those totem fragments, because if you take the time to get those and get. I think it's six of them along with hand, you're gonna get other perks that you don't have to spend ability points into your character because they're basically. It's almost like passive. Passive ability points that you're getting because you're. You're being rewarded for getting those Sonos. So I took advantage of that, and I would spec my build around that. Like, okay, I'm gonna get extra stamina here. I'm gonna get extra essence here. You know, I'm gonna get more damage here. I'm gonna get fire resistance because of this. This other passive ability I got from the. From the. Totem fr. And then I'll spend my other points into other things that will supplement that and, you know, improve my character. So that's kind of how my approach to combat was. I tried to be super nerdy about it, like, all right, well if I do this here, then I'm going to be able to do that over there and blah, blah, blah, you know. And it was good. Like I said, I really enjoyed the combat and I think that's what really pushed me forward through the game was I was looking forward to getting into different encounters because I wanted same thing.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

To try out stuff wandering the living lands and I'd see I'm going from point A to point B and there'd be enemies faction. I'm fucking these guys up. Come here, stupid Beetle. I'm killing you. I'm doing this. You know what I mean?

[Greg Miller]

I had a really. I had a really cool perk on one of my pistols that I upgraded to because for a while I was doing pistol with a dagger. And I only did it because of this one perk that I had where if I would get a crit shot with my pistol, it would suck the enemy towards me to melee range and then I would start wheeling on. So there's. There's a lot of cool creativity that sort of happens in addition to all of the, you know, I didn't go wizard class, but like Paris, you bring up Marius's sort of root entanglement ability. I was a rogue, so I went with that anyway. That was my ability. So I was like, Mars, you're kind of just like, not only are you not super entertaining and not only do I like, if you were super sick, I would have had you in my party regardless of your powers. Nobody's really like that. You know, this wasn't. I'm gonna get a lot of hate for this anyway because Dragon Age Veil Guard largely not loved by a lot of people, but I love so many of the MVPs or any so many of the NPCs. Little Freudian Siber right there. They're all MVPs for me. But for the. The NPCs that I'm like, you know what? I don't really vibe with your combat style, but I love having you in the party.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yep.

[Greg Miller]

And you have such cool things to say. Never felt that about any of the people here until, you know, until recently where I'm getting a bit more threads that I'm kind of enjoying narratively before.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

We way because I do want to. The one thing we haven't talked about when we're talking about how much we like combat, we're talking about the, you know, dual wielding, and we're talking about the switch between weapons. We're not talking, I think, effectively about how you're using your companions and how you're using your abilities.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Thank you.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

So, of course you have your weapons. Yeah. But then, at least on controller, right, you hit LB in a fight, right. And you bring up a wheel. It's just a tap. It brings up the entire wheel. And then you have your abilities that you've chosen to unlock via your skill tree as you've been going. But then for the two companions, they have their own section with the abilities you've unlocked for them. And that's where you're getting the Hulk smash. You're getting the entanglement. I did entanglement for me as well, but then I also used the stealth one where I would go invisible so I could sneak around and then use this same. This godlike blade that looks like the omni blade that looks like the dagger from Dragon Age to stab people from behind for double damage or whatever. And so that's where you really get into what are you using in combat? What do you need both from your tree and then what do you need from your companions that you're bringing along with you? And it was the thing again, where for me personally, as we start to move now, more towards narrative and what. These people are never connected with any of these companions. And also, I feel like the game, it has pivotal choices more down the line than in the beginning. There's two ones that are like, oh, there's a before and after for this choice, but, like, not enough. Again, this is similar to my argument about Dragon Age, where I really wanted more of those to have more permutations. But I will compliment it on the fact that I was running with two characters. I don't want to get any spoilery things here. Two characters. I was presented with one of the major choices I chose, the one that I was like, well, clearly this is the right choice. This is the good choice. And those two companions flipped out on me about it. And I was like, well, guess what? You're riding the pine the rest of the show. I liked your abilities more than the other two abilities, but fuck you both. You're not with me. You're not ride or die. Then I'm bringing these two people.

