Fidelity or Per for mance?
Or how about just Fun?
There’s a bit in Astro Bot where you can walk through a splodge of oil then jump into a pool of water and watch a rainbow-coloured shimmer emerge in the liquid around you as it reacts with the gunk on your feet. It’s the tiniest of touches, one that doesn’t need to be there at all, because this isn’t a game that’s interested in anything as predictable as realism. But someone on the development team had the idea, and then someone else agreed that it was wor th putting in. You know, just for fun. This sense of playfulness is in inexhaustible supply throughout the entire game, meaning that our review (p92) can be only a skim across its sunny sur face.
We were still making return visits to Astro Bot when the new PS5 Pro hardware was revealed (p8). An enhanced version of Team Asobi’s game wasn’t included in Sony’s presentation, possibly because it’d be tough to make it any more appealing to the eye But we can at least appreciate why the console exists (even if we can’t get on board with its price), since it’s aimed at removing the need to choose between Per formance and Fidelity modes. That process is the definition of an unhappy compromise, a bit like going to a restaurant where the waiter explains that you can have some mediocre food immediately, but some of the really good stuff if you ’ re OK with waiting for an hour. In a way, it recalls the bad old days of the PAL/NTSC console era, except in that case consumers in Europe didn’t have much of a choice, and had to put up with second-rate versions of even the biggest games – and without the offer of crisper visuals as compensation for inferior framerates. We’ve come a long way since.
And yet, as we ’ ve seen with all of this year ’ s redundancies, the modern game industr y is failing in other ways. The founders of Raccoon Logic, the studio behind this issue’s cover game, experienced the crushing fallout from things going wrong when Google’s great Stadia experiment imploded. For tunately, they were able to get back to their feet and star t again with Revenge Of The Savage Planet They tell us their stor y on p54
se ctions
Knowledge
8 Pro evolution
How does a new model aim to upgrade the PS5 experience?
12 Double Dragon Inside Amazon’s for thcoming Yakuza: Like A Dragon TV series
14 Fantasy star
Talking shop with Ralph Ineson, the man behind FFXVI’ s Cid
16 Bear arms
A graphic look at the power and the furr y of Bogdan’s Cross
18 Soundbytes
Game commentar y in snack-sized mouthfuls, featuring Mar tyn Ware
20 This Month On Edge
The things that caught our eye during the production of E403
Dispatches
22 Dialogue
Edge readers share their opinions; one wins an exclusive T-shir t
24 Trigger Happy Civil War actually is like a videogame, argues Steven Poole
26 The Outer Limits Fun for the entire family? Alex Spencer rolls the dice for success
28 Narrative Engine
Randomness in games? No chance, according to Jon Ingold
Features
54 Escape Velocity
How the founders of Raccoon Logic battled back from the brink for Revenge Of The Savage Planet
72 Lens Flair
Beyond photo modes: the game developers framing their worlds through the eye of a camera
82 The Making Of…
Developer Don’t Nod didn’t quite reach for the stars, but it came pretty close in creating Jusant
86 Studio Profile
How Kyoto’s Q-Games became one of the leading lights within Japan’s burgeoning indie scene
124 Time Extend
The per fect playground? Ubisoft takes its famous love of high places and goes big to Grow Home
129 The Long Game
Broken Sword – Shadow Of The Templars: Reforged sees George Stobbar t back in the saddle
EDITORIAL
Tony Mott editorial director Alex Spencer deputy editor
Jon Bailes games editor Miriam McDonald operations editor Warren Brown group ar t director Ryan Robbins designer
CONTRIBUTORS
Julian Benson, Ruth Cassidy, Christian Donlan, Caelyn Ellis, Jon Ingold, Jordan Oloman, Simon Parkin, Emmanuel Pajon, Andre Pechelin, Steven Poole, Jeremy Peel, Tom Regan, Abbie Stone, Sarah Thwaites, Alan Wen
SPECIAL THANKS
David Bar tlett, Greg Jones
ADVERTISING
Clare Dove UK group commercial director Kevin Stoddar t account director (+44 (0)1225 687455 kevin stoddar t@futurenet com)
CONTACT US edge@futurenet com
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PRODUCTION
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MANAGEMENT
Kevin Addley SVP, consumer division Matt Pierce MD, games and enter tainment Tony Mott editorial director, games Warren Brown group ar t director, games and tech Rodney Dive global head of design
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Pro evolution
Sony’s latest console upgrade provides a smattering of embellishments – for a price
Sony ’ s long-rumoured PlayStation 5 Pro hardware finally became a reality on September 10, when a presentation by system architect Mark Cerny revealed that the console will debut on November 7
Following the PS4 Pro approach, the console will of fer enhanced graphicsprocessing capabilities rather than a comprehensive architectural overhaul, although it will ship with a 2TB SSD – an essential upgrade considering that the original PS5’s meagre 667GB of usable SSD space is barely fit for purpose
