Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Avowed Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

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What's up, everybody, and welcome to another kind of funny games cast for Thursday, February 13th, 2025. I'm one of your show host, Snowbike, Mike, and today we brought out the Xbox screen very, very special broadcast. Paris, Lily, how are you doing today? I'm doing fantastic, sir. How are you doing? 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-host 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 are we feeling as we get ready for tomorrow's game showdown? I got him right where I want him. 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 is the thing, Mike. 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. A lot of video games. You like Freedom Wars.

What's the fighting game that that developer? What's on? Name an NPC inside of Crash Bandicoot that isn't Crash Bandicoot. It's like, dude, only Tim's going to know that. But if I went first, I would have said Neo-Cortex. Of course, I didn't get to go first because I was in the lead because it was later. You were playing the game. It's right.

God damn. 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. Because Thursday night, I'm hosting the Dice Awards, 8 p.m. Pacific with Stella over on IGN.

Come check them out. Do you think I'm going to win? No, but I think I'm going to get in trouble. One of the jokes is going to get broken out. I'm going to get a lot of trouble. Nice. Okay. Hey, there you go.

There's a heads up if you're watching 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 a Vowd. 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 go back and watch. The horny's piece of content I saw. The hornyest episode ever is what they called it. It's hilarious.

It was a funny-ass. Yeah, funny-ass pot. I got to 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 Hey everybody Of course, I'm taking over today's Gregway

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 can talk about a gaming backlog, of course. You know what I mean? A whole bunch of different Benny stories. You know, I've cried a bunch on Gregway.

There's all sorts of stuff to go see. I love like you cry lately. That's beautiful. 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 was because I do them and they're

gone. They go out, they go out the window. I give you 20 minutes on my time. I answer the goddamn question. We live in the now. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Me and Andy got to beat Tim on game showdown. All right. That's all I'm thinking about. Of course, some housekeeping for you. If I could fast forward time of rewind, I think today's

kind of funny games daily will 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 Snowbike Mike and Sniper Elite. That's right. The Hunt is on. Oh, no. It's going to be a whole lot of fun. I've been playing a lot of sniper elite resistance. Oh, great. Cool. I haven't touched it. Awesome. Definitely fair for putting for everybody involved.

Let's play a game that only I've been playing. If you are a kind of funny member, don't forget today's Greg. 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, Omegabuster, and Karen Lindner. Thank you so much for your support. And thank you to our sponsors that are brought to you today, like Rocket Money, Shady Ray's,

and BetterHelp, but we'll tell you all about them in just a little bit. Guys, let's get to it. Ladies and gentlemen's and NBs, I have brought to you the three, team members here are kind of funny who have jumped on and done the review for a vowed, which is today's topic of this show. We're going to go through all three of you guys's reviews. We're going to talk about it in depth. Of course, a vowed 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, let's jump in to your reviews. Paris, I'll kick it off with you. Why don't you give me an amount of time you played? and of course your overall review on the kind of funny scale and just jump right into it. So before I give you time played and all the good things about a vowed. It's worth of you. None of us know what the other person thinks.

We haven't talked. I'm so excited here, Paris. Yeah, I have no idea what anybody thinks about this. So Mike, you and I did a show called the X-Cass, which was the best Xbox podcast ever in the history of video games. And for many years, I would say. say that Obsidian would wind up being the most important acquisition that Xbox has made in their history. I would also say that I've 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 a vowed. We're here. And with that said, I have put 52 2.2 hours into a vowed across it was like 30 it was 32.2 on steam and 20 on Xbox I played on the series X. I love this game. 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. Have you rolled credits? Oh, yes. I've rolled credits.

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. Wow. Whoa. Oh my God. I'm shocked.

That's so excited. That is how much. Yeah, that is how much I love this. And the funny thing is when I first started out, I was like, man maybe maybe this is okay and I'm not because I don't know the pillars universe I this is my first trip to the living lands right I don't understand the characters the factions just the 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 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 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 going to miss so much if you do, though. 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 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 to treasure. Where is this at? You get these totem fragments in the different regions that can help add to 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 Scatterborn. And I was like, oh, let me jump in there. Go down there. There's a fragment. And then 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 stand you got to find. That's just one little piece of things that you can do in this game.