[Greg Miller]

I think there are cool moments, just not nearly. Not nearly often as I would want them to happen.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And again, like, for the side missions I did and I Not nearly as exhaustive as Paris throughout his 50 hours. Right. But again, for the first two islands or areas, I was very much like, I'm doing everything. Let's do it all. There I was finding it few and far between where it wasn't just my parents. They turned into dream thralls. Can you go? I went and killed them all. They're dead. That's sad.

[Paris Lilly]

All right, bye.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Thanks. Here's some gold. Like, all right. Like, there's a great one. There's a bathhouse there. Right. That was a really cool mission that I. That I was like, oh, wow. Not only is this a cool mission in terms of this world, it's a cool mission in terms of me as a character. Because I'm making a choice here. And it is very much. There are. It's. It's black, white, and red of like, what shade are you making your character like, that's cool. I wanted more of that. When I think the overall majority of what I played side mission wise was, can you go do this? All right, you did it. Thank you. Here's money. Even the bounties where I was like, all right, I'm kind of. I was with Andy. Like, I did all the bounties twice. Then it was like, all right, well.

[Greg Miller]

I wanted a twist if I need cat.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. Paris, I'm sorry.

[Paris Lilly]

Did you do it? Because this is scatterborn in the third area. Did you do the one side mission where it was. No, I know. That's why I'm going to be vague. The graffiti.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No, it's on my thing. I haven't done it yet.

[Paris Lilly]

That one's pretty cool. And then there's another again, and I don't.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I want to be so clear that, like, I like this game. You should play this game if you like, open RPGs, new open zone, open world, whatever. But it's like, there are interesting quests in this. There are interesting beats in it. But then it's like. Like, overall, back to my thing in the size and the scope. The amount of times where I would turn off captions just to watch the scene. And it is just the guy standing there talking like this. And it's like, yeah, this feels like it isn't a Bethesda game, but it feels like what we all think of a Bethesda game. And I love a Bethesda game. But it's like, again, bumping up against those walls where it's like, oh, this is what this is.

[Greg Miller]

It's got that sort of old school jank to it. Yeah, in a lot of moments where I may have a. I may have just completed this really pivotal side quest. And it's emotional and it's like one that I actually was like, super stoked to do, and you end up murdering somebody and it's like a really kind of tough moment, you know? And then your NPCs like, nice shot. All right. And the person's like, there. And it's like, oh, it's nice to.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Work as a team.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. I didn't need you to sort of like pop in here with your character bark at this moment. You're really sort of like, harsh in the vibe right now. But I think the reason why I've mainly, you know, I won't say I'm 100% everything, but I'm like 98% everything where I've done so many of the side quests. And the reason I have been doing them all is not because I'm like, I just want to live in. It's because I'm sort of chasing the hope that I will get more of. Of the obsidian that I want. And I've been kind of led down by a decent amount of them, more than I would like.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

So here's a big question I have. Listening to you review this game, now that we've reviewed it and we've said our piece, are you gonna keep playing or are you gonna move?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, I wanna beat it. Yeah. Cause I'm again, I'm at the point right now where the game is a lot more enjoyable to me now because of the zone I'm in, because of the characters I'm dealing with, because of the writing I'm dealing with, because of the sort of political implications of. It was always a really cool thing from the start. You are with the Empire. You are a fucking, like, I don't know, captain in Darth Vader's Empire. And you're out in the world doing stuff and you're seeing these people being affected by your fucked up empire, and you're like, I know they're doing messed up things, but, you know, I'm just kind of the messenger. I understand. And. And I really like the moments where the game asks you, are you. Are you willing? Are you willing to sort of just go with the company status quo, or do you want to show these people I'm not like them, I'm not a part of that system. And yes, like, I'm not like a captain for them. I'm just like this other person who's still kind of with them. And that introduces a lot of really cool kind of character interactions. I just, I wish they went like the extra mile with it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It agreed 100% against the bumping up and especially the ending with it, which I won't talk about, but the ending with it where I was like, oh, okay, pairs.

