What do you get when you cross the stylish, reality-bending, physics-defying visuals of a Doctor Strange movie and mix it with the fast-paced, endless shooting combat of DOOM, while also offering the world-building of an Elder Scrolls game? Well, you get Immortals of Aveum — Ascendant Studio’s debut title that was announced back at The Game Awards last year.
While the reveal trailer only teased the gameplay with a very short snippet, we were fortunate enough to have been invited by EA to get a deep dive into not only its gameplay but what seems to be a sneak peek at a much larger universe. Here’s all we learned about Immortals of Aveum in our first hands-off preview.
What We Learned About Immortals of Aveum From Our Closed Presentation
The History of Ascendant Studio Leading up to Immortals of Aveum’s Reveal
- Immortals of Aveum has been in development for over five years.
- Developed on the most up-to-date version of Unreal Engine 5 (UE5.1,) taking full advantage of nanite and lumen technology
- Its vision, however, has been one brewing in the mind of Ascendant Studio’s CEO, Bret Robbins (Creative Director on the original Dead Space, Call of Duty Advance Warfare and MW3, and other high-profile projects), for the last three decades.
- The idea came to Bret when he was going over some work for Call of Duty and got inspired to replace aspects of it. Like a helicopter with a dragon, soldiers with battle mages, and military weapons with magic-based weapons. It was at that moment that a vision had begun to form, with him and the team asking themselves where that game was. It was a game Bret wanted to make, an idea that has stuck with him throughout the decades.
- In 2018, Bret got together with his friend and studio investor, Brian Sheth, to found Ascendant Studios to help bring Bret’s vision to life.
- In the same year, Telltale Games announced their shutdown, leaving a vast void in San Fransisco North Bay development community. Bret had only just started prototyping his game but saw the shuttering of Telltale Games as an opportunity to bring in some incredible talent. Dave Bogan (Art Director) and Julia Lightblau (Associate Art Director/ Lead Level Artist) were some of the members of Telltale Games that were brought into Ascendant Studio.
- In the short months, the team grew from 1 to 25 and then eventually to 50, with members coming from studios such as 2K Games, Sledgehammers, Hanger 13, and Cloud Chamber.
- A few years later, the Covid-19 pandemic happened, hitting the studio hard as they transitioned from office to working from home.
- Despite the challenges, the studio continued to iterate and experiment with ideas every day.
- Covid-19, however, did introduce a big opportunity, as it allowed the studio to extend its team all over the country, growing from 50 to over +100 triple A veterans in less than a year.
- Soon the pillars of what defined Ascendant Studio started to form – Well-rested developers with an emphasis on work-life balance. A talented and ecologist collaborative design style. A place where purpose is paramount and where the process of making art answers the higher call of leaving the world a better place.
- Major publishers began taking notice of the studio, and amongst those were the execs at EA Originals.
- Lewis Harvey, the executive producer of EA Originals, played an updated demo that the team built. He was blown away and immediately ran it up the chain at EA. Lewis sounded like he had full and complete trust in what the team was building and believed that people were going to love to play and explore.
- Fast forward to December 2022, the team finally reveals to the world during the Game Awards Show, Immortals of Aveum.
General Game and World Information
- You play Jak, who is a Magnus, which is the studio’s term for Battlemage. Raised on the streets of Seren, Jak is what is known as an unforeseen, a person who doesn’t develop magic powers until later in life. His powers came to him after experiencing a great trauma that caused him manifest an enormous amount of magical powers.
- Jak is unique as he can wield all three known colors (red, green, and blue) of magics in Aveum.
- Jak is recruited by the Immortals, which are described as the special forces of the world consisting of the best of the best battlemages.
- Aveum is the name of the world.
- One of its features is known as the leylines, which are huge conduits of magical power running throughout the land.
- At the center is a giant, bottomless creator known as the “Wound” that grows every day.
- In the center of the Wound is a mile high statue known as the Pentasod, which is revered almost as a god.
- Aveum has been ravaged for over a thousand years by the Everwar, a war fought between the kingdoms (Rasharn and Lucium) for control over magic.
- Jak becomes a key figure in the war.
- Immortals of Aveum development has three core pillars.
- Be the Battlemage – Everything about Immortals of Aveum had to be about the fantasy of being an awesome, powerful, gunslinging wizard.
- Master Your Magic & Unleash Your Arsenal of Spells – The studio wanted fast and fluid first-person combat that used spells instead of guns that had a deep combing system and deep progression.
- Save a World on the Edge of Abyss – Want to tell an epic cinematic story with compelling characters and a story with amazing moments that people will be talking about for a long time.
Meet The Cast
General Kirkan – She is the grand Magnus of the Immortals and voiced by Gina Torres. From what we saw, she doesn’t appear to be some one-off character either, as she was prominently featured throughout the presentation and had plenty of screentime interaction with the main character.