I haven't even gotten to the combat. My God. At first, ah, yeah, I get the sword. I get the shield. I'll get the wand. I'll get the Grimmore book. Oh, 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 you'll see a certain quest that you can do you'll see skulls on them right once you get up to three skulls i mean it's way above your level at one point everything was three skulls i'm like oh my god what do i how do i i can't complete this how's how's this going to work turns out i needed to go find shit 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 Grimor 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 favorite load out wind up being,

I was using the shock pistol along with the grimo. And I just, in 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 a different build.

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 main go-to load out once I figured things out was my primary was my pistol and my grimor 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, okay, in hand combat, I would flip to my sword and my shield, not to mention I, 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 essence on this. Like, there's just so much shit. There's so much shit 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 to go 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 not telling you to go do. And 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 just a lot. So I know I'm dominating the conversation because I'm dying to hear what Greg and Annie thinks about this game. But I connected with this so much. I would like I said, probably around about hour 12 that I was just locked and loaded the rest of the way. That I loved it. To the end.

A lot of place. Love that. For me, I'm going to say for me, and then I'll hand it off. I get why Xbox deleted 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. Because I think this is potentially their first nine, ten, it makes it into the Keylees game of the year discussion. Definitely will

be an RPG discussion. 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 the Bissidian. Greg, it's your turn. I know you've rolled credits. So why don't you give me your time, your review and let's jump into your thoughts. 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 avowed, I beat it at a 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'm going to pretty much from this point on,

just do main stuff, right? Um, my thoughts on avowed, right? Uh, 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. 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. 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 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 it for me. Like the main quest I don't think is, 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 a 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 at camp. 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 and you know like, Kay in this game, right? Voice actor is Garris from Mass Effect, who I, of course, I romance. I love Garris. Sorry, sorry. Bad pronunciation on my part.

who I loved, right? But here hanging out with Kai, it was 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 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? At 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 garrup 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 time there, right? Lord Ludwin, or Lodwin, they got the oomelot over the oh, it screws me up every time. But she's this skeleton-faced person with the glowing red eyes. I'm sure we'll get to it eventually again or whatever.

I think very much a traditional video game villain of like, whoa, you look awesome. I can't wait to do. No, we never do anything really cool with you. Nothing. Okay, by the end of this or whatever. And then there's the fact that you're godlike, right? This is something we talked 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'd put there. So I think you have three plot lines there. and I think they all have an interesting seed and 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 and I can't wait to hear what you guys all think 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 spare a, uh, 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 trying to roleplay 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 to be it. But this one care, like I was literally, picking the dick option every time but shut up what are you talking about shut what are you you about me you know what you're alone yeah exactly and so it's like oh 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 uh paris anybody who knows chime in if they're doing dLC for this i'll be oh yeah we're doing an expansion to a vow i want to jump in i want to play a out. 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 do, I, Andy looked at my screen today who in 80 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 sword and board,

man. It's like how it was and I enjoyed it. But that meant I'm fighting the same 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. I like that. All right. Well, Greg, at 7.5. 7.5's right there. Let's move on to you, Andy. Of course, how much time did you put in what's your overall thoughts? What's that number? I don't know if I want to give it a number yet. You can give an asterisk number. Here's an asterisk number.

I would give it a 7 out of 10. Okay. Early on, though, I was more around a 6. Okay. How many hours then are you? I'm about 30, 31 maybe. And it's, you know, I was asking Greg in kind of comparing where we were. and he told me

if I mainlined it I could kind of get towards the end and you know I don't know maybe five hours or whatever but I knew I wasn't like the main review around 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 think my feelings are very similar to Gregs or I don't love my NPCs I don't love my squad mates

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. Oh, wow. Where I, and, you know, on the flip side of that, it's a completely, I think a completely good and serviceable video game. 100% if you're, you know, 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, a vows coming out soon. What if we play the outer world 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 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? Yeah.

