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Gwendolyn is the sole playable character and protagonist of Tides of Annihilation, the Arthurian action-adventure developed by Eclipse Glow Games. She is the lone survivor of an otherworldly invasion that fractures modern-day London, and the only known person capable of wielding the mysterious gray fog, a power that lets her summon and command the spectral forms of the Knights of the Round Table. Her personal quest drives the entire campaign: find the Holy Grail, save her sister, restore the shattered world, and take vengeance on the demi-gods of Avalon who destroyed the city she called home.
The game opens in the aftermath of a catastrophic event. Avalon, the mythic realm of Arthurian legend, has folded itself onto the real world, and London is the epicenter of the incursion. Colossal invaders and lesser horrors have poured out of the breach, killing most of the city's inhabitants in a single wave. Gwendolyn is the only survivor the story introduces, and the gray fog she can draw on is presented as the force that kept her alive when nothing else should have.
Her journey follows a quest to find the Holy Grail: a relic tied to the Arthurian cycle that the story treats as the key to undoing the catastrophe. To reach it, Gwendolyn has to cross back and forth between the ruined, invasion-fractured streets of London and the mystical realm of Avalon, fighting her way through its demi-gods and reclaiming pieces of the world along the way. The Arthurian legend in Tides of Annihilation is not set dressing; the cast, locations, and lore are drawn directly from it, and Gwendolyn is positioned as a modern-day successor to the Round Table's heroes.
Gwendolyn's motivation is personal before it is heroic. Her sister was among the victims of the invasion, and rescuing her is the thread that pulls Gwendolyn forward through every encounter. The developers describe her goal as threefold, and each strand feeds into the next:
Save her sister, the emotional anchor of the main story.
Restore the shattered world, stitching Avalon and London back apart and undoing the collapse.
Take vengeance on the demi-gods of Avalon who orchestrated the invasion.
Collecting Grail Shards scattered across both realms is the practical means through which all three objectives can be accomplished. Each shard brings her closer to completing the Holy Grail, and by extension to the only power capable of rolling back the catastrophe.
Gwendolyn's base design has drawn a lot of attention in pre-release coverage, with her look described as striking and strongly stylized. The player can customize her outward appearance through collectible armor sets, hair styles, and makeup options unlocked over the course of the game. Customization is intentionally cosmetic only: armor pieces do not grant stat bonuses, because the developers wanted progression to feel skill-based rather than gear-dependent. That choice keeps the focus on how the player uses her abilities rather than on farming the right loadout.
Gwendolyn is built around summoning. She fights on the front line herself, but her real strength is the four colossal allies she can call into battle, the Spectral Knights, modeled after the legendary Knights of the Round Table. Each knight has a distinct kit, tactical role, and elemental identity. The player equips two knights per combat set, with two interchangeable sets for a total of four knights in rotation, and can swap between them in the middle of a combo using directional inputs.
This loop is the game's Dual Frontline Battle System. Gwendolyn and her summoned knights operate as a coordinated pair, or in larger encounters like boss fights, as a larger ensemble. The Colossal Knights are designed to be genuinely massive, dwarfing Gwendolyn in scale, and her role in those fights is as much director as participant: she chains her own combos, orchestrates tandem assaults, or lets a knight disrupt an enemy's pattern while she repositions.
Two additional mechanics extend her moveset. She can channel elemental energy drawn from an active knight directly into her own weapon, so a knight linked to lightning lets her empower strikes with lightning, and likewise for fire and ice. And she can enter a Partnered State by absorbing a knight into herself, swapping the two-character rhythm for a solo, enhanced mode with synchronized combos, improved mobility, and defensive parrying.
Gwendolyn has four confirmed weapon types, and the developers have been deliberate about only revealing three of them in pre-release coverage:
Sword, the primary melee option and the form her companion Niniane takes when she transforms into a weapon. Gwendolyn's blade is, in the fiction, Niniane herself in shape-shifted form, which makes Niniane a constant on-screen presence even when she isn't appearing as a character.
Fists, used for close-range brawling and fast, unarmed sequences.
Bow, the ranged option for enemies that resist melee pressure.
A fourth weapon, confirmed to exist but not yet shown publicly.
Weapon choice feeds into her skill tree and progression rather than existing as isolated loadouts; investments in one weapon family carry over into how combos chain with the Spectral Knights and how elemental channeling plays out in her hands.
The Partnered State is Gwendolyn's most distinctive solo mode. Instead of keeping a Spectral Knight on the field as a separate entity, she absorbs one into herself, essentially fusing with it for a window of empowered combat. While partnered, her move set picks up the absorbed knight's elemental identity, her dodge and traversal options expand, and she gains a dedicated parry that shifts the rhythm of a fight from spacing to timing. Different knights produce different Partnered States, so the mechanic doubles as an expressive choice: the player picks which knight to absorb based on the enemy in front of them, not just on who has the best raw damage.
The mode is also how the game solves the problem of boss encounters that aren't suited to the two-character frontline. In set-pieces like the fight against Tyronoe, Gwendolyn pairs with Sir Lamorak across a Mirror Space Folded Realm, and the player controls both characters simultaneously to overcome the encounter. The shift between distinct frontlines and unified Partnered State is a core rhythm of her combat identity.
Gwendolyn is voiced by Jennifer English, an English actress best known for playing Shadowheart in Baldur's Gate 3 and Maelle in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Her casting was announced as part of the game's English-language push, and the role was positioned as one of the major performances anchoring the Western launch.
In an additional piece of casting trivia, Jennifer English's real-life partner Aliona Baranova voices the antagonist Mordred, which marks the first time the two performers have played opposing characters in the same production. The dynamic between Gwendolyn and Mordred is one of the story's central relationships, and the pairing plays into it directly.
Gwendolyn has featured in every major reveal of the game so far. The first announcement trailer and PlayStation blog reveal set up her premise as the lone survivor of London and a wielder of the gray fog. Subsequent gameplay shows have focused on expanding the combat system around her:
Initial gameplay reveal, the first extended look at Gwendolyn commanding Spectral Knights. This shows off the Dual Frontline Battle System and a confrontation with Mordred.
Extended gameplay trailer, an eleven-minute combat-focused deep dive into her sword, fist, and bow weapon sets and her swap-mid-combo rotation between knights.
Xbox Partner Preview trailer, the reveal of the Mirror Space Folded Realm mechanic, built around a spectacular boss fight between Gwendolyn, Sir Lamorak, and the witch-boss Tyronoe.
Full gameplay demos, roughly 20 to 27 minute slices of end-to-end play that show Gwendolyn traversing both London and Avalon, using Partnered State in practice, and facing mid-game encounters.
Across these showings, Gwendolyn is consistently positioned as the face of the game rather than as one of an ensemble cast. Tides of Annihilation is, structurally, a single-protagonist action-adventure, and every combat, traversal, and story system in the game is built outward from her.
