Immortals of Aveum

Immortals of Aveum is an ambitious FPS that largely succeeds in its worldbuilding, immersing us in a world ruled by magic and engulfed in warfare. It may struggle with tone and structure, with a baffling protagonist and tiresome backtracking, but manages to make up for it with interesting puzzles and engaging action sequences.

The protagonist is Jak, a street thief who lives in the underside Seren, a city in the kingdom of Lucium that is built around a giant bridge, where the rich live on top, while the poor are relegated to a vertical slum of makeshift houses that hang from the bridge’s pillars. Jak’s world is locked in a perpetual state of war, with nations battling over the control of Leylines – floating rivers of magic – and his best friend and accomplice, Luna, is going away, having recently joined the army in search of a better life.

Luna decides to take Jak to one last heist to help a friend, but disaster strikes on their way back, when the enemy army, the Rasharnians, attacks Seren, adding Jak’s friends to the list of casualties. During the chaos, however, Jak’s powers are awakened: he discovers that he’s one of the few souls capable of harnessing the power of all three types of magic, instead of just one, and is so promptly recruited by the High Field Marshall herself, the ruthless Kirkan, who trains him to become one of Lucium’s elite fighters, the Immortals.

Jak becomes marked by a desire for revenge, dedicating his entire life to making the Rasharnians pay for what they did to those he loved. His primary goal is payback, his innermost wish is to enact violence against his enemies. It is a problem, then, that he acts as if he’s Peter Parker (a personality that’s becoming increasingly common in big-budget games, we either get that or the brooding, stoic soldier), joking about everything and making fun of his enemies and the situation he’s in.

The brooding stoic soldier would still be a tiresome cliché, but at least he would make sense in a world that is forever at war and in a story that is full of betrayal, sacrifice, and loss, revolving around our collective tendency for violence. “But one thing was common to whichever form we humans took – our unending greed for magic. And what’s war, except for greed that’s found a structure?” a lore entry reads. Jak’s society is built around social casts and the common people even avoid questioning the ruling class out of fear of being accused of being unpatriotic (a serious crime).

Jak’s narrative crime is not to take his world seriously when it is begging him to do so. He acts with a levity that not only feels out of place in Aveum but at times doesn’t fit even his own characterization: when someone tells Jak, “All you are is angry,” we simply don’t buy it. He’s the biggest flaw in the game’s otherwise successful narrative: the events that transpire require more gravity to land properly than Jak is willing to hand them. Some side characters also joke from time to time and display a playful personality, but Jak, as the narrative center of the game, had to be toned down for everything around him to work.

The story revolves around the “Wound”, a big, bottomless chasm at the center of Aveum that is growing larger by the day while people fight the aptly named Everwar to control the magical Leylines. There’s an enormous statue of the Pentacade, Aveum’s godlike figure, standing right at the center of the Wound, framing its expansion as divine punishment. But people still remain oblivious to the danger because when it comes slowly and gradually, one tends to underestimate the gravity of the situation until it’s too late. The world is coming to an end but people are too busy killing each other to care.

When Jak questions his superior about the Wound, her answer is telling, revealing how money and power always come first for those already in charge: Kirkan explains to Jak that the growing chasm is a concern for the future, for a time when the war is finally over and they have already won. Jak, then, reminds her that it is called Everwar for a reason, but he eventually starts to agree with Kirkan’s point of view, that they need to win before they start fixing things.

Here’s another problem with Jak: the soldier mindset that the story requires him to have – the unwavering trust in his superiors and the tendency not to question orders – is at odds with his Peter Parker personality, which pushes him to joke about the obvious problems that surround him and rebel. This is why he questions Kirkan and then acts as if he has accepted her answer as the truth: Jak doubts and questions until he simply doesn’t. It’s as if the person who wrote the story events and the one who wrote his dialogue (full of modern-day vernacular, which can be distracting) were two different people who never thought of communicating with each other during production. Jak’s character is full of contradictions that instead of elevating the story by adding complexity to it, just undermine everything by making it not make much sense.

And we have a great example of how light-heartiness can work in this type of narrative in the game itself, with the High Marshall Kirkan. There’s a scene early in the game where she stops everything to cheer a soldier on, making him believe that they will all prevail in battle because of the Immortals, while a heroic tune plays in the background. There’s a similar scene at the beginning of The Witcher 2, when a soldier is led to believe an amulet will grant him protection – it doesn’t, but the fact that he believes that it does gives him the confidence necessary to survive the incoming assault. It’s the same principle applied here. And Kirkan manages to sell the idea because she seems earnest: it’s precisely the levity in her tone of voice, which should only belong to some untouched by the horrors of war, one who is confident victory is certain, one who is not hopeless in any way, that makes her speech believable. In other words, the levity here works because it’s calculated, it’s a persona, a mask that Kirkan wears because she’s a leader that intends to inspire confidence. The real Kirkan is as ruthless and cruel as the leader of the Rasharnians himself – and maybe even more so.