And you do these bounties to get XP. And there, that's pretty much, income too. Yeah, good source of money, good source of income. And I kept on, I kept on wanting to, experience all of these bounties like just normal you're just doing it for the fuck 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 want to get to one of these bounty things and i'm going to go kill them and the person i'm going to go kill goes whoa don't kill me dude the person the the bounty master who sent you over here and i want like intrigue and go oh shit that person was crooked the whole surprise 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 20-ish hours for me to get here. I obviously have been 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 re-spec 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 your main hand, your off hand. Yeah, the main hand and off of 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 doing all these cool stabming 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 agree with Greg that 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 out in 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 I what will happen here unfortunately it was kind of boring it was just like oh oh you know the enemy just like oh you talk to me out of this cool you're good to go I was hoping there was a bit more there but 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, Balders 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 I love that for it. And I do think the world is still really damn lives. 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 going to be, oh, it would be. 20 RVG, you'll be in a nut, you know what I mean? Yeah, maybe if you mainline, you would,

but back to the difficulty spikes. Every time you go to 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 it, 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. 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 parry can i say one thing no no finch i do want to jump in to probably dissect it 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 a vowed and i re-rolled and started a new outer worlds and it was like man

wasn't 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 and joan 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 guy's wacky and this thing. And like, even in outer worlds, the first time you talk to the guy and you're like, yeah, it's my shipper, 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, when I talk about this, it's like, a vow 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. 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 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 shit, that's really cool. And I wish I was having that this whole time, uh, the whole past 20 hours. But, um, it's still like a lot of fun to play. I do love the kind of quality of life stuff where you immediately have transmogify. Yes. You can transmog any of your items.

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

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. You're right. We're going to go in depth in just a moment. Parents, why don't you wrap us up here on this first part of it? It was just, again, I had no idea of what either one of you thought. So it's fascinating to hear the different opinions in here, which are all valid.

I totally get it. But that's why I even said 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 have not seen. in quest 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, the first checkpoints, right? You're encouraged to go explore. And I'm right there with you.

To be clear, just so my reputation is unbesmirched. 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,

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 bath. 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 can blow past it. You got to come, like, no, the game does a great job of all that. But, like, to my point of, why? 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, uh, I, I think I've only not done about three side quests. Like, 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... 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 know. I had that happen to me twice so far with two different ones in different worlds.

I went back and like, I don't... This item isn't on the ground. That sort of stinks. So, you know, that happens with games that haven't been out yet. You get bugs now and then. But Snowycego, Michael, how much about have you played? And what do you 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. This episode's brought to you by Rocket Money.

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That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P-com, Kind of Funny. BetterHelp.com slash kind of funny. Welcome back. 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 Vowd, I think of Citi 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 out of worlds in kind of that comparison, which I'm excited to hear from you. But where do you want to start this conversation? I want to talk about scale and scope of it. 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 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 normity, 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. 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 grimroars or whatever, but for my build, there were certain powers I didn't have. So then it was this weird one of, okay, 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 companion's 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. I would then have to... Dragon Age fucking. I would have to go from where I open a map, 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 over there. Like a town portal and Diablo to be able to come back to where you were. 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. 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, through soul's dagger 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. No point I have my teammate. And then now you just kind of have it it's like oh fuck I don't need you you go back to the base so like I see the law 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? There'd be some narrative clutch of a crutch of being able to radio back and say, I'm doing this and they zoom through your eyes or something. Harris, you shook your finger though when I was talking about. What were you going to say? Well, because it goes back to what I said again. Like 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 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. I hear you. 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. I don't disagree.

I don't disagree. And that's my point. My point is you finish that quest that you're on. 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 another thing to 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 and get stuff, sell stuff, have ready to go. But one of my things was like, okay, I'm going to blow past this room that might have a treasure chest in it because I'm going to be able to pick it up in the next thing. I'm getting a lot of it. And also, 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 level on 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 I even worry about what's in the chest? You really wish you could re-edit your character. Okay. Yeah, you don't have that ability. Yeah, like change your hair in your face. Yeah, once you look the way you look, that's how you are, you know? 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 them know. Dear Obsidian. Dear Obsidian, dear all game developers. We need a disconnected beard and mustache. And when that option is presented, it's always a goddamn Shakespearean.