Devyn – Described as the youngest green master in Lucium’s history. Played by Antonio Aakeel.
Zendara – Kaithus’ red master, hidden royalty. Played by Lily Cowles.
Jak – The main character you play who’s been described as “cocky.” He’s a triarch, meaning he has control of all three magic colors. They’re voiced by Darren Barnet.
Sandrakk – Your nemesis and leader of the Rasharn Kingdom. Like Jak, they, too, are a triarch capable of controlling all magic colors. Steven Brand will voice the character.
The Hand – Sandrakk’s lieutenant, played by Yvonne Senat Jones,
Gameplay and Features Details
- Cinematic to gameplay transitions are seamless.
- As a triarch, Jak can use all three colors of magic.
- Blue Magic – Straight, accurate long-range shot.
- Red Magic – Compared to a shotgun with high amounts of damage.
- Green Magic – Automic fire with projectiles that can hone in on targets.
- Jak powers are focused through his Sigils and argument on his hand. Players will be able to find new sigils, upgrade, and customize them for different playstyles.
- Rings, bracers, and totems can also be found and equipped, enhancing certain powers.
- Jak can cast a shield anytime. He can shoot through it, and the only penalty is that it slows movement down when in use.
- Using green magic, Jak also has a Blink spell that causes him to blink out of enemies’ attacks.
- There are spells known as control spells. The one shown off to us was essentially a whip that pulled enemies closer to Jak.
- Jak has more powerful spells known as Fury. One called the Shatter spell, which launched explosive spikes. These stronger spells will drain the mana bar, which can be replenished with mana crystals.
- Some enemies will have defensive measures and weaknesses that are exploitable by matching the corresponding magic type. A blue shield can be destroyed with blue magic.
- We were shown the gear menu, which had 9 equipable slots. It appeared that each gear had a level and certain stats and perks.
- Individual gear does change the player’s appearance.
- Blue, red, and green magic each have their own talent trees, where you can purchase new talents.
- Bret said in addition to gear and talents, there is a huge amount of ways players will be able to customize their playstyle.
- The user interface during combat looked very clean. No large amount of clutter.
- We were then shown different sections of combat, one including the dragon shown in the gameplay trailer and others sections showing some of the normal combat we can expect. It seems that all magic colors can be combo’d into each other and even used simultaneously, giving the impression that the combat will have lots of variety to it.
- Bret revealed that Immortals of Aveum will have loads of exploration and puzzle-solving, with Jak unlocking new abilities as he progresses. Lots of optional passes to take and hidden content to find.
- You’ll be able to return to previously explored areas to use newly unlocked abilities to unlock more areas.
- Another new spell was shown off called “Limpets” which allows you to slow things down, such as enemies and puzzles.
- Immortals of Aveum doesn’t appear to be open-world, but we were shown a variety of different locations that were all unique.
First Impressions (Hands-Off):
MP1sts was invited to attend a closed door presentation where we were able to see our first glimpse of Immortals of Aveum gameplay. While EA has released the official gameplay trailer today, the presentation had a bit more gameplay footage to chew on, as Ascendant also explained how the game’s magic system works, what each color stood for and so on.
Starting things off, how magic is portrayed in Immortals of Aveum is vastly different from say, Harry Potter (and in connection, Hogwarts Legacy). There are no stick-like wands here, but instead, each character wears an augment and uses sigil’s. Right off the bat, you can see that Immortals’ world is dark and has a serious tone.
It’s hard not to think of the Marvel’s Doctor Strange when you see the magic in action, as you can see familiar finger and hand movements in casting spells, as well as how they’re displayed on-screen. It’s a special effect bombardment that just — for lack of a better term — looks cool.
Based on the gameplay we’ve seen, Immortals of Aveum’s actual combat seems to be similar to how first-person shooters work, though you’re firing magic instead of bullets. It’s not as cut and dry as that, but if you’re curious how the combat would play it, that’s a simple explanation of it. However, Ascendant Studios kicks it up a few notches and you can see hints of id Software’s DOOM in it as well. I don’t know about you, but to me, that sounds pretty freak’n awesome of an idea, and one I didn’t even know I wanted until I saw Immortals of Aveum.
Even with the less-than-optimal way of digesting the gameplay and presentation, I could tell that visually, Immortals of Aveum was a title that truly looked to be a next-gen experience. It looked stunningly gorgeous, with buttery smooth performance and a spectacle of animations and particle effects that helped bring the whole magic theme of the game to life. And based on our short viewing, it seems that Immortals of Aveum is rather cutscene heavy. Not that there is anything wrong with that, especially given that the title is supposedly around 25 hours long.
If Immortals of Aveum ends up being as good as it looks come this summer release, then Ascendant Studios may just have this year’s sleeper hit upon us.
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