Obsidian, developer of "Pillars of Eternity," "Fallout: New Vegas," and "The Outer Worlds," released a gameplay trailer for its first-person RPG "Avowed" last week; PC Gamer's Ted Litchfield spoke with game director Carrie Patel and gameplay director Gabe Paramo.

Designing first-person melee combat is difficult. Any third-person action game has all sorts of tools at its disposal, from custom-made animations to overhead situational awareness to cool flips, but it's much harder to execute them when you're inside the skull of the protagonist. Cool flips, in particular, only make the ride more intoxicating.

Fortunately, Obsidian is counting on a development studio that has basically perfected it over the years: Fatshark, which developed Warhammer's Vermintide and 40k's Darktide.

"Our goal was to make it feel intuitive, explains Paramo. "Like Vermintide, it's about making the sensation of hitting [an enemy] feel jarring. That's where we're trying to draw inspiration from." It's a real master class in terms of the feeling of hitting and impact."

Honestly, fair play. If you want a great example of meaty first-person blade swinging, both "Vermintide" and "Darktide" are great places to start, and Fatshark has developed Left 4 Dead's formula of knocking down zombies with a frying pan, allowing enemies based on both weapon type and attack angle to Fatshark has taken Left 4 Dead's formula of knocking down zombies with a frying pan and added a complex system that makes enemies stagger and rumble in specific directions based on both weapon type and angle of attack (great video by Polygon's Patrick Gill).

"I'm definitely really proud of what the gameplay team has done: ...... Even the melee combat has a great feel to it," says Patel.

"I really feel like we're head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to melee combat in fantasy first-person action RPGs.

Honestly, I'm pretty excited about it on paper. It's been a long time since I've had a proper, meaty first-person combat experience in a game other than a horde shooter. "Likely" in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic was overshadowed by the fact that first-person brawls are laborious to design, but I still hope Obsidian pulls it off.