Yeah, yeah. No, I don't want to curl up to them. I don't want to curl up. I don't want that. Let me know. 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. Okay. But I used the makeup in the game. And I use freckles to give myself a ch- Like just great customization. Again, your first person, you can't really see your character, but still.

I was really deflated as I made generic Gibroni 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. Like, that sucks. I immediately was like, well, there goes the air out of my sales on this one. Um, otherwise I do think the character creator is like, fine, I, I enjoy sliders. I, I, I prefer the ability to, you know, um, playing Baldess G3 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. Yeah.

You know, like playing this, playing Montauna Wild, 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 characters. Where the environments, when I'm running on

full epic, you know, Paris can probably attest it is. He got the 4090s rocking. Paris got a 5090. Like, you know, running this game with ray tracing, the environments look fucking awesome. But here's the thing. I got a 4092.

I had to read about the Blaine 18 laptop. They lynch me so I can play it on the road. But I got it too. Thank you, Razor. Thank you, Razor. I got Greg's thing kind of humming, you know what I mean? I was watching the 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. 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 temporal anti-Ailicing,

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

Because I thought Greg had a nice one. I was like, oh, that looked cool, but everything else I didn't find anything that I loved. I chose the one that I just looked like a pretty little fairy boy. Okay. I got like the above my eyebrows just like a tiny bit of that sort of like purple sort of fungus look. And then and then I have like little pink spark.

I'm just a little pretty boy. Yeah, I like that. I'm slacking to assets a screenshot. I just took on my phone on the computer screen because that's how cool I am. Paris, what did you go with? Yeah. God likewise. Yeah, it's similar to yours bringing hairstyles into the sea.

I wanted the Angela Davis Afro and the one that I did. did like my my car i'll have to post it you can post it on here too but my character looks it's terrible it's not good but i was like we're just gonna power we're gonna power through this and we're just gonna 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 cut scenes and i'm like this you know what i mean so it's fine yeah i did leave godlike on though i didn't turn it off yeah i still couldn't do like the godlike where it was like your eyebrows are mushrooms

or your hair's mushroom so I did this thing that looks like a fungus like she's turning into Groot. Oh, that's good. Yeah, I called her Isley for, you know, Pamelaizing Poison Ivy right, gave her some green hair on the red there, put that in there, yeah. She looks like we have Melania at home, Andy. Oh, sure, yeah, yeah. Of course.

See, I think she looks like Batwoman too, do you to agree. You know, I want to bring in some of the community because I was looking at the avowed hypecast that Greg and Parris 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 menus? Are three, baby, you can toggle it on enough. The U button on keyboard. Get out of here, dork. I like that. Did you use that often?

No. Okay. No. I mean, once in a while, when I'd be like traversing the living lands, just running through the deserts, so 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 combat feels great, it looks great, it was just like the way to go. 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 third person and you kind of see like the way the character kind of like

twist their waist and stuff, it's like, it 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. Okay. If it were a lot better, I could see maybe going for that, but I still enjoyed first person a lot, you know. Let's dive into the combat. Sure.

Because that was a big thing. Real quick. Oh, yeah. Please, Paris. Greg, I'd select you my character. Oh, let's take a look at Paris' character. I got to download it and send it to bear. Hold on.

Oh, my God. Okay. I don't want to see the combat. Not a good sign when Greg says that. You don't want to hear it. Oh my God. Look for my computer. I'll go back.

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. Hey, boy, don't you know I got something going on? I'm sending to assets as well, Bair. Oh, we're sending everything over. Okay, well, you get to see everybody's character. Here we go.

You get to see my pretty boy with a mustache, silver hair. Got some, uh, I just, I just, I just, you know, I just look so, I'm just a little pretty fair. You look like, you look like, uh, Tony Howard Stark, Howard Stark. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I could see that. Again, you give me a second facial, you know, hair option, Mike, I would give myself. He would have a bit of a beard. I love that for you.

