Immortals of Aveum is like Call of Duty in a fantasy game | hands-on preview

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Immortals of Aveum is the new single-player “magic first-person shooter” game coming from developer Ascendant Studios and publisher Electronic Arts on July 20.

I attended a preview event last week at EA’s headquarters, where I was able to play the first couple of hours of the single-player-only game, which debuts on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and the PC. I didn’t know what to expect, but as a Call of Duty fan, the gameplay of the EA Originals title was pretty familiar to me at the outset.

Yes, that’s right. It’s like Call of Duty, where you shoot a variety of magic weapons that make you feel like you’re playing an FPS set in a fantasy world. It’s not so strange when you learn that the game director and CEO of Ascendant is Bret Robbins, who was the former senior creative director at Sledgehammer Games, maker of titles such as Call of Duty: WWII. He started Ascendant Studios five years ago after leaving Sledgehammer.

I interviewed him about Immortals of Aveum after I played.

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“I think the initial inspiration came from my time on Call of Duty,” Robbins said. “Learning how to make a big blockbuster shooter, what that meant, and then looking around and not seeing anything in the fantasy genre like that. That seemed like a huge missed opportunity. I was surprised that no one was making anything like that, and so I decided I wanted to make it.”

But it’s an original story, and it’s not all Call of Duty. It draws