Here’s what ‘Call of Duty, but with magic’ looks like in action

There is a lot of knowledge involved Immortals of Aveum; you would expect that when the game and story combine sci-fi technology and powerful magic, and the characters are dressed in a somewhat imaginative way. It’s also an old fashioned single-player story, so yes, there’s going to be a big story behind it.

There will be much discussion about that later on. The ballplayers must keep an eye on this: Immortals of Aveum is a first-person shooter with magical powers launching in July for PlayStation 5, Windows PC and Xbox Series X.

We got a taste Immortals of Aveum‘s spell-driven footage during a reveal trailer at The Game Awards 2022 in December. A gameplay trailer that came out Thursday, and a closed developer presentation we saw last week, shed a lot more light on what that really means.

“It’s the kind of game we haven’t seen in years,” Bret Robbins, CEO of Ascendant Studios, said during the presentation. Most FPS fans will probably get the closest thing to Raven Software’s Quake engine Heretic and its two sequels, published more than 25 years ago.

Developers at Ascendant, which Robbins founded in 2018, prioritized a rich story and world, and of course sharp, fast-paced single-player shooter gameplay with plenty of visual reward for the player. But above all, the creators of Ascendant wanted to create a powerful battle mage that everyone would want to become.

“Everything about the game had to be the fantasy of being this powerful, awesome gunfighter of a wizard,” Robbins said.

Grid view

From what has been shown, Ascendant appears to have done so, at least. Our demonstration began with what appeared to be an early mission to repel an invasion, from futuristic airships. Glyphs and wards popped up around the player’s hands, a bit Doctor Strange in style, as the main character (named Jak) raised a shield or fired a quick burst of ‘green magic’.

Jak’s story is kind of the standard one coming out of nowhere, using a rare way of harnessing all three of Aveum’s “lines” of magic to become a military savior. The factions in Aveum have been fighting it all out for over 1,000 years in a conflict called the Everwar. The Immortals are more or less the top military unit, “almost a team of superheroes,” according to Robbins. Jak is on his way to becoming one himself.

In combat, Jak’s standard ranged weapons (which would be weapons in another FPS) are on his right hand. His left hand is for defensive moves, powerful attacks called Furies (which gobble up mana), or use an energy whip to drag enemies in for a close finisher. (Yes, it kind of reminded me of the one from 2011 Bullet storm).

Naturally, Immortals of Aveum will serve all of this with a library of spells, special abilities called talents, plus other gear customizations that both advance Jak and tailor him to a player’s style. For example, that thing on the end of Jak’s right arm that projects magic is a Sigil. There will be other Sigils that players can use to remain a generalist who uses all three forms of magic, or a specialist in one. Robbins gave the example of a “Javelin” Sigil, which allows Jak to take a huge shot.

“Because it’s magic, we can do a lot more than you could with standard modern weapons,” Robbins said.

Image: Ascendant Studios/Electronic Arts

Without going into too much detail about this, Aveum has three ribbons of magic rippling through it: Chaos (red), Force (blue), and Life (green). In terms of basic weapons, Chaos is like a shotgun, blue is a more accurate rifle with a longer range, and green is akin to an SMG. The sound that backs it all up is definitely more FPS than magic, with explosions and the thumping sound of your “guns” resembling energy weapons from sci-fi shooters.

“We made a lot of decisions about magic and how we wanted it to feel different from traditional weapons,” Robbins said. “First of all, I didn’t want to make a traditional cover shooter; I didn’t think the fantasy I was trying to create involves you hiding behind the bush and shooting the wand over it.” Hence the shield, which can be shot up; it just slows down the player a bit. It also has its own health and can be broken when depleted.

Robbins added that the “Call of Duty but with magic” label, while a good shorthand or elevator pitch for its appeal, omits some other gameplay aspects that Ascendant wanted to implement in Immortals of Aveumwhich was developed in Unreal Engine 5.

“We have a lot of world exploration, a lot of puzzles and puzzle mechanics,” he said. “It’s a huge game. If you just try to play it all in one sitting, it’ll take you well over 20, 25 hours. And if you really want to explore and do a lot, it gets a lot longer.”

Immortals of Aveum is the first game from Ascendant, a Bay Area studio whose alumni hail from the old Telltale Games and are tenured on projects like the BioShock, Borderlands, and Call of Duty series. Robbins himself has credits on three Call of Duty titles and was part of the team that gave birth to Visceral Games Empty spacethen an all-new, story-packed action-adventure, coming to consoles in 2008.

Robbins has often cited the inspiration for it Aveum as coming from a stray thought he had while designing a Call of Duty level – basically, what if all the elements were swapped for their fantasy counterparts. Ascendant Studios was formed to finally make that game, the concept of which had stuck with Robbins since that day.

Ascendant Studios now has over 100 developers and Electronic Arts, under its EA Originals label, will be publishing Immortals of Aveum for PS5, Windows PC and Xbox Series X on July 20.