God, beautiful. So there's Andy right there. See, the mushroom eyebrows I can't do. Oh, really? I love it. It makes my skin crawl literally. The mushroom eyebrows here. It makes my skin crawl literally.

Now the first one. Show me Paris. I think the first default option you get, it looked 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, did something I 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. We're all zoomed in. Yeah, bring it out. Okay. Oh, you did the hair fungus as well. Yeah, way too much. Plastic surgery, by the way.

Look at those eyes and lips. What was that? So Paris chose the face fungus as well as the hair fungus. I did not choose the hair fungus. I only did like the little eyebrow thing. I turned it all off. I said I just want to be Mike.

Yeah. 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 hand 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? So I went sword and Bork. So I went, I originally was like, I'm going to be dual daggers. I was running dual daggers and I was running bone arrow on the bat 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 it 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 I... You could, but not

is easier. Which I feel like is something that could be fixed. and I wish it was personally close. Could be elevated. Because I like the pairing in this game. Like, you know, 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 audibly. Yeah. Audioli. It's awesome. It feels good to do, right?

But I have a dagger that whenever you pair, 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 end, 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 you, if I parried somebody the person that I was paring 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 because it's the same button, right? 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 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 just... I would like to use the solder button or something like that. Yeah, it just doesn't make sense to me. So I wish that that option was there. But since it's not there, I did switch back to a sword with one, when I'm doing melee

stuff, just so 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, much stronger shot. And having both of those and charging both of those, it feels awesome. I feel so powerful and ridiculous. The one thing, though, that I found playing is I eventually was never using my secondary. Like, I wasn't switching weapons anymore.

Oh, I switch all the time. I switched so much then. 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 I, so that's how much I am kind of using that.

Paris, what were you rocking? So you mentioned this way earlier, which is another quality of life feature in here. The economy to respect is pretty, pretty reasonable. So you almost encourage 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 I used. So that like I was saying before, my, my main go-to was. my Grimor 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 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 against certain certain enemies like all right I'm going to take a and I always screw her name up but Yatsli Yatsley right yeah yeah Yassely like her that that essence bomb that she'll drop on people I was constantly using that with her um Kai I would take advantage of of his range pistol that he'd be able to use if I was using for me I was using his Hulk smash where he was like flying yeah yeah you can do that too 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 and more health back really love that one I keep going very sorry no no no I was just going to say like with Giata 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 used the least 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 a bleeding effect, as well, if you upgraded it, really like that. So you could take a horde of enemies and get them stationary, and then they're immediately bleeding, and then you can attack them using 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 the stand,

you're going to get other perks that you don't have to spin ability points into your character because they're basically, it's almost like passive, passive ability points that you're getting because you're being rewarded for getting those items. So I took advantage to that and I would spec my build around that. Like, okay, I'm going to get extra stamina here. I'm going to get extra essence here. You know, I'm going to get more damage here. I'm going to get fire resistance because of this, this other passive ability I got from the, from the totem.

fragments, right? And then I'll spend my other points into other things that'll 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.

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 get into different encounters because I wanted to try out stuff. Wandering the Living Lands. And I I'd see, I'm going from point A to point B and there'd be enemy faction.

I'm fucking these guys up. Come up, you stupid beetle. I'm killing you. I'm doing this. You know what I mean? 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 wailing on. So 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, Marius, 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, and I'm going to get a lot of hate for this anyway,

because Dragon Age Vale Guard, largely not loved by a lot of people, but I love so many of the MVPs or so many of the NPCs, a little Freudian sip 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. Yep. 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 we go that 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 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. 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 that 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 this godlike blade that looks like the Omni Blade that looks like the dagger from Dragon Age to stab people from behind for like 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 the 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 pond the rest of the show. You know what I mean? I liked your abilities more than the other two abilities, but fuck you both.

