What a week Microsoft has had. On one hand, it published a clear game of the year contender in Avowed, a fantasy role-playing game jam-packed with surprises and inventive touches. On the other, it announced Muse, a game-making tool no one asked for that serves as additional proof that generative AI’s time is running out. The contrast here is stark: Avowed is such a revelatory experience in large part because its world feels meticulously crafted by a human team with a specific vision in mind. Tools like Muse threaten to displace those people. On this week’s Aftermath Hours, we talk about that.
We begin the episode champing at the bit to talk about Avowed, but first, The News: NetEase shocked the game-playing public by laying off members of the team behind Marvel Rivals, the biggest breakout success story to come out of the live service sector in years. What happened? Well, decaying relations between the United States and China, for one, but also a seismic shift in how Chinese companies are developing games.
Then we discuss Microsoft’s new Muse AI, which it intends on shoehorning into game development projects – a plan you will not be surprised to learn that nobody likes! Game developers least of all! This is especially pertinent considering that Microsoft just published Avowed, a fantasy role-playing game that’s so good because it was crafted by human hands in a way that feels tangible for every second of the experience.
We then talk about all the things we like about Avowed: The world design, the combat, the (slightly wonky) progression, and even the fact that your main character is a weird-looking cop who everyone regards with suspicion. Lastly, we decide which game console would work best as a house (Gamecube for humans, PlayStation 4 or 5 for roaches).
You can find this week's episode below and on Spotify, Apple, or wherever else you prefer to listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, make sure to leave a review so that we can write so many blogs about Avowed that companies will finally attempt to succeed at the Video Game Industry Value People Challenge (Impossible).
Here’s an excerpt from our conversation (edited for length and clarity):
Chris: [Microsoft] might as well just be an AI company at this point. They have services – whatever. The degree to which Microsoft is all in on this shit is so troubling that I worry from an existential perspective what happens when it all drops out. I wonder what happens to the game studios, I wonder what happens to Xbox, I wonder what happens to the very good games they seem to be investing in. It’s gonna tank a lot of things, and I know it’s small-minded to narrow it down to just this thing, but I’m looking at what’s in front of me, and I don’t want to lose that.
Luke: The [Muse] announcement almost felt like it was under duress, like it was a hostage video in some ways. Not Phil Spencer’s performance and input specifically, but just the packaging around the whole thing suggests that Microsoft is so overextended on AI.
Nathan: They’ve got to put it in everything, in every corner of their business.
Luke: Yep. “Xbox, it’s your turn. You need to come up with something. We need a name for it. We need some videos. Sell AI.”
Nathan: The crux of all of this – and this was true with EA’s AI demonstration last year, too; the one with all the cardboard boxes that looked like dogshit – is that companies keep going back to this notion of “We’re going to give you something that will help you come up with ideas.” That’s the one thing nobody is lacking! There are so many ideas! There are too many ideas!
Chris: Have you ever talked to a stranger at GameStop? They will give you ideas for video games unprompted.
Nathan: Admittedly, they’re not very good, but…
Chris: Yeah, often with the caveat of “I don’t know how to program or do much of anything, but…” But there’s no shortage of imagination. It’s not the expensive thing you need to automate. This is the thing: Games are so hard to make well that all they have is, like, a Magic Eight Ball or whatever the fuck they’re coming up with. It’s bad.
Nathan: I think it’s especially pertinent because we’ve all been playing Avowed, and one of the standout qualities of it is that it feels very deliberately handcrafted. You can feel the human touch of that entire studio everywhere you go in that game. And I saw somebody on Bluesky talking about it last night, saying that, in some ways, because it feels so designed, it does add this element of artificiality to it. It feels like a video game. But that’s not a bad thing in this case. I think it really accentuates the game's positive qualities.
Luke: The number one way they’re probably describing that is that you associate a game in that engine and in this setting with being a sprawling open-world Skyrim or Witcher kind of thing where you can ride your horse or walk around for days on end and not see anything.
Nathan: And you have all these big, empty landscapes.
Luke: This is a theme park RPG. This is a small open world, and you cannot walk over a hill or turn a corner without running into someone who’s in trouble or a bunch of mushroom monsters or something like that. There’s no vast wilderness here. There’s something everywhere. Because it’s not trying to be a realistic landscape, it’s like “This is a video game. You’ve got swords and spells, and you want to hit shit, and you want to kill things, and you want to save people. We are gonna put this stuff everywhere, and it’s gonna be super cool because you can do something at all times.”
Nathan: And [Obsidian is basically saying] “It’s gonna be so rich with things that we have written, that matter to us to convey.” The fact that that is everywhere, that it suffuses the whole project, is indicative of where their priorities lie compared to these other open-world games that are very big and sprawling but are maybe lacking in substance in other areas.
