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

lots of learning coming and the immortal, You’d expect that when the game and story mix science fiction technology and powerful magic, and the characters are drawn in a slightly high-fantasy way. It’s also an old-school, single-player narrative, so yeah, there’s going to be a big story behind it.

There will be much more discussion on that later. Ball players should keep an eye on: and the immortal A magic-powered first-person shooter is launching in July for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.

we got a taste and the immortalMantra-powered shooting during a reveal trailer at The Game Awards 2022 in December. A gameplay trailer on Thursday, and a one-off developer presentation we saw last week, shed a lot of light on exactly what this means.

“This is a type of game we haven’t seen for many years,” Ascendant Studios CEO Brett Robbins said during the presentation. Probably the closest comparison for most FPS fans would be to Raven Software’s Quake engine heretic and its two sequels, published more than 25 years ago.

The developers of Ascendant, which Robbins founded in 2018, prioritized a rich story and world, and decidedly fast-paced single-player shooter gameplay with plenty of visual payoff to the player. But most importantly, the creators of Ascendant wanted to create a powerful war mage that everyone would want to be.

Robbins said, “Everything about the game was the fantasy of being this powerful, terrifying, wizardly gunslinger.”

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From what has been shown, Aarohi seems to have pulled in at least that much. Our demonstration began with what looked like a preliminary mission to repel an invasion, born on futuristic airships. Glyphs and wards popped up around the player’s hands, somewhat Doctor Strange-style, as the main character (named Jake) raised a shield or fired a rapid-fire blast of “green magic”.

Jaak’s story is a somewhat standard up-to-nothing tale, a rare means of using all three “lines” of Avium’s magic to become a military protector. The factions have been duking it out for more than 1,000 years in a conflict called Everwar. According to Robbins, the Immortals are more or less the top military unit, “almost a team of superheroes”. Jack is on his way to becoming himself.

In combat, Jake’s standard ranged weapons (what would be guns in other FPS) are on his right arm. His left hand is for defensive moves, powerful attacks called Furies (which drain mana), or using Energy Lash to draw enemies for an up-close finisher. (yes, it reminds me a bit of 2011 bullet storm,

Naturally, and the immortal A library of spells, special abilities called talents, as well as other gear customization will do it all together to further enhance Jack and fit him into a player’s style. For example, the magic thing at the end of Jaq’s right hand is a sigil. There will be other sigils the player can use to remain a generalist who wields all three types of magic, or a specialist in one. Robbins gave the example of a “Javelin” sigil, which allows Jack to land a huge shot.

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

Image: Ascendant Studio / Electronic Arts

Without giving it too much detail, Avum has three ribbons of magic wafting through it: Chaos (red), Force (blue), and Life (green). In terms of basic weaponry, the Chaos is like the shotgun, the blue is the more accurate, long-range rifle, and the green is similar to the SMG. The sound backing it all up is decidedly more FPS than magical, with explosions and the shuddering reports of your “guns” resembling energy weapons from science-fiction shooters.

Robbins said, “We made a lot of decisions around magic, and how we wanted it to feel different from traditional guns.” “For one thing, I didn’t want to make a traditional cover shooter; I didn’t think that the fantasy I was trying to create involved you hiding behind a bush and wielding a stick at it. Hence the shield, which can be fired when raised; This slows the player down somewhat. It also has its own health and can be broken when it runs out.

Robbins said that the “Call of Duty but with magic” label, while a good shorthand or elevator pitch for its appeal, leaves out some other aspects of the gameplay that Ascendant wanted to implement. and the immortalWhich is 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’re trying to play it straight, it’s over 20, 25 hours. And if you really want to explore and do a lot, it gets a lot longer than that.” .

and the immortal The game is the first from Ascendant, a Bay Area studio whose alumni come from old Telltale Games and have held tenures on projects like BioShock, Borderlands, and the Call of Duty series. Robbins has three Call of Duty titles to his credit and was part of the team at Visceral Games that brought dead SpaceThen in 2008 an all-new, story-heavy action-adventure for consoles.

Robbins has often cited the inspiration for and When he was designing a Call of Duty level, he had a stray idea — basically, what if all of its elements were swapped out for their fictional counterparts. Ascendant Studios was eventually formed to produce the game, the concept of which has been associated with Robbins since that day.

Ascendant Studios now has over 100 developers, and Electronic Arts will publish under its EA Originals label and the immortal On July 20 for PS5, Windows PC and Xbox Series X.