According to an anonymous ex-developer of Ascendant Studios, the choice of genre made it no wonder that the game, which ran on Unreal Engine 5, was quickly forgotten!

Immortals of Aveum was the first game from Ascendant Studios. Independent developers with AAA ambitions – that makes you wonder. The studio was founded by Bret Robbins. A former creative director at Electronic Arts and Sledgehammer Games, the team set out to create a single-player sci-fi shooter with magic at its core. The studio ended up partnering with Electronic Arts (not surprisingly, given Robbins’ track record) to be published by Andrew Wilson.

Then Immortals of Aveum didn’t have a great reception: it stuttered at launch on PC and didn’t make much of a splash on the PlayStation 5/Xbox series. Three weeks after its (delayed!) August release, Ascendant Studios laid off about half of its staff due to poor sales. The studio is still going strong though, so that’s at least something positive to say about the story.

Not so an anonymous ex-Ascendant developer who told IGN how he thinks it was a bad idea to make a single player AAA shooter: “On a high level, Immortals was massively over budget for a studio’s debut project. The development cost was around $85 million, and I think EA kicked in $40 million for marketing and distribution. Sure, there was some serious talent on the development team, but trying to make a AAA single player shooter in today’s market was a really bad idea, especially since it was a new IP that was also trying to leverage Unreal Engine 5. What we ended up with was a bloated, repetitive campaign that was way too long,” said the anonymous developer.

We have to agree with the person: the story could indeed get a bit boring in a short time. In the meantime, Ascendant Studios might be working on something else…

Source: WCCFTech, IGN