Skyrim was one of most commercially successful RPGs of the last decade and continues to sell well on Steam nearly ten years after its original release. However, the game was not without its flaws, and Obsidian Entertainment’s upcoming first-person RPG Avowed will need to learn from the last Elder Scrolls game’s mistakes if it is to take the genre into the next generation.
One common criticism of Skyrim was its combat system, with many players feeling that it was clunky and didn’t scale well to higher level encounters. Fortunately for Avowed, the Skyrim modding community has done a lot of work improving the game’s first-person melee combat, providing some great lessons on how to tighten up the formula in time for launch.
Skyrim’s melee combat in particular had a few big problems. First, NPCs did not respond very naturally to combat, which made thinking ahead and attempting to be tactical almost impossible in the game, at least using real-world logic. Mods like Skyrim Revamped – Complete Enemy Overhaul went a long way towards improving this and in ways that Avowed could likely learn from.
The mod gave Skyrim’s enemies access to the same vanilla perks as a player of their class and level, giving mages, for example, the ability to dual cast spells as well as take on perks from the destruction and conjuration trees. The mod also improved upon enemy AI, making them run away if they were low on health, or keep their distance and take cover if they were a mage or an archer.
Mods like Know Your Enemy also gave different NPCs particular strengths and weaknesses. For example, Draugr were given resistance to poison and disease but a weakness to axes. Having to plan for specific encounters rather than just hack away at enemy health bars would go a long way towards making Avowed’s combat feel more organic and exciting.
Other mods made combat interesting in indirect ways. The popular Frostfall survival mod introduces survival elements like cold and camping into the game, which has an inadvertently interesting effect on combat. The mod incentivizes players to base their armor choices not only on the protection it provides from blows but also the warmth and coverage it provides. This can lead to scenarios where the player is wearing fur armor, for example, at a far higher level than they would in the vanilla game due to the cold protection it survives, having to be far more careful in combat as a result.
Based on what is known about Avowed so far, the game should also try to make higher level enemies less damage-absorbent than Skyrim’s, and instead have them more likely to parry and block blows, as well as take advantage of player weaknesses to improve their chances of victory. In return, players should feel confident that an arrow to the neck of most humanoid enemies would take them down, but landing the shot itself before the enemy has a chance to react should be the challenge.
With some players claiming that Cyberpunk 2077 has the same melee combat problems as Skyrim, Avowed could have an advantage on the next-gen consoles if Obsidian looks at the improvements the modding community made for Skyrim. Not only do these improvements provide some great solutions, but they also serve as a reminder of what players find frustrating in first-person combat. Obsidian should ensure that combat feels reactive, that enemies don’t feel like damage sponges, and that players are incentivized to plan their attacks based on their specific enemy in Avowed.
Avowed is in development for PC and Xbox Series X.
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