Dead on arrival.

Dear god, this game had a budget of $125 million. Immortals of Aveum is one of countless misfires in the gaming industry that makes me wonder if anyone with access to as much money as this has any idea what they're doing with all of it. You can see the underlying mentality of use-it-or-lose-it with regards to the budget — celebrity cast lists, particle effects so dense that you can't see through them, Unreal Engine 5 tech demo scenery — and how little it actually goes towards making a game that's fun to play or a world that's interesting to engage with. I was certain that this was a small-scale AA game that EA was publishing simply to make a little cash on the side; finding out that this is one of the most expensive games ever made just confuses me. It's a complete and utter squandering of basically everything that it had going for it. We're witnessing a gaming failson being created in real time. It's like Victor Frankenstein made a monster that emptied the family bank account on a timeshare scheme.

This might be the most poorly written piece of media I’ve ever sat through. I’m extending this beyond only video games. Immortals of Aveum is written the way that people who don’t like Marvel movies think Marvel movies are written. There is no moment that cannot go un-quipped, no revelation nor death so important as to prevent every nearby character from rolling their eyes and cracking a joke about it. This refusal to hold anything as sacred can work — most comedies pull this off just fine — but this game exists in that 2000s-era Adam Sandler dramedy hellsphere where, despite the fact that none of the characters are taking this seriously, it’s clear that the viewer is expected to. Immortals of Aveum wants to be a story about wildly differing people coming together in the face of adversity, a story about betrayal, a story about racism, about ancient world-ending prophecies and secret orders desperate to keep the balance. It also has a character say, verbatim, “he’s right behind me, isn’t he?”. He is, in fact, right behind them. Holy fuck. Michael Kirkbride is the lead writer.

Speaking of, every character is such a potty mouth. I know that’s the most Melvin thing imaginable to complain about, but it really does clash with everything that’s set up here. This feels like a PG-13 movie. The best comparison is that it’s an adaptation of a young adult novel that doesn’t actually exist, but it’s not a good adaptation, and the YA novel in question was written like Divergent instead of Hunger Games. This is some bootleg bootleg garbage. This is stepped-on Noughts and Crosses. Characters in this universe ought to be saying “crap” or some made-up fantasy curse like “stars and bolts!” instead of shouting “fuck” every other sentence. Everything and everyone is so flat that you can only reasonably conclude that it was written to appeal to children, but the constant swearing reminds you that they actually intended this for adults. The ESRB gave this an M rating, and I think it’s almost exclusively because of the strong language. There’s barely any blood — hell, barely any actual violence beyond shooting little flashes of magic at people. Harry Potter is more hardcore even in its earliest parts, when the cast is made up of fourth graders fighting ogres in the school bathroom. Michael Kirkbride is the lead writer.

I want to take a moment to complain about Devyn, who might be the most annoying character I’ve ever seen. I cannot fucking stand Devyn. He even spells his name like an asshole. They very clearly want you to be annoyed by Devyn — he’s a Claptrap figure of sorts, placed here by a cruel and uncaring god solely to torment you with his quips — and this is probably the greatest triumph that the writing can manage. In a world where nobody is the straight man and everybody seems desperate to be the one who gets to say something “funny” next, Devyn stands out for his ability to fuck up every single conversation by inserting himself directly into the middle of all of them. Some character will start complaining about the Immortals being isolationists who only care about themselves, and Devyn will cut them off to go on a John Oliver-esque rant for a straight minute to mock them. The player character sets up an uneasy alliance with a member of a discriminated race, and Devyn hops on the holo-orb to joke about how much he hates the entire filthy lot of them. The player character starts telling a story and Devyn fucking burps like a cartoon character to cut him off. God, fuck him. I’d say that I hope he dies, but the game actually pulls through and obliges me. The lead villain blows a hole through his chest like Piccolo and we’re expected not to instantly start rooting for him. People mourn Devyn. He’s the first name that our heroes drop when they give the villain the “and this is revenge for...” speech once he’s defeated. Michael Kirkbride is the lead writer.