[Paris Lilly]

Yeah, yeah. To avoid any spoilers, this is the two people I did talk to about the game. Just, just to get, you know, kind of comparison stuff during the process. What I found out is your decisions do matter in certain encounters that you're eventually going to have. So the choices that you made, like, there was certain things that I did that they're like, I didn't do that, I didn't see that. I didn't encounter that. And they're like, oh, I had this. And I'm like, I didn't do that. So. And it, and it turns out, sir, well, I chose this, it took me down this path, they chose something else and it took them down another path. So look, I, I get it that not everybody's going to want to go back and replay a 30, 40 hour RPG, but it almost seems like they're setting this up that I am definitely curious to go back and play it differently, to make different choices to see. I want to experience the thing that he experienced. Oh, you got this weapon because of that. I didn't get that weapon. I want to get that, you know, So I, I, I think that is there as well. And that's why I said at the beginning, I do think there's definitely layers to this game, whereas you can play it just straight up as just your standard cookie cutter RPG. All right, I played it 20, 25 hours, rinse, repeat, I'm done. Or you can kind of dive in even deeper into the layers and there's more to discover.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think I just wish you rewarded me for diving in. I know that you've, you've dove in. You feel like it has, whereas the stuff I was doing, I just, okay, this isn't worth it. I'm gonna just go through and do it.

[Greg Miller]

I think what, I think maybe the first side quest I experienced was why I was so high on this game in the first, like couple hours. Because I, it just had a really kind of cool story and neat discoveries about the world because again, much like Paris, I don't know anything about the Pillars universe.

[Paris Lilly]

No.

[Greg Miller]

But seeing what this character was going through, immediately I was like, oh, cool. If we can keep diving into this and see the way other people are affected by this certain aspect of their world and I just. I don't know, I. I never feel like. I. I never feel like I quite got there. But again, in this third zone that I'm in, I'm getting a lot more of what I want. And I wish if the rest of this game was like this third zone, I would be way higher on this. It's just, just the first two zones. I feel like, aside from a couple of like neat things that happened, I. I was largely left a bit underwhelmed. So. Yeah. So I have like a bunch of other notes here. Let's see.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Really quick jumping off of that. I want to give some praise to the team over at Obsidian because when I first jumped into this game, not having the pillars background, you are smacked with it over the mouth right away. Like, oh man, I don't. A lot of jargon, I don't know any of this. What is going on. And they have a nice little dialogue glossary. Every single time you talk to someone, there will be highlighted words of like, hey, we know you're not going to know what this is. If you press X, you can jump in, you can read all about pauses.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The conversation so you can read through what they're talking about.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Because it is overwhelming. The first probably hour, you're gonna jump in, you're gonna go, I don't know, let's calm down a little bit and you're gonna wish it went a little bit slower. But great job on that. I really enjoyed like the dialogue options. I think they really push forward of like, hey, you have options here. If you want to be of your envoys, a certain class, you can do this option. Or hey, if you've gone into Persuasion, you can do this. Or you can just be Mike and say, you know what, we're fighting. I think there are more times than not. I just went straight to now, we're fighting now, no more conversation. I really enjoyed that in the dialogue tree.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. To keep praising them about their lore thing. Final Fantasy 16 first did it. It. From what I know as a gamer in my experience, but with. With Final Fantasy 16's active time lore.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yes.

[Greg Miller]

Where you could pause any cutscene and you get the Amazon prime tv. What do they call it? DNA. Amazon. What do they call it whenever you pause an Amazon show and you could see what actors are in the scene and what they've been in and who their character's names are.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

X Ray.

[Greg Miller]

X Ray. Thank you.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I was like, I have to know.

[Greg Miller]

Loved, loved seeing that in Final Fantasy 16 and being like, oh, thank God. I am so Bad with my adh, it's hard for me to stay immediately focused and I'll catch myself slipping focus wise. And to be able to pause the cutscenes in Final Fantasy 16 and see who the characters are, what factions are with what the implications are. Awesome stuff. The same thing here. I'm so glad you brought that up because I. I want this to be standard here. I learned so much more about this world where an E A word could just kind of come and go and it slips and you're like, I'll hopefully remember that later on if I decide to open up the glossary or whatever. But having those cutscenes and, you know, you bring. You hit pause and there's all the. Those magical terms. You're like, what world is that that they're talking about? What. You know, what's a nimdu to like, what the.

[Snow Bike Mike]

What are all these.

