Highlights
- Immortals of Aveum's plot flips between predictability, confusing lore dumps, and excessive plot twists.
- The story lacks focus with an indecisive portrayal of the Immortals' corrupt nature.
Immortals of Aveum opens with the day-to-day of Jak and his found family of thieves. It's very cute, and a perfect introduction to his quippy and sarcastic attitude. There are more than a few references to the "Everwar" that the plot will soon revolve around, but for the moment, it's just Jak and his family.
Then, in a move I will admit I saw coming immediately, all of them but Jak die, and he's drafted into the Everwar of his own volition. But it's not this clichéd bit of the storytelling that started to lose me, it was the following chapter that decided to lore dump the real reason behind the Everwar, which came with a reveal that what little I knew about the war was somehow all a lie anyway.
Before I knew what was going on, I had no idea what was going on. Sadly, this rug pulling became Aveum's favorite way to tell me the plot.
Before I rag on the game, I want to say I really like the combat and gunplay (you're casting magic, but let's call it what it is: gunplay). I also really like the character writing. Everyone's mostly down-to-Earth, and I find a lot of the quips to be fitting for the moment instead of taking me out of the moment, especially Jak's far more passive-aggressive-feeling ones, which let his jaded nature shine through. He's not lightening the mood for the audience; he's mocking and insulting what's being thrown at him.
And a lot is thrown at him, as it comes across pretty quickly that every chapter wants to have a shocking plot twist reveal, and it didn't take long for me to be fed up with the whole concept. The Immortals themselves are supposed to be the highest order of soldiers, the backbone and brains behind the operations keeping the world in order the best they can. But are their sinister secrets behind this order?
Sure? Likely? No not at all? The game is indecisive over how corrupt the order is, if at all. There are things we watch that come across as harsh and morally questionable, but then the game just kind of forgets about this and goes for a different story approach altogether. Forget you saw anything, unless we revisit the exact same thing in another chapter or three.
Pictured above is the villain of the game, and you will have no idea that's who he is once introduced (nearly at the halfway point I might add), but the game will act as if you already know him. He was name-dropped as Sandrakk by Jak, and he'll report this appearance to commanding officer Zendara, who will be shocked. But I myself kept going "Yeah, that's great, who is this?" just so Jak could stand up and essentially go "Stop right there Sandrakk; the guy behind the evil army we've been fighting this entire time!"
Sandrakk then gets another plot twist, as it turns out he was an Immortal before. Okay. I have no idea why he defected, and I don't know if the game does either. Sandrakk is a shallow villain that the game's writing wants us to think is a lot deeper than he is, and it just leads to him honestly being less interesting than if he were overtly two-dimensional. He'll go off about how the order of the Immortals has the wrong idea, not really elaborate what the hell that means, and then call in his goons to slaughter everyone. He's a figurative mustache-twirling bad guy that allegedly has something important to say about the corruption of army structures or social pecking orders—really can't tell you, because I can't help but notice he's trying to destroy all that's good and kind in the world on a whim.
Sandrakk's motivation is that he's evil. Plain and simple. And that's not even inherently a bad thing if done right. Just like having a deeper villain who started as a hero and got corrupted by systematic abuse and hypocrisy isn't a bad thing either, but just because the game says he's the latter, that doesn't mean he isn't the former, and the game loves showing that he's the former.
The game thinks it has a lot to say, and all its talking points have merit in a vacuum—not so much when combined into this smoothie of, well, blandness feels like the right word.
At one point, the magic usage becomes a metaphor of climate change.Yeah, dead serious. Using magic hurts the world as it can't naturally meld back in, but we need to keep using magic because that's how things are and nobody knows how to control the forces of magic without using magic just yet. But then Jak gets a spell to help clean unrelated goo, so this metaphor is immediately forgotten. I'm up for games tackling serious discussions, but it has to commit to them, and the only time the game mentions magic destroying anything, it's only in regard to what Sandrakk will do with magic.
The only consistent writing is Jak's character, frankly. Jak believes in fighting only over the sake of his fallen family, has a grudge against Sandrakk, likes his comrades, and deals with the sudden rug pulls and plot twists about as well as I did. Jak's a good person, on top of a jaded cynic who doesn't keep his mouth shut. When Jak speaks out, it starts funny, but around the halfway point of the game, just becomes cathartic. At least someone understands this story is falling apart at the seams.
The only detriment to Jak's character is that he's the one writing the lore entries in the journal. Logs abut his backstory and the other characters work, as he gets to make jabs or remind us of his softer side in terms of his dead found family. But in regard to the lore, you never learn anything from the journals, as they're too informal and jokey. So yeah, don't expect writing the diary to help you know what's going on. Because it's just that, Jak's diary, not the lore dictionary it desperately needs to be.
The sad thing is, the clichéd bits of the opening became the story bits I liked the most. I never stopped caring about Jak's family, but I instantly stopped caring about the reasons and consequences of the Everwar. I liked Immortals of Aveum as a gameplay-type game and its main character, but I could do without everything else.