As could have been expected, given all console manufacturers’ push towards moving consumers to digital-only game libraries, the PS5 Pro hardware will not ship with an optical drive Less predictable was the price of entr y At £699 in the UK, the console recalls the PlayStation 3 introduction in 2005, when
Sony’s Ken Kutaragi famously encouraged potential customers to work more hours in order to be able to af ford the console, which debuted in the US at $600 At $699, the US PS5 Pro’s price tag doesn’t look quite as steep to UK eyes as it does to those in Nor th America, given that it equates to £530 at current exchange rates Regardless, reaction to the new console’s pricing was almost universally negative, with even the kindest takes concluding that asking nearly £700 for a slightly upgraded console is a hard sell Matching almost directly with rumours that had circulated in the run-up to Sony’s of ficial announcement, the Pro hardware speaks the same design language as the existing PS5 family, larger than 2023’s Slim model but not as big as the towering original Three ridges running across its body echo the three layers of the PS4 Pro
design, the overall construction bringing to mind the limb joint of an Imperial stormtrooper’s armour
Inside, the base PS5 CPU is retained in order to ease interoperability, and the focus is instead on an upgraded AMD GPU, running 45 per cent faster than the original unit, handling ray tracing at up to three times the speed Crucially, the new GPU incorporates deep-learning imageupscaling technology at the hardware level, which Sony has of ficially designated PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) Even if the raw hardware has greater capacity than the original setup when it comes to processing native 4K images, then, the emphasis seems to be on following the established approach of generating frames at 1440 or 1080 resolutions internally (and lower in some instances),
then upscaling Incorporating PSSR will push better-quality pixels to the display than we ’ re accustomed to with base PS5 upscaling methods such as checkerboard rendering, as popularised with the introduction of PS4 Pro Impor tantly, enhancements are not only about image quality Contextualising Sony’s approach, Cerny noted that, given the choice between Per formance and Fidelity modes, PS5 players opt to have a smoother framerate in approximately 75 per cent of cases
necessarily be consistent across all games (even as Sony encourages PS5 developers to employ Pro-specific features, without resolutely insisting on it)
A 4K60 standard across console games isn’t going to magically materialise any time soon, then
The Pro GPU’s increased headroom will allow for new modes that combine the best of both, although Cerny was careful not to promise that improvements will
A 4K60 standard across console games isn’t going to magically materialise any time soon, then That will most likely require a full console-cycle refresh, not a Pro-shaped interim step
PSSR will also be used to upscale a selection of games to 8K, with a revamped version of Gran Turismo 7 already running at this resolution Polyphony’s racing series has always been used as something of a technical showcase, and it’s no surprise to see it as a PS5 Pro demo here, displaying
ray-traced reflections across competing cars ’ bodywork at a target of 60fps
Such features are clearly aimed at players who have invested in high-end display technology, and the results will scale in accordance with the size and quality of your TV If you want to run GT7 at 8K and happen to own the requisite display setup, Sony has confirmed that 60fps is even possible at this resolution, despite early repor ts suggesting that it would per form at half of that rate
In fur ther demos, other enhancements were a little harder to discern than GT7’ s ray-traced accoutrements Cerny enthused about how distant details in the parade scene of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apar t are much clearer on PS5 Pro, while SpiderMan 2 is “noticeably higher resolution throughout” when compared to its Per formance iteration on the base
£699 gets you the Pro hardware and a standard DualSense controller Unlike the launch PS5, there is no stand for vertical orientation packed in – that’s an extra £25
On the thirdparty
A MATTER OF OPTICS
Is it reasonable to promote something as a ‘Pro’ model when it doesn’t actually include top-of-the-line features? That was the question on many lips when weighing up the fact that the PS5 Pro hardware does not include an optical drive The addon –originally released alongside the PS5 Slim model last year –must be purchased for an additional £100. That’s if you can actually find one: at the time of writing, the drive is sold out everywhere online (scalpers excluded)
console The bald reality is that it will be dif ficult to notice the dif ference when the screen is cascading with nuts and bolts or you ’ re swinging through downtown New York at breakneck speed, but at least the slower pace of The Last Of Us Par t II Remastered will invite you to stop and admire the flowers (or weeds, perhaps)
