How Player Choice Is Infused into Avowed’s Approach to Combat

“Flexibility in combat actions was always a goal for us,” adds Gameplay Director Gabe Paramo. “In terms of weapons, you can expect anywhere from a one-hit dagger to a slow reloading arquebus, two-handed great hammers, a one-handed sword, one-handed pistol, a one-handed wand, and we have a dual-wielding system that lets the player equip off-hand and one-handed weapons together in a dual-wielding type way.”

As I continued my experimentation with weapons, I initially found myself gravitating to the Grimoire early on, which is a magic weapon that allows you to tap spell abilities even if your class isn’t magic-based. Holding it in my off-hand while wielding a sword in the other felt like a great combination that could yield some entertaining results in combat. We’re told you can also discover more of these Grimoires throughout Avowed, and then choose to either improve it or learn spells from it. For example, you could take something that you learned from a Grimoire, like a “Fan of Flames” ability, and put it into your ability bar, and then run around with a giant hammer while tossing fire independently of the spell book.

“I think the biggest kind of unique element is how all the pieces fit together and how we don’t restrict the player; to give them ultimate flexibility in being able to quickly swap and execute these actions, like their abilities they choose from their trees, the weapons they fire, the dodge — all those I would say is a mix of how a lot of games handle it; we just mix some elements more uniquely,” Paramo says.