Devyn is really only as annoying as he is because his actor is as annoying as he is. This is a common thread throughout the entire cast; all of the actors here are performing like this is their first time in front of a camera. Hell, I thought it was. Turns out that the entire cast is comprised of actual fucking screen actors who do this shit for a living, and none of them seem to have a clue what they’re doing. This is doubtless a directing problem — Gina Torres is delivering a career-low performance, far beneath even the worst projects she’s done elsewhere — and it seems like Ascendant believed they could just hire professional actors and tell them to "start acting" as their only point of reference for what they ought to be doing. Charles Halford as Rook crushes it, though, and I have to wonder if it’s solely because his character doesn’t look like a human being. They were apparently doing some weird hybrid face-scan/mocap setup where the actors would have their faces scanned while they were doing voiceover in a booth, and then their heads would get pasted onto the bodies of whoever was doing the mocap. There are scenes clearly intended for big emotions, or that expect the actors to at least raise their voices a little — when they see their friends die, when they give speeches on the battlefield — and they just can't seem to muster them for this. Everyone just talks. Nobody in Aveum has ever heard of an outside voice.

I've gone this long without mentioning the gameplay because it's about as much of an afterthought as this paragraph. You get three types of magic, creatively named Red, Blue, and Green, and Blue magic is so ridiculously good that you only use the other colors when the game forces you to. Blue magic is a semi-automatic rifle that gets a stacking percent damage bonus on critical hits, which are guaranteed on headshots and weak spots. It has virtually zero recoil, infinite range, hitscan, and does obscene damage obscenely quickly. Red magic is a slow shotgun that deals a solid chunk of damage but has low DPS, and Green magic is a projectile-based submachine gun with some homing capabilities that serves mostly as a shitty shotgun that misses more often than it hits. Since all of your basic magic has infinite ammo, there's little reason to do anything other than keep your Blue magic in your hand and spam bolts at enemies so far away that they're using their low LOD models. Consider binding your fire button to the scroll wheel to spare your index finger from a repetitive stress injury.

What I do like, however, is that there's actually some emphasis on platforming and exploration. While this isn't an especially interesting world to poke through, there are all sorts of goodies scattered throughout, and they're all more or less worth collecting. Grabbing lore notes will always reward you with XP even if you don't read them, and actually getting to them can be fun. You've got a double jump to start out with, which is already a plus, and you'll eventually graduate to a hookshot and a glide that you can use to get basically anywhere you want to be. Chaining air dashes and hookshots with your glides to get across a massive pit with a treasure chest at the end of it might be one of those gameplay systems that's inherently rewarding. Even though most of what you'll get for doing these mini challenges amounts to little more than a lump sum of XP or a buff to some of your damage numbers, it's the act of platforming around where the tiny kernel of fun is hidden.

There's really not much to say about Immortals of Aveum besides the fact that, were it not for being the worst-written thing I've ever seen in my fucking life, I would have completely forgotten about it in the two weeks it's taken me to type this out. I'd almost say that it's worth playing if only to see how ridiculously bad the characters are, but you're better off watching someone else play it on YouTube at that point, and you'd be watching it for way too long to get a laugh out of it. At least bad movies usually have the courtesy of ending in two hours, not eight. Part of the problem with "so bad it's good" games are the amount of time that they demand you invest in them, and then you've gotta reckon with the fact that you're putting in work for something that isn't going to be worth it. I don't regret playing Immortals of Aveum. That's faint praise, but it's all the praise I can give it. The studio isn't going to exist by this time next year. It's hardly worth thinking about beyond the thoughts I've already had. People probably won't even remember that this existed, and what a sad thought that is. Try not to think about what they could have done with that money instead.

What are we, some kind of Immortals of Aveum?

Arena, open map, arena, open map, arena.. la diligente competenza nel pensare un combat system veloce e dinamico (ma anche macchinoso e programmatico, uguale a se stesso dall'inizio alla fine), non compensa la struttura divisa - indecisa? - fra l'essere un'esperienza single-player lineare e un looter shooter con poco loot e ancor meno libertà di movimento. Non aiutano i modelli bruttini, le caratterizzazioni risibili (salvabile solo il cattivone di turno) e quel generale senso di estetica derivativa da fantasy sci-fi come se ne sono già visti fin troppi. Un tempo sarebbe stato un perfetto esempio di gioco da cestone del discount e, in questi termini, avrebbe avuto diversi motivi di interesse (non ultimo la consapevolezza di durare il giusto, vista anche la scarsità estrema di varietà nelle ambientazioni). Dubito però che queste fossero le intenzioni di Ascendant e EA.