Obsidian's next big RPG Avowed is looking to Vermintide's 'masterclass in having a sense of hitting and impact' to make its first-person sword-swinging feel weighty

A horde of heavily-armoured skeletons in Obsidian's upcoming RPG, Avowed. — (Image credit: Obsidian Entertainment)

Obsidian (the studio behind Pillars of Eternity, Fallout: New Vegas, and The Outer Worlds) released an extended gameplay trailer diving into its first-person RPG Avowed last week. PC Gamer's own Ted Litchfield sat down with both the game's director Carrie Patel and the gameplay director Gabe Paramo to talk shop.

First-person melee combat is hard to design. In any third-person action game, you have all kinds of tools at your disposal—bespoke animations, the situational awareness of bird's-eye view, cool flips—things that are much harder to execute on when you're in your protagonist's skull. Especially the cool flips thing, that'll just get you motion sick.

"Our goal was to try to make it feel visceral, right?" Paramo explains. "To make the sense of hitting [enemies] feel impactful … like Vermintide. We're trying to get our inspiration from there, just that masterclass in having a sense of hitting and impact."

Honestly, fair play. If you want a great example of meaty first-person blade swinging, then both Vermintide and Darktide are great places to look. Fatshark took Left 4 Dead's formula of mowing down zombies with a frying pan and expanded on it—adding complex systems that sent enemies stumbling and ragdolling in certain directions based on both the weapon type and the angle of attack (as per this excellent video by Polygon's Patrick Gill).

"I'm definitely really proud of what the gameplay team has done … even our melee combat is feeling fantastic," says Patel. "I really do feel like it's going to stand head and shoulders above when it comes to fantasy first-person action RPG melee combat."

Honestly, I'm pretty stoked about this on paper. It's been a while since we've had a non-horde shooter game with properly meaty first-person combat—where are our Zeno Clashes? Our Dark Messiah of Might and Magic games? Likely locked behind the fact that first-person brawling's a pain in the rear to design, but still, here's hoping Obsidian pulls it off.

TOPICS

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.

With contributions from

Dave JonesVideo Producer
Ted LitchfieldAssociate Editor