[Greg Miller]

What are all these terms? And having all those definitions there. Super great. And I. I love that. Really, really big fan of that.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Guys, as we start to ramp down, I of course want to open it up to any of you that might have. Want to hit on something that we didn't hit on. I do want to bring in, of course, just to kind of piggyback off of that, the community. Once again, the Coulson writes in and says, does this push any of you to jump in and maybe check out Pillars of Eternity?

[Greg Miller]

No.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Not at all. No.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It does. I like, again, I know this has been a critical one or seven five calling a game good. I might as well call it Dog shit. This is one where I do get go. Like, man, I. I hope that there's a quiet period to reroll a character, because I would like to do a new character and just go and be the asshole.

[Paris Lilly]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And just be like, no, my emperor says this. Fuck you and see how that plays out and what that does and how that changes the effects. Because even playing this and not having talked to anybody, I was like, oh, man, I do wonder what that choice does versus what the choice I'm doing and how that's all going to play out.

[Greg Miller]

Now. The only reason I say no immediately to the pillars thing is I. I think I've always sort of loosely been interested in that game anyway because it is so highly regarded. But this game didn't in any way make me want to play it more.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

Like, this game didn't say, like, whoa. I know I'd been holding that game off for a while. It's been in my backlog now I need to go. It's like, it didn't really encourage me to go do that more. And I, I don't necessarily think that's like a, a bad thing either. It's just like to me, if they. Out of nowhere we're like, you know what? It's actually not part of the universe. Like I, I just, I don't know as somebody who wasn't really aware of this universe anyway, it just, it doesn't feel like there's a whole lot to make me grasp onto Paris.

[Snow Bike Mike]

How about for yourself?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Are you muted? You muted. You muted. When you sneezed, you muted yourself.

[Paris Lilly]

I had the most sarcastic response all queued up and I just blew it. But no, I disagree with both of you. And yes, I would like to know more about the Pillars universe. So if time allows. Yeah, I would love to check out one of the other games.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay.

[Snow Bike Mike]

That's great, guys.

[Greg Miller]

I, I just got a bunch of like things kind of listed here. I love that. Loot shimmers. You have a shimmering sound effect like loot boxes in Fortnite.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I.

[Greg Miller]

So you didn't know where they're at.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I love that as well. I love the shimmer sound. I love a good treasure chest. Also amazing. This is the first RPG my son's ever played. My three year old son was running around playing a vow on my controller. I sent Xbox the video so they got to see it. But every time we go to a treasure, just treasure. I'm like, I know Ben. This is what this game is. Isn't it fun? The one thing I would say is, and I know Steve Saylor, of course, Blind gamer Steve is doing a review of this and I want to check it out because I thought accessibility options were lacking. Because what I went in is I was having trouble all the time spotting the loot from kills on the ground. I don't know if this is just a Greg thing, but it was like I'd have to look at the map and see the X, which of course awesome that it says that. I love that when a game get does that. But I'd be running towards like, where is it in the bush? Like I wanted to be able to put on a thicker outline and I couldn't.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, I don't disagree. There was a lot of. I mean, I don't know, I just kind of ran around and no, I found it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, I mean I didn't fucking leave it. Trust me.

[Greg Miller]

I don't. I don't disagree.

[Snow Bike Mike]

You want to leave some treasure?

[Greg Miller]

Let's see. I really Enjoyed that. Whenever you sort of start to bond with an NPC and you start kind of like learning more about them, eventually they'll be like, anything you want to learn from me? And you could talk. And then you'll be like, yeah, sure. And they give you a couple things that you could learn from or they could give you, you know, let's say they're good at magic. So they might have, they may be an intellect type character with a whatever, I don't know, type character. And then you could be like, get a little boost. Yeah. Or. And then you could be like, you know what? Kind of teach me whatever you want to know. And they'll be like, all right, I'll teach you. You know, kind of mixture of everything. I'll give you a mixed bag. And then you get added stats after you talk to them more. So you're kind of rewarded for doing that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Like, hell yeah.

