Story Highlights
- Ascendant Studios has confirmed in a recent blog post that Immortals of Aveum will upgrade to Unreal Engine 5.2.
- The studio also detailed their previous transition from UE4 to UE5 because the latter was a better option to solve the technical impossibilities at the time.
- The blog post also confirmed that Ascendant Studios will be making their next project on Unreal Engine 5.3. Though, no other details were shared on this project.
- Immortals of Aveum was released on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on August 22, 2023. The game was poorly received and did not sell well, leading to the studio laying off nearly half its staff.
In a recent blog post, Ascendant Studios confirmed that it will upgrade Immortals of Aveum to Unreal Engine 5.2. The announcement also contained some words from associate art director Julia Lichtblau, who expressed the significance of the game’s previous transition from UE4 to UE5. Not only that, but the studio has also confirmed that its next project will be made on Unreal Engine 5.3.
Despite Immortals of Aveum’s poor launch, it seems like the studio is determined to make it better. This isn’t strictly out of the question, as we saw how Cyberpunk 2077 also had its redemption with the v2.0 release. Nevertheless, the scale of both projects was much different, and Ascendant Studios has already laid off nearly half of its staff due to the game not meeting certain expectations.
Even so, the game has been important for the studio, and it can be understood from the words of associate art director Julia Lichtblau. She expanded on one particular design meeting, which was a pivotal moment in developing Immortals of Aveum. The topic of this meeting was a battle of significant importance that would take place on a giant 400-foot mech, walking across the ocean and coming under attack.
The combat team wanted the player to battle inside the giant mech’s chest, at one point even falling off it only to catch themselves with the lash ability. All of this would happen while the mech took heavy damage and counterattacked enemy ships in the sky. After hearing this proposal, Julia stated, “I was in heaven. I thought this sounded like a really memorable set-piece moment in the making.”
How the hell will we actually make this level? It’s not technically possible in this time frame. You content people are absolutely dreaming!” said Mark Maratea, CTO.
The dev team then realized that most of these technical impossibilities could be tackled with the new features of UE5, which was in early access at the time. Back then, Immortals of Aveum was on UE4, and the only way for them to go above and beyond was to transition to the latest tech. They completed this task by the next year and further polished the game.
The next step in the studio’s journey is to transition yet again to Unreal Engine 5.2. The studio also gave some insight into what features will be explored in this upgrade. Aside from the Lumen and Nanite features, we can expect some visual and performance improvements. More details on this should be given in the livestream scheduled for 9 AM CT (7 AM PT) on Wednesday, October 4.
Related Reads:
- Immortals Of Aveum Receives Its First Post-Launch Update
- Immortals Of Aveum Reportedly Cannot Run At Native 4K/60 FPS On NVIDIA RTX 4090
- Immortals of Aveum PC’s Official System Requirements Have Been Revealed
Immortals of Aveum is a first-person shooter game developed by Ascendant Studios and published by Electronic Arts. It was released on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on August 22, 2023, and had a very underwhelming launch. The sales failed to meet the studio’s expectations, leading to it laying off nearly half of its staff.
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