You're not with me. You're not right or die that I'm bringing these two people in. I think there are cool moments, just not nearly often as I would want them to happen. And again, like, for the side missions, I did. And I, not nearly as exhaustive as parents 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 a, my parents, they turned into dream thralls. Can you go, I went and killed them? Oh, they're dead. That's sad. All right. Bye, thanks.

Here's some gold. Like, all right. Like, there's a great one. There's a bath house there, right? That was a really cool mission. 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 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 was with Andy.

I did all the bounties twice. Then it was like, all right, well. I wanted to twist it with cash. Yeah, Paris. I'm sorry. Did you do this? 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. No, it's on my thing. I haven't done it yet. That was pretty cool.

And then there's another one. And I want to be so clear that like, I like this game. You should play this game if you like open RPGs, 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, 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 like, I'm standing there talking like this. And it's like, yeah, this feels like it is in 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. It's got that sort of old school jank to it. Yeah. It's 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 MPC's like nice shot, all right! And the person's like there and it's like Oh it's nice to work as a team. Yeah I didn't need you to sort of like

hop 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 have mainly you know I won't say I'm 100% everything, but I'm like 98% in 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 the existence. It's because I'm sort of chasing the hope that I will get more 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. So here's a big question I have, listening to you

reviewed this game. Now that We've reviewed it and we've set our piece. Are you going to keep playing or are you going to move? Yeah, I want to beat it. Yeah, because I'm, again, I'm at the point right now where it, it, 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 mess up things but you know I'm just kind of the messenger I understand 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

agree 100% against the bumping up especially the ending with it which I won't talk about but the ending with it where I was like oh okay pairs yeah yeah to avoid Or any spoilers. This is the two people I did talk to about the game 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 make, 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 were like, oh, I had this. And I'm like, I didn't do that. So and it turns out, well, I chose this. It took me down this path. They chose something else and it took them down another path. So look, 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 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 and repeat. I'm done. Or you can kind of dive in even deeper into the layers and there's more to discover. I think the first- I just wish it rewarded me for diving in.

I know that 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 going to just go through and do it. it. I think maybe the first side quest I experienced was why I was so high on this game in the first couple of hours. 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 of course.

No, zero. 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 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 the first two zones, I feel like, uh, aside from a couple of like, neat things that happened,

I was largely left a bit underwhelmed. Um, so, yeah, I still have a bunch of other notes here. Let's see. I want to 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 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 this. It pauses the conversation. that you can read through what they're talking about. Because it is overwhelming. The first probably hour you're going to jump in, you're going to go, I don't know, let's calm down a little bit. And you're going to wish it went a little bit slower. But great job on that.

I really enjoyed the dialogue options. I think they really push forward of like, hey, you have options here. If you want to be 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, No, we're fighting now. No more conversation. I've really enjoyed that in the dialogue tree. Yeah, to keep praising them about their lore thing, Final Fantasy 16 first did it from what I know as a gamer in my experience, but with Final Fantasy 16's active time lore, 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 characters name. are. X-ray, X-ray, thank you. I was like, I have to know. Love seeing that in Final Fantasy 16 and being like, oh, thank God.

I am so bad with my ADHD. It's hard for me to stay immediately focused. And I'll catch myself slip in 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 want this to be standing. here going out. I learned so much more about this world where 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 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 nymdute? Like what are all these terms and having all those definitions there? super great and I love that. Really, really big fan of that. 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 Colson writes it and says, does this push any of you to jump in and maybe check out Pillars of Eternity? No. Not at all, no. Okay. 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 go like, man, I hope that there's a quiet period to re-roll a character. Because I would like to do a new character and just go and be the asshole. And just be like, no, my emperor says this, fuck you. And see how that plays that 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. Now, the only reason I say no immediately to the pillars thing is 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. Okay. Like this game didn't say it like, whoa, shit. I know I'd been holding that game off for a while. It's been on my backlog.

Now I need to go. It's like, it didn't really encourage me to go do that more. And I don't necessarily think that that's like 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 just, I don't know. 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 on to.

