If you've been worried about Avowed not looking punchy enough, Obsidian's combat designer has a hitstop animation 'superpower' that might reassure you
My ears perk up anytime a game developer says the word «hitstop.» It means I'm about to hear some secret sauce, or at least opinions, about how to make a game feel great—specifically how and when to add a short pause mid-combat to make a hit really pop. In early footage of Avowed it's been hard to tell how impactful its combat will really feel, but my hands-on time with the game has been a pleasant surprise. It doesn't have the weight of the finest melee combat games on PC like Mount & Blade 2 or Vermintide 2, but its speedy sword swings still feel better than I expected, while charge attacks really pack a punch.
According to Obsidian VFX lead Ash Kumar, who I interviewed at a recent preview event at Obsidian's offices in southern California, there's one person in particular to thank for how combat's shaped up.
«Max has a superpower of looking at an animation and deciding how much hitstop there should be there for it to feel good,» said Kumar.
That's Max Matzenbacher, who joined Obsidian in 2020 after previously working on MMOs including Warhammer Online and WildStar. Kumar had a lot to say about Matzenbacher in his role as Avowed's senior combat designer.
«He has tweaked every weapon with hitstop differently. Like the hammer: The special attack kind of lodges the hammer into the enemy and then brings it down for an area of effect attack. All the tweaking, all the animation timing, all the times when I send him a particle effect and he's like 'I'm going to play it right at this instant,' he's done such a fantastic job. And he's done it with every weapon.»
If you right-click and open the video above in a new tab, you'll be able to hear the audio.
Kumar kept the praise flowing. «He's taken a week for a weapon and just constantly tinkered with every minor aspect of it, from the animations to when you move a sword, how an enemy will react to it,» he added. «It's fantastic work, and it feels visceral. It feels weighty. When you have a lower-tier weapon than the enemies
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