Immortals of Aveum: the new man’s bet after Call of Duty

A dozen soldiers leap from a rocky cliff and spaceships fly over the desert landscape. An armor-clad knight speeds up to plunge his ax into you, while you quickly lean back to fire a bolt of electrifying energy at him. with your own hands.

You think he might be dead, but it only takes a few seconds to find out you were wrong. The battle continues, at a rapid pace .

Armed giants, flame-breathing dragons, armies of violent enemies and attack spells of different colors.

It’s like that Immortals of Aveum (2023), the video game recently released that immerses users in a fantasy world, where there are multiple scenarios to explore in first person.

off screen, In San Rafael, California, about 20 miles from San Francisco, Bret Robbins sits in his office. .

Contrary to the scenes described, the atmosphere is calm. although yes there are tables and figures with a high level of detail of the elements that appear in Aveum like a structure that seems to be made of steel.

Immortals of Aveum is the debut release from Ascendant Studios, a company he founded five years ago after a long career at companies such as Crystal Dynamics and Electronic Arts (better known as EA).

“I’m super excited, I want people to play it”, he comments to La Tercera the creative director.

In its history are several titles that have been appreciated by both fans and specialized critics.

Robbins worked in the teams of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011), Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (2014) and Call of Duty: World War II (2017) in addition to those of others like dead space (2008) —nominated for a BAFTA Award in 2009— and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), to name a few.

But now the focus is on Ascendant Studios and the beginnings of Immortals of Aveum a work that brings together aspects of what he has developed throughout his career, but which has its own distinctive character .

And the most important, a story and an individual game mode that promise to stand out this season.

In the video game developed by Ascendant Studios and published by EA, We explore the world through Jak’s vision .

“It starts quite humbly, like a street child, someone who has neither money nor family. He has friends who are kind of a band of thieves he is part of, but as events unfold he gains all that magic power. Robbins anticipates LT.

This leads him to become a combat mage, who enters into a huge eternal conflict – the so-called “Perpetual War” – which has broken out in the territory of Aveum For thousands of years.

In the middle of this plot “Immortals are the best of the best” . Robbins compares them to the US Navy Seal troops of reality, but taken to this magical universe.

And as expected, Jak ‘seeks to become one of them’ and ‘ends up being crucial’ trying to stop the war.

“SO, is an epic story spanning over 20 hours (of gameplay) “, adds the CEO of Ascendant Studios, “I wanted to take a lot of elements from movies and games that I really like, and put them together” .

In the wake of Robbins’ career, you are surely wondering which elements of the saga call of Duty Can be found in Immortals of Aveum .

On this point, the creative director acknowledges that his nine years of work on said title influenced the development of his new opus .

“The feel of the fight and the shot was paramount. The feel had to be nice, the controls had to be easy to use. The player had to feel them really smooth and flowing. The fight scenes had to be intense and heart-pounding, with lots of adrenaline ”.

He points out, however, that the objective was not to make “a call of Duty of fantasy” despite the fact that they share influences in the way of playing.

In this line, he points out to LT that Immortals of Aveum “offers lots of exploration, puzzles and story”, plus it has “lots of secondary and hidden content” in the different scenarios.

“You have many different acts you can do during the course . It was very important to me.”

One of the hardest things to nail down, says Robbins, was getting the combat system in place, because “magic is something different” develop.

Under this idea, he says that “This is not a game where you just cast your only spell all the time. » . “To be successful, you have to use many different tools” .

Along with that, he reveals that the decision to do it in first person was made early on, because – in this case – makes the experience “more intense and visceral, because it feels like it’s happening to you” through the personality and behavior of the characters found in Aveum.

Such characteristics, in addition to the details of the clothes, the landscapes, the attacks and the agility of the movements, among other aspects, required the work of dozens of people since the creation of the company .

“It was quite a challenge. but five years later here we are and the game is out So I’m very happy,” he said.

Although the Ascendant Studios team did not use artificial intelligence (AI) for the development of Immortals of Aveum —beyond moving enemies, as we usually do for decades in video games—, Robbins says he can ‘see nominations in the future’ .

“Especially in pre-production and preview, as a way to quickly generate lots of concept art, test ideas, or write temporary scripts (…) maybe not things that would lead to the final product, but it would help to imagine what a project would look like . I see it very useful in the short term. In the long term, who knows? We hear all kinds of stories about the ability of AI to decode and create games on its own (…) I think there are some areas where it can be useful, but we don’t we haven’t really gotten into it yet.”

Although Immortals of Aveum just released this week Robbins confesses that “personally, I would love to tell more stories in the world of Aveum”. .

“It’s huge and there are a lot of great characters that we’ve created that I want to see again. We’re not announcing anything yet, but I clearly can’t help but think about what the future holds. i think anything is possible », sentence LT.

The video game, recommended for ages 17 and up, is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC in the EA app, Steam and Epic Games Store. . It doesn’t offer micropayments once you buy it, although you can buy a deluxe version with more features.

Review the minimum and suggested requirements for it to run optimally on your computer by performing click on this link .