Why is there so much shit happening on the screen. I feel like having a seizure from watching this gameplay. What is this crap:
Anyways. I remember reading a while ago on how they were
trying to hype up Vermintide:
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.
However, from what I've seen so far, the melee looks nothing like Vermintide. Let's ignore the obnoxious UI design and look at the fundamentals of what's being displayed in that gameplay video. Now I have over 3k hours in Vermintide, I've been playing the game for over 6 years now, so I'm pretty autistic when it comes to the Vermintide games. With that said, if there's one thing the games do very well, it is the nuance of the melee: Dodge dancing, Parrying, Weaving attacks, Sidestepping, Blocking; the melee in Vermintide is *very* finesse like, more so on the higher difficulties where all of these mechanics are put to the test. Then you also have the ranged component where you quickly swap between weapons to headshot specials or disablers - the whole process is fluid, quick, and snappy to operate. Here's a video of my favorite solo run that I did, so you can see what the gameplay is like in action:
In my solo run you're seeing me parry attacks, dodging in-between enemy attacks while weaving my attacks, all the while pushing enemies to create space. These are all mechanically interesting things that I'm doing in combat which add nuance - this is in contrast to the left click simulator that I'm seeing in Avowed.
Additionally to add to the complex, deep, melee, Vermintide also has dismemberments, decapitations, gore, stagger, etc; which all happen naturally from the gameplay; all of these things really add to the *impact* of the melee when you behead a Skaven unit with a well timed strike. Or when a lesser Nurgle worshipper flinches from a two handed weapon swing by falling down. One of my favorite moments in Vermintide that will never get old is how you can slice off a lesser Nurgle worshipper's arm off, and sometimes they'll just hold on to the gaping wound left from the dismembered limb; other times they'll just stand in place, looking down, as if in shock for a few seconds until slowly walking towards you while madly swinging their other weapon arm. Reaction - Vermintide's enemies react to your attacks in a satisfying way that adds to the melee experience.
In the Avowed video everything looks stilted to me. Where's the gore? Where's the dismemberment? Where's the fluid display of mechanics? All I see is the player move up to the enemy whilst spamming left click - it feels like a cinematic version of a left click simulator, i.e it's basically just Skyrim's already simplistic combat but with annoying effects that go off when you perform an action - case and point, kicking does a stupid yellow effect. It's also a shame that there's no real gore on display, which just subtracts from the melee; good melee needs gore to punctuate the impact of attacks, otherwise the experience will be lacking.
The ranged combat also looks boring. While Vermintide isn't really a shooty shoot game, it does have a ranged component and that component is quite smooth to interact with. For starters, when you switch between the weapons it's quite fast. When you reload, it's fast. In Avowed I'm seeing the player do these weird clunky reload animation for the rifle - yes I know the firearm is from the 1400s, however Warhammer Fantasy takes place around the same era of crude firearms, and Vermintide doesn't have you do these weird, clunky, reload animations - the reloading is usually fast and off screen so you don't get bogged down with it (for example the Blunderbuss reloading is done off screen). I did like the bow gameplay though it's difficult to ruin that. I don't think I've seen a first person game with a bad bow.
I have no strong opinions on the magic in the video. I don't really care for it. I don't care for magic in general.
Another thing that bothers me is the lack of any Dark Fantasy elements, in terms of aesthetic. Avowed looks a bit too marvel-esque for me - meaning everything is stupidly colorful. Dragon Age: Failguard had the exact same problem which was a major turn off for me. I'm not sure why games from big publishers are going down this route, it just looks childish. Fall of Avalon, an indie title, was able to balance this out by having some environments that were dark and other environments that had color.
So far Avowed looks stupid.
