If you're worried that Avowed doesn't look punchy enough, Obsidian’s combat designer might be able to reassure you.

When a game developer uses the term "hitstop," my ears perk. It means that I'm about hear some secret sauce or opinions about how to make games feel great. Specifically, how and when to include a short pause in the middle of combat to make a hit really "pop ." Early footage of Avowed made it difficult to gauge how the combat would feel. However, my hands-on experience with the game was a pleasant one. It may not have the same weight as the best PC melee combat games like Mount & Blade 2 and Vermintide 2, yet its fast sword swings feel better than expected. Charge attacks are also more powerful.

According to Obsidian VFX Lead Ash Kumar, whom I interviewed at a preview event held at Obsidian’s offices in Southern California, one person is responsible for the combat's current state.

"Max is a superpower. He can look at an animation and decide how much hitstop it needs to be for it to feel right," said Kumar.

Max Matzenbacher is the one who has joined Obsidian 2020, after working on MMOs such as Warhammer Online and WildStar. Matzenbacher's role as Avowed senior combat designer was a big part of what Kumar had to say.

"He has tweaked each weapon with hitstop in a different way. Like the hammer. The special attack lodges the weapon into the enemy, and then brings it to the ground for an area-effect attack. He's done a fantastic job with all the tweaking, the animation timing and the times he said 'I will play it this instant' when I sent him a particle. And he did it with every weapon."

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Kumar continued to receive praise. "He spent a week on a weapon, and he constantly tweaked every aspect of it. From the animations, to how an enemy reacts when you move a blade, he did it all." Added Kumar. "It is fantastic work and it feels visceral. It feels heavy. Your weapons will not pass through an enemy when you are using a weapon of a lower level. They will instead boink them off. You're still doing damage, but the damage is small, and the animations reflect that. We wanted to give players useful feedback on each swing of the weapon."

I asked Matzenbacher how he developed his impact instincts as soon as I sat him down for the interview.

"If you pay close attention to combat in the gaming community, you'll come across it pretty soon--hitstop is one of those things which are just ubiquitous now," said he. Obsidian’s combat designers used the term “sense of striking” to question if weapons were landing with an appropriate impact.

"Any game with fighting, or even an MMO that has a camera that is really pulled back, if there is no sense of connection, the game will feel bad. I worked in a NCSoft-owned studio, where they spent a lot of research and time on what makes a game fun. That's how I learned about the term "sense of striking." When I came here, the challenge of doing this in first-person felt exciting. Making that feel crunchy and satisfying was a real challenge.

Matzenbacher stated that with a first-person view, one of the biggest challenges is conveying the "state" of the player - where you are in the attack's stage, basically. Third-person cameras make it much easier to see if you've already slashed an enemy or if you've just pulled your hand back for a sword swing. In first-person, if you raise the sword above your heads, for example, the moment it is out of sight can be confusing during a frenetic fight.

"We've tried leaning into some soft tracking to get the player to align to the enemies in a manner that doesn't seem like we're taking skill out of the game, but rather feels 'correct'," he said. "The challenge with RPGs is that we want to feel the progression throughout the game. But it can't begin in a way which feels crappy. We've spent a great deal of time experimenting with the timing and the animations. We try to make the connection between a normal and a strong enemy feel right. Our UI team decided that camera shake in first person makes the game too confusing, so they made the HUD shake. I could spend hours squealing over the directional blood and VFX.

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Avowed offers a wide range of weapons, including muskets, pistols, rapid-fire wands, bows, and the usual swords, daggers axes, and lances. Avowed has a variety of weapons, including muskets and pistols, as well as rapid-fire wands and bows. It also features dual wielding. The leveling system is classless and allows players to increase their attack speed and unlock special attacks. The developers of Avowed are at least saying the right things.