The brand new IP from EA Originals and Ascendant Studios has finally been revealed, with a grand trailer showing off gameplay and story for Immortals of Aveum.
Before today, we had only seen a short teaser video at The Game Awards last year, but really the game is releasing in just three months!
READ MORE: Immortals of Aveum reveal trailer
(EA / Ascendant Studios)
Immortals of Aveum is a first-person single-player magic shooter where you play as Jak, a young and gifted Battlemage, and must save a world on the “edge of abyss”.
“Summon your power, stop the Everwar, save the realms.”
We had the chance to sit down with Kevin Boyle, the executive producer of the game, to talk all about it.
Kevin’s got quite the catalogue under his belt, shipping over 30 game titles for heavy hitters like LucasArts, WB Games, SEGA, and Telltale Games.
But he’s not the only one, the team at Ascendant Studios is impressively made up of over 100 AAA game developers, from programmers to animators, and led by Bret Robbins who is responsible for three Call of Duty titles – they really mean business.
Kevin says he’s thrilled to be able to finally show off Immortals of Aveum to the world and can’t wait for people to experience its deep story and intense, evolving first-person combat.
Immortals of Aveum is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC on June 20.
Kevin, thank you so much for your time. How are you feeling about the whole thing?
I feel great. I mean, we’re in the last leg of the race here and I feel like we’ve got something pretty exciting on our hands and, you know, frankly I’m sick of not being able to talk about it! So this is a nice opportunity.
It must feel pretty good. It’s five years of work under lock and key and now you get to this.
Absolutely. I joined the team in 2021, so it hasn’t been quite as long for me. But certainly, you know, Bret (Bret Robbins) and kind of the first folks in who started from ideation have been holding on to this one for a long time.
Tell me what can players expect when they get their hands on Immortals of Aveum.
Kevin Boyle, Executive Producer of Immortals of Aveum. (Supplied)
I think it’s safe to say they can expect a campaign that is a single-player, magic shooter that is really, you know, invested in narrative and storytelling. And one of the things that’s been really important to us as a team is world building and, you know, using cinematic tools to tell a story that gives context to the act that’s going to have meaning to the player.
And so we’ve got this world that has a deep, rich history and politics and interesting geography and kind of the way magic works and the problems and conflicts of this world are really, really well thought through and kind of how Jak, as someone who is initially, you know, just has like a glimmer of magic but is found to be someone with dangerously powerful potential.
He’s an interesting protagonist for players to get to learn about the nature of the conflict in the world to learn about the nature of magic. Kind of as Jak is also discovering these things for the first time. So it’s a story that I don’t think you could really tell outside of this unique place that Ascendant has put together. I’m excited to get it in front of people.
And it’s entirely single-player, like it really is story-driven?
It’s a single-player campaign. And we really did want to lean into storytelling and character development and world-building in a way that I feel like a single-player campaign offers better tools to do that.
(EA / Ascendant Studios)
So the magic. You’ve got your red, your blue, and your green magics, each of them are essentially their own, I don’t want to say gun, but they’re like their own…
Yeah, or at least like a category of weapon. There isn’t a singular green sigil and there’s variation in the gear as well. So like, what an individual sigil is capable of isn’t necessarily going to be the same as the next you come across even though they both might be green. You know, one might fire a spray of tiny shots like with really deep sigil mana. Another might have, you know, fire a lot less and larger projectiles that seek more aggressively towards the opponent. And so there’s variation even within the capabilities of a given sigil within each colour.
And you’re seemingly forcing the player to adapt to these new sigils, and change sigils during combat. Is that because some enemies are only susceptible to certain colors of magic?
Yeah, there’s a notion of, well, I think each sigil kind of has its own general, like tactical, superiority, right? Like even in terms of combat with enemies that aren’t particularly, particularly well protected, like blue magic is very precise and accurate even at long range. Whereas red is, you know, a wider spread and more damaging up close and personal. Whereas green is more, you know, you can get away with a little more spray and pray with green mad green magic.
But when it comes to enemies with magic defences, it’s kind of like a call and response as opposed to rock paper scissors – its blue magic is effective against blue defenses, green magic effective against green defenses. And so there’s, there are definitely situations where one is preferable over another.
But I should also mention, in addition to the, you know, what’s going on with sigils, as the game goes on, Jak acquires more and more gear and more abilities and spells. And so you’ve got your sigils on your right hand, and you’ve got totems used to cast control spells on your left. You’ve got a series of powerful furies that are more powerful spells cast using a pool of mana. The option is on the table to switch things up and bring a diverse bag of tricks into combat, it’s something that I feel like we’re paying off on for players.
