Obsidian Entertainment, the developer behind the upcoming role-playing game Avowed is working on improving the upcoming role-playing game's combat based on player feedback from January's Xbox Developer Direct. At the time of that presentation, the game's combat was criticized for appearing a little listless in its combat.
In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, Avowed senior gameplay engineer Gabriel Paramo explained that the Developer Direct showing was "really great" for the team as it allowed them to learn exactly what needed improving for the game.
"When the player feedback is like, 'Oh, this doesn't look great,' you're like, okay, we need to prioritize that polish, like, immediately. So we jumped on that," he explains in regards to how fans reacted to the combat.
"We really heavily focused on the hit reactions on the creatures and started to really frame-by-frame focus. Like, what is the delay time between the player swinging their weapon and the time they hit to really make that feel a lot snappier.
"And [we] really focused on the extreme poses of the starting frame of the hit reaction animations, and then also really improved the blood impact and looking at where's that location coming from? Is that making sense, and maybe we should push it a little bit more so the player actually notices that there's impact effects coming out of these things."
Paramo also explains that while players haven't seen the bulk of changes yet, Obsidian is also working on improving on "all standpoints of animation" including visual effects as well as auditory feedback.
Avowed doesn't currently have a release date attached to it, but Obsidian is targeting a '2024' release window so players should expect it to launch on Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC before the year is out. It's also coming to Xbox Game Pass on day one.