[Greg Miller]

One thing I don't love is that I feel like a lot of these conversations with people in the world, you're given the option. And I, I love talking my way out of situations as much as I love combat in games. You know, I love just seeing how I can talk my way out of something. Just like, what are the devs going to do here to see exactly what the dialogue is going to be here to make this character? How am I going to trick them? How am I going to lie to them? How am I going to convince them? I really enjoy that about RPGs and a lot of them could be solved with resolve and intellect. And I feel like that's been a massive majority of the ways that you could get out of conversations if you have the resolve stat or the, or the intellect stat. I'm not a mage, so I never put into intellect, collect and resolve. I eventually started putting more stuff into resolve, which means that I didn't put stuff into my other rogue stats that I need. But resolve is when you hover over what the resolve stat is. It's like if you're a hard hitting warrior that wants to, you know, be in the thick of it or whatever. And that's not me either. Like I'm a, I'm a rogue, I'm a kind of archer guy. But the amount of situations that relied on resolve and intellect, it's like, well, I'm not putting any stats into that. I guess I should start putting it to resolve. But, but the things that you're telling me those stats are for don't really apply to me. But I'm. The amount of situations that I'm seeing where it's like, wish I had a resolver intellect there. It's like, all right, well, I gotta start specking into that, even though those aren't meant for my rogue type of character. So I wish I. I wish maybe resolve, the description was a bit more like, it's good for, you know, resolving situations.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I have it pulled up. It's very much talking about second wind here. Right. And lethal damage or whatever.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Good for warriors who need to swing heavy weapons and survive. Kids. It's like, well, that's not me either. None of these apply to me. But the majority of conversations that I could talk my way out of required either of those.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Yes.

[Greg Miller]

And that sort of sucked early on, so I eventually started doing stuff like, I started putting points into that. But I wish resolve also said, I wish you said intellect and resolved really used for a lot of conversations.

[Snow Bike Mike]

You know, guys, anything else that you want to praise or maybe just discuss really quick?

[Paris Lilly]

One thing I forgot to mention before just exploring the land is you'd look at something and go, can. Can I get up there? Can I climb up to that? And a lot of times you could.

[Greg Miller]

Great parkour.

[Paris Lilly]

You know, not every time you're rewarded with something, but, you know, you. You find like, oh, hey, that was worth it that I took the time to go explore that and see if I could climb up to the top of this thing or whatever the case may be.

[Greg Miller]

And.

[Paris Lilly]

And I'll bring up again, I. I found the. The treasure hunt, the treasure map stuff to be pretty fun, in my opinion, because they didn't hold your hand. They kind of just gave you a picture of where it was. And then you have to figure out in that zone where that picture is. And then even when you figure that out, there's usually some kind of secret cave or button or something you got to push somewhere to actually get to where the treasure is. Not all the rewards on it were decent. I mean, some of them were actually pretty good. But again, I enjoyed my time doing it.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Mantling and parkouring. Fantastic.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Freeze in the water, like you said. Or electrifying. As a. A spellcaster. The whole time that I've played, it's been a lot of, like, using the environment to my advantage. Oh, I'm parkouring. Freeze that. Now I can jump on it and jump off that I'd like.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, really excellent stuff. I want to echo that from Paris. So, like, this falls into. I think one of the great things this game does is the level design is what it. It's Laying it out and making it a jungle gym slash world. You can scale. You can go, I want to get up there. How do I get up there?

[Greg Miller]

And. And forgiving enough to where there's been. There were a couple times where I'm like, oh, you have that split second moment when you're mid air. Like, I under jump this. I'm not gonna hit this ledge. It's gonna take forever to get back up here. I'm already annoyed. But it'll, you know, give you the grace every. You know, a lot of times where you feel like you're gonna miss a jump, your character will still sort of mantle. So, yeah, parkour and traversal in this game. Really, really damn good. Very enjoyable.

[Snow Bike Mike]

One thing we didn't really stick on was those boss fights. You will have a number of encounters where you will find someone with a large boss fight health bar. Did you notice a lot of flavor to that where they were hitting you with different moves? Is it always a big ogre that kind of just does the charge and the big shield? Smacker, did you run into some other flavors?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I found none of them to be remarkable.