Are there any abilities that you can get that will regenerate mana over time, or is it – do you only you need to find these crystals?
There are, and that’s a type of thing that in our talent tree, there are like over 80 individual nodes in our blue green, and red talent tree. And so, I believe one in the green tree allows you to passively regenerate some of your mana, which can certainly be helpful in some situations where you are hunkered down and running low – it’s saved my bacon in more than a few fights. But yeah, that, that’s the kind of thing where, depending on as a player, where you want to specialise and what kind of abilities you wanna’ lean into.
We give you some freedom to kind of invest your talents in different areas of the tree and for players who have made decisions they’re not happy with, you can always circle back and re-spec and spend them differently. So trying on different play styles is certainly an option as well.
Enemy types, you’ve got the standard enemies that you are just seeing as you work your way through a level. But then you’ve got giant dragons, which is just insane. Without spoilers, what else can we expect to see in this world?
I guess you expect that, you know, we’ve done our best to keep things varied and to kind of punctuate with big events and boss battles and, there’s some, there’s some good stuff in there that is definitely a curveball for the player who’s getting used to, you know, feeling powerful, taking out swordsmen and archers and the like, it’s different when it’s Magnus versus Magnus or, you know, the Howler, the dragon you mentioned, certainly more of a boss fight vibe going on there.
And so we’ve tried to make that as the player is progressing in their abilities, their abilities, both as a player and as what Jak has at his disposal, that the threats you’re facing kind of require that that development as well.
Because this game is so narrative-driven, it has this amazing story behind it. Will there be options to change the difficulty of the game for someone who might just want to experience the story?
Yes. Yeah, we will have a baseline, an easier and a more difficult setting. So for players who don’t quite want the same level of challenge, there’s an option there.
And given you’re approaching the release so soon, I mean, it’s, it’s only a few months away. What’s your main focus for the studio at the moment?
You know, there’s a lot of focus on, on polish and closing out cleanly on performance and memory footprint and, and making sure the game runs cleanly and evenly and that it stays as responsive as players want a shooter to be.
And so we’re coming at it from the perspective of players and, you know, we want this thing to play as smoothly and, and fun as possible. And that’s a large part of our focus right now. And certainly, you know, we’ve got a significant portion of the DEV team in the bug database, just kind of tying off loose ends and making sure everything’s in ship shape.
You’ve been playing it yourself obviously for quite a while now. Is there a particular not moment, a particular thing in the game that you can’t wait for everyone else to experience for the first time?
Yeah, I mean, I think the thing I would point to first is something that’s hard to get across in, you know, in a shorter revealed trailer format, which is kind of the relationships of these characters and the discovery that happens throughout the game and really the way that narrative and storytelling and world building are woven in as the context for the action.
It’s something that I feel like the team has really pulled off effectively and it’s still, you know, it still hits me as someone who is just steeped in this daily.
So, you know, I’m, I’m really looking forward to player reactions to that end of things. I mean, the mechanics I have a lot of fun with and, and, you know, we can give people a little bit of a taste of what that looks like in these revealed trailers, but your connections to other characters like that, that takes time. So that’s the piece I’m most looking forward to seeing out there in the wild.
What’s your message to people thinking about picking this game up?
I think, you know, my main message is that if from what you’ve seen kind of the appeal of this world we’ve created that’s very unique and specific, both aesthetically and in terms of like its history and its characters and social structures and all of that. The team here has really done a deep dive on this stuff. And if at a glance, you feel like, oh, this might be interesting to me, I think you are in for a pleasant surprise when you get into the details of it.
I guess what I’m looking forward to, that again doesn’t so much come across in the preview, is the storytelling like there’s, there’s an interesting story that’s very, it would be difficult to tell in any other context than this world that the descendant and, and Bret and Michael Kirkbride, our lead writer, have created. It’s one of my favorite aspects of the game.
So I’m thrilled to get that out there and to, you know, see people’s reactions to it because I’m, I’m having a great time with it and it is, you know, it’s hard work and there’s a lot to do and pulling off a game of this scope and scale is never easy and yet I still find myself just sucked into this game. So, I feel like there’s something there that, I’m looking forward to how it hits with players.
Well, I can’t wait to play it. Thank you so much for talking to me, Kevin. I really appreciate it.
Yeah, it’s great to talk to you. It’ll be exciting to have something out in the world that’s not just, yeah, a little teaser.
