'Avowed' (Image: Obsidian Entertainment)
Obsidian Entertainment’s newest RPG title, Avowed, has been highly anticipated for many months and finally was released on Feb. 18. After being available for about a week now, the general consensus is that it’s quite fun to play with a great story and an interesting cast. So far, the game has achieved a 7/10 rating from both Steam and IGN. Despite the beautiful and unique design of the game, there are hiccups here and there of course, but Obsidian found some clever ways to utilize Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) to its advantage.
Avowed’s format and play style is similar to other Obsidian titles like The Outer Worlds being an open-world game focused on a smaller map than what you might find in some more massive RPG titles. The focus on a more controlled open world allows for a beautiful and manageable map in Avowed where there’s still plenty to notice and explore within The Living Lands. The game’s aesthetic, too, is nothing short of unique, with a bold pallet and towering buildings.
Being a game created with Unreal Engine 5, Avowed utilizes the features of Lumen global illumination and reflections, Nanite virtualized geometry and virtual shadow maps (VSMs). This time around, Obsidian took careful considerations when implementing these features into the game in order to use these tools in the most effective way possible without completely straining the game.
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For example – according to the Unreal Engine’s website – Nanite is designed to “render pixel scale detail and high object counts.” So when it comes to rendering a bunch of buildings or trees that one would find in an RPG, Nanite makes it so that the closer a player is to a tree or building, the more detail they will see on it but if it’s farther away, it will seamlessly blend into the background. Avowed achieves a very clean use of Nanite and many players have been impressed with its majorly consistent effectiveness.
In regards to Lumen, it seems that the quality of the feature varies depending on the console and in-game settings. Overall though, the feature is effective as it demonstrates Avowed’s immersive use of real-time global illumination. This allows for a deeper and more realistic picture of lighting throughout the game.
Obsidian has also opted to use a combination of virtual shadow maps (VSMs) and screen-space shadows to create details in the game. Because VSMs alone are designed to be high in resolution and detail, they naturally can take up a lot of memory for a game and can become an expensive feature for the developer. In order to allow for more memory space and to be more cost-effective, Avowed omits many smaller details from the VSM and relies on the shadows within the screen space to fill up those details instead. For the most part, gamers agree that it looks alright but the combination of features is noticeable when looking closely.
Avowed overall has shaped up to be a great fantasy RPG with most of its praise coming from the story and characters. And you’ve got to hand it to Obsidian for finding clever ways to efficiently utilize UE5.
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