Paris, how about for yourself? Oh, you muted, you muted, you muted. And when you sneezed, you muted yourself. I had the most sarcastic response all cute 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. the other games. Okay. That's great

guys. I just got a bunch of things kind of listed here. I love that loot shimmers. You have a shimmering sound effect like loot boxes in Fortnite. So you didn't know where they're at. 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 3 year old son was running around playing a VAT on my controller. I sent Xbox the video so they got to see it. But every time we go to a treasure chest, I'm like, I know Ben. This is what this game is. Isn't it fine? 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 good does that. But I'd be running towards like, where is it in the bush? I wanted to be able to put on a thicker outline and I couldn't. Yeah, I don't disagree that. There's a lot of, I mean, I don't know, I just kind of ran around and I found it I didn't fucking leave

I don't disagree He wouldn't leave some treasure Um Let's see Um 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 for them 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, 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 a 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. You get plus for a mite. Like, how yeah. One thing I don't love is that I feel like a lot of these conversations with people in the world you were given the option.

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, you know, exactly what the dialogue's 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. 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 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 into resolve, but the things that you're telling me those stats are for don't really apply to me. But the amount of situations that I'm seeing where it's like, wish I had a resolve or intellect there, it's like, all right, well, I got to start speccing into that, even though those aren't meant for my rogue type of character. So I wish maybe resolve the description was a bit more like good for, you know, resolving situations. I have it pulled up.

It's very much talking about second wind here, right? And lethal damage or whatever. Yeah, good for warriors who need to swing heavy weapons and survive big hits. 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 have required either of those. And that sort of sucked early on. So I eventually started doing stuff like I started putting points in.

to that, but I wish resolve also said, I wish you said, intellect and resolved, really used for a lot of conversations, you know. Guys, anything else that you want to praise, or maybe just discuss really quick? One thing I forgot to mention before, just exploring the land is, you'd look at something

and go, can I get up there? Can I climb up to that? Yep, yep, yep. And a lot of times you could. Great parkour. You know, not every time you're rewarded with something, but, you know, you'd find it like, oh, hi, 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. And I'll bring up again, I found 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 always the rewards on it were decent i mean some of them were actually pretty good but again i enjoyed my time doing it yeah the mantling and parkoring fantastic freezing the water like you said or electrifying as 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 parkoring freeze that now i can jump on it and jump off that 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'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 we get up there? And forgiving enough to where there's been, there were a couple times around like, ooh, you have that split second moment when you're midair, like, I underjump this. I'm not going to hit this ledge.

It's going to 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 going to miss a jump, your character will still sort of mantle. So, yeah, parkour and traversal in this game, really, really damn good. Very enjoyable.

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 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? I found none of them to be remarkable. The latest one that I did, I was like, oh, okay, you were wearing a funny hat. And 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. 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. I agree with Greg. They didn't really stand out to me either, aside from having like a name

you know okay exactly oh there's a health bar this is important yeah it 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 wound 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 level they showed that people got hands on during Gamescom, because we got to play it at Gamescom, LA, and I know they did it at Gamescom proper. I did 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 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 that makes sense that makes sense and i love the physics system as well like being able to yeah once you're sort of overpowering dudes um it was a great moment where i'm in this zone that has like a mass sort of hill decline and the enemies sort of above me and my squadmate does something that makes them ragdoll and they just start sliding down this hill with no hope in hell because 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 you know immediately dual pistol charge, headshot them, and their body flies again. It's a lot of fun when everything's happening like that. That's great. Well, that has been the kind of funny games cast, a vowed 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? My final score was a 9.5. I thought this game was excellent. 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. I like that. Greg Miller? I 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 avowed 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. Wonderful. Andy, just to wrap us up. I 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 crying fest for me over here, just kind of complaining about a lot of stuff.

But a lot of it is because I see the potential. And I'm kind of disappointed by a bit of the potential. even though I still think it's a game that is very, very competent and very good and fun at a lot of moments. Once again, A VALD 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 AVoud.

Thank you for watching the review here on today's gamescast. Enjoy the stream after this and goodbye, everyone.