Another interesting thing about Immortals of Aveum’s narrative is that most Codex entries are written by Jak himself, which is great because it gives us more access to his thoughts while also allowing the text to deceive us: the entry about “The Path”, for example, – the mysterious realm the Immortals use as a proving ground – has an error in it because Jak was lied to. So, when he discovers the truth, the entry gets updated with his mad ramblings about the whole thing. This makes these lore entries more fascinating to read and helps develop the main character. When a friend of Jak dies, for instance, we can see how the whole event impacted him because all entries related to it are written in very simple, short sentences, while the rest are long and detailed.

But the thing that immediately stands out in Immortals of Aveum is its excellent art direction. The difference between Jak’s humble home in Seren and his quarters in the Immortals’ headquarters is striking. The walls of his house are dilapidated, and the whole structure appears to be barely hanging together, but it is still filled with warmth and life, decorated with objects that matter to Jak and his friends: near the bed there’s even a board of some game like to chess, suggesting they play often before sleeping. His quarters with the Immortals, on the other hand, may boast the golden pillars of a stunning palace, and there’s a beautiful fountain in the middle of the room that reeks of excess, but it’s ultimately devoid of personality: it’s cold and impersonal, just like the power Jak has achieved.

There is also a great sense of scale to most environments, with pieces of giant statues littering the world of Aveum: much like most of the technology used, they are remnants of an ancient civilization and not entirely understood.  However, it’s true that later areas are not as intricate and elaborate as the first ones we visit, leaning more toward the generic side, which is a pity.

Immortals of Aveum’s structure is more fascinating than it seems at first glance. It quickly abandons the linearity of the combat-heavy first missions in favor of exploration and puzzle-solving. It’s a game more akin to Metroid Prime than Call of Duty and it even shares the same 3D map design with the famous Nintendo classic.

Areas are big, require some platforming, and are full of secrets to find, locked behind the new abilities and equipment we acquire during the story. These secrets vary from more powerful weapons and accessories to health upgrades and even a couple of optional powers that are helpful both in combat and puzzle-solving. The only problem with this structure is that backtracking is not done right: the game doesn’t make us return to many old areas with the main missions, so we must backtrack on our own constantly, which can become tiresome and feel like busywork. At least the map marks each type of lock we find, so we can at least know when to return to previous areas or not.

A common puzzle in the game is a chest locked inside a device that closes too fast when we activate it by shooting a distant button. This puzzle is about timing and geography: we are supposed to position ourselves in a way that allows both the chest and the button to be in our line of vision, shoot the chest with a bullet that slows down time, and then shoot the button. The timing comes from the fact that this special bullet takes a few seconds to reach the chest, while the normal one hits the button instantaneously.

Another recurrent puzzle requires an object that emits a ray of light, which can be refracted on certain crystals to reach and activate nearby eye-shaped devices. These puzzles are the hardest ones in the game and can become quite tricky when we are supposed to take mirrors into account, color-coded crystals, and the ability to move the eye-shaped devices around. It’s just a pity that these puzzles are mostly optional: just like Tomb Raider, which relegated the act of raiding tombs to a sidequest, Immortals of Aveum leaves its more engaging parts on the sidelines.

The three types of magic Jak has access to are color-coded and function like guns. Blue magic functions similarly to a rifle or a javelin while red magic works like a shotgun. We can change the type of magic with the press of a button, and the game encourages us to do so with color-coded enemies that are weak to only specific types of magic. Combat is fast-paced and frantic, with arenas full of enemies that can pack quite a punch, but the number of particles on the screen can become overwhelming in the more hectic fights late in the game, when the particle effects that our weapons produce, that the enemy weapons produce, and that even their bodies produce when they’re defeated, they all stop looking cool and just become visual noise.

Finally, the game also has the equivalent of Breath of the Wild’s shrines: secret areas that offer unique, self-contained challenges that range from obstacle courses to combat arenas. They are fun and some even hide some pretty demanding optional bosses, but they are too few and far between to really have an impact on the experience.

Immortals of Aveum is a game that does a lot of things right, boasting great art direction, an engaging story, and tricky puzzles, but unfortunately, a lot of things wrong as well, with a tone-deaf protagonist and a problematic structure that turns backtracking into busywork. There’s a lot of room for improvement here, but also a lot of potential.

May 19, 2025.