[Snow Bike Mike]

The late.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The latest one that I did, I was like, oh, okay, you were wearing a funny hat and you spun. You spun a bit to attack me. But this is kind of where I jotted down the note of, like, again, there's all this stuff to do. And again, the scope, the scale bumping into the walls, going through the first two areas of bounties and doing them all. Just being like, all right, like, I'm killing things, which is fun, but it's not. And I don't need the money, and I don't feel like I'm getting something out of this narratively. So, like, why am I doing this other than to do it? Would my character, I'm trying to be right now do this on our giant open quest to do this? So they didn't stand out to me, but that was just me.

[Greg Miller]

I agree with Greg. They didn't really stand out to me either, aside from having, like, a name, you know. Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, exactly. Oh, there's a health bar. This is important.

[Greg Miller]

Yes.

[Paris Lilly]

Spin it this way. I don't necessarily disagree with what you're saying as far as the boss is doing something drastically unique that made them stand out. But what I found on this kind of goes into what you're talking about, Andy. There was one boss where. And this is water cooler talk where I found out. I thought I was talking to this boss to resolve the issue peacefully, and then it Wind up just turning in all hell and fighting all these different creatures. And I wound up killing the boss and doing my thing, talking to someone else. They were able to successfully talk to this boss and resolve it peacefully. And then now that boss and its creatures became allies of yours in that. In that region, they didn't attack you anymore. So I was like, oh man. So that. That was cool in that regard. And then there was another one, actually, this one. The. The. The level they showed that people got hands on during Gamescom because we. We got to play it at Gamescom la. And I know they did it at Gamescom proper. I did that, that mission in the game and the end result that I had with that boss, I did it completely different than I did during the preview. And then something really cool happened as a result. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, so I don't think it's necessarily about all the bosses are doing these. These crazy things that, you know, you got to find the cadence to figure it out. Yeah, the combat is very similar with the bosses with a bigger health bar as they are with the other enemies. But I do think in results, how you encounter them can. Can have rewarding results. If. If that makes sense.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That makes sense.

[Greg Miller]

And I love the physics system as well. Like being able to. Yeah. Once you're sort of overpowering dudes. It was a great moment where I'm in this zone that's has like a massive sort of hill decline and the enemy's sort of above me and my squad mate does something that makes them ragdoll and they just start sliding down this hill with no hope in hell. Because like, like I. The game is telling this npc. Once you have, you know, footing, you'll be able to get up, but the characters, like, they're just like, they're trying to recover, just sliding down this hill because the physics never, ever caught up for them. And once they got back up, I, you know, immediately dual pistol charge headshot them and their. Their body flies again. It's a lot of fun whenever things happen like that.

[Snow Bike Mike]

That's great. Well, that has been the kind of funny games cast avowed review to go around. One more time, just your score and your final thoughts before we get out of here. Paris, I'll kick it with you. What was the score again?

[Paris Lilly]

My final score was a 9.5. I thought this game was excellent. I really. It really resonated with me as a nerdy rpg. And like I said before, I think this is the first big game of the year. For Xbox did a great job. Congrats to Obsidian.

[Snow Bike Mike]

I like that that Greg Miller I.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Think this is a very good game. I gave it a 7.5. I didn't get the story and companionship I wanted out of it, but I had a great time playing it. I enjoyed it. I never was like ugh, I got to play more about tonight. Never, never never never. I enjoyed that moment to moment combat and that discover and exploration. And again, if they do an Avowed too, if they do DLC for this, I'll be first in the line to play it.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Wonderful. Andy Just to wrap us up, I.

[Greg Miller]

Had the asterisk because I'm not finished with it yet but I do want to keep playing it and see it through because I'm enjoying it more than I did. But so far I'm at a 7 out of 10. Good. And I know this whole episode was mainly a wine and baby baby crying fest for me over here. Just kind of complaining about a lot of stuff but a lot of it is because I I see the potential and I'm kind of disappointed by a bit of the potential even though I still think it's a a game that is very, very competent and very good and fun at a lot of moments.

[Snow Bike Mike]

Once again, Avowed coming to you from Obsidian Entertainment releases February 18th. But of course you can play early with that premium edition, five days early. So I'm sure we'll be seeing some comments down below of you jumping in to early access. If not, we will catch you hopefully in the comments later on once you go hands on. Let us know what you think of Avowed. Thank you for watching the review here on today's gamescast. Enjoy the stream after this and goodbye everyone.