BioShock 4's Gunplay Might Want to Take Notes From Avowed

With BioShock 4 launching the much-lauded franchise into the modern age, it will be vital that it expands and updates its core gameplay without losing what makes it so special. When it comes to combat, BioShock 4 is in a unique position: the BioShock series has had a massive influence on action-RPGs of the past 15 years, but the teacher may be able to learn from the students in some ways.

Although Avowed is surrounded by some controversy, it shows a lot of promise as well, and is a clear inheritor of BioShock's varied, expressive gameplay. Much like in the BioShock trilogy, Avowed will allow players to customize their fighting style with an assortment of distinct weapons and abilities, with dual-wielding playing a key role. Melee weapons, firearms, and magic can all be combined to great effect in Avowed, and experimenting with different offensive and defensive combinations promises to open doors to fresh and exciting opportunities. Games like BioShock 2 represent the gold standard for this sort of synergy-focused combat, but Avowed has some unique spins of its own that could benefit a future BioShock title.

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By William Carter

Avowed's Loadout System Could Work Wonders in BioShock 4

Loadouts Give Avowed's Combat Additional Depth and Variety

Early looks at Avowed's combat system reveal its emphasis on flexibility and unique weapon combinations, with players able to dual-wield various melee weapons, guns, and magical tools like wands. This sort of dual-wield mix-and-matching isn't exactly novel in the world of action-RPGs, but what is unique is Avowed's loadout mechanic: players can customize a handful of gear presets and switch between them on the fly, meaning that one could dual-wield pistols at mid-range before swapping to a heavy two-handed weapon upon closing the distance between them and the enemy.

There's a lot of powerful potential within this feature. Individually, Avowed's combat playstyles aren't incredibly unique — ranged, magic, and melee builds are essentially the holy trinity of fantasy RPGs — but being able to swap between these playstyles at will means that players can invent entirely new approaches to fights. The possibilities for a ranger-mage, or a heavy-ranger, are considerably greater thanks to loadouts, and even if the mechanic winds up being poorly executed, its framework ought to be applied to other games, like BioShock 4.

A BioShock Game Could Make Great Use of Avowed's Loadout System

Assuming that BioShock 4 maintains the traditions of its predecessors, players can expect to wield various spells, guns, and perhaps the occasional melee weapon. Mixing in Avowed's loadout mechanic, however, would allow for far greater flexibility and, by extension, strategic depth in combat encounters.

This would be buttressed if BioShock 4 were to allow for a more articulated weapon and magic system, letting players dual-wield guns, melee weapons, and plasmids (or whatever BioShock 4 calls its version of quasi-magic powers). For instance, players could dual-wield status-effect plasmids at the start of enemy encounters, sacrificing the stopping power of guns for stackable, sustained damage, before swapping to akimbo firearms for a heavier short-term damage output. Considering how well previous BioShock games leveraged unique weapon-plasmid combinations, the potential latent in these sorts of tweaks is dizzying.

Even if BioShock 4 doesn't copy Avowed's loadout mechanic verbatim, it may still benefit from borrowing a few of its elements. A more traditional loadout feature, for example, would be a solid quality-of-life feature, especially if BioShock 4 offers a significantly wider variety of weapons and powers. Ultimately, a lot of this depends on how much BioShock 4 builds on what came before it, as fundamental changes to gameplay or progression could either make an Avowed-style loadout system more effective, or less so.

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