As Sony’s demos illustrate, as well as appearing in new PS5 games, Pro enhancements will also be applied to existing releases via patches A total of “40 to 50” games will of fer Pro-specific modes at the console’s launch, with Assassin’s Creed: Shadows leading the way among new releases, suppor ted by games including Demon’s Souls, Dragon’s Dogma 2, Final Fantasy VII: Rebir th and Horizon: Forbidden West on the upgrade side Cerny emphasised that the latter game shows what else is expected from the Pro hardware beyond framerate and resolution upticks, citing upgrades in lighting ef fects and character detail
There are obvious incentives for publishers in giving new life to old games, and developers rarely say no to any piece of hardware that makes their games look better Indeed, Cerny’s Pro presentation opened with talk of how studios are always asking Sony for more graphics-processing power And having one more platform configuration during the production process doesn’t seem to
have fazed developers One, who has been working on multiplatform releases over successive console generations across the past 25 years, assures us that introducing another hardware iteration –at least one that raises the per formance ceiling – does not create an enormous amount of additional work on the studio side “Developing a PS5 Pro version isn’t a pain in the arse at all,” he says “Why would it be? It makes it easier to use your PC version [as the basis] It’s just like adjusting the settings Dealing with multiple hardware variations is only dif ficult when you have to spend the largest amount of time tuning and optimising for the lowest-spec hardware, such as Series S For us, allowing for PS5 Pro [with our current project] is easy to do, and it would be like that for any developer, really ” Outside of concer ted work on the developer side, the new hardware will also benefit the existing PS5 Game Boost feature, applying per formance enhancements to “ more than 8,500” PS4 games PSVR2 games are also expected to benefit from the upgrade of the new GPU, although specific titles did not factor in the Pro announcement
That Sony fell back on existing PlayStation games in showcasing PS5 Pro rather than using it as an oppor tunity to debut a new game speaks to the platform strategy as a whole By design, this is not supposed to be a console for ever yone, and with such a controversial RRP Sony cannot expect sales to exceed those of its more reasonably priced PS4 Pro predecessor, which stacked up at about 12 per cent of the core PS4 model’s installed base
“Developing a PS5 Pro version isn’t a pain in the arse at all. It makes it easier to use your PC version”
There will be new game announcements during Sony’s next State Of Play, but in the meantime it is tempting to ask what all of this might mean for PS6 The next console has been in development in tandem with PS5 Pro, and AMD is said to be providing the silicon, having beaten Intel during a lengthy audition process An emphasis on backwards compatibility is said to have worked in AMD’s favour, given that its technology is used in both PS4 and PS5, although frankly the idea of suppor t for past-generation games not being a priority is ludicrous at this point The more impor tant question is: what can the next console of fer in terms of a genuine step change? What will be its equivalent of this console generation’s adoption of SSD
side, Square Enix’s Pro upgrade of Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth is the best example so far At 60fps it is considerably crisper than the original in Performance mode
ABOVE The Pro version of The Last Of Us Part II Remastered runs at 60fps and aims to the match the detail of the standard version’s Fidelity mode This side-byside comparison shows the base PS5 version’s Performance mode (left) against the sharper Pro iteration
RIGHT The PS5 Pro hardware is more closely aligned to its Slim brother than it is the original PS5: the optional stand is compatible with both, as is the optical drive
storage? And how much will the console cost? If a PS5 Pro is £699 today, is it ridiculous to expect a PS6 to retail at £899 when it launches in, say, 2027?
And what is Microsoft cooking up in response? Its decision to not put for th a similarly upgraded console, of fering special-edition Series X and S consoles with larger hard drives instead, shows how the company ’ s strategy has changed since the days of the Xbox One X launch
An Xbox handheld is said to be in development, but overall Microsoft feels like a much less aggressive contender nowadays, with Ampere analyst Piers Harding-Rolls noting that “the lack of competition” from Microsoft “ means it is an easier decision for Sony to run with a higher price point” for its new console
In truth, neither platform holder is showing its best face right now PS5 Pro’s announcement was preceded by the shutdown of Sony’s Concord, just weeks after launch And two days after wards, with PS5 Pro pricing criticism still raging, Microsoft pounced on the open goal by announcing that it was shedding another 650 staf f from its Xbox division, adding to the 1,900 it cut in Januar y (Sony, for its par t, laid of f 900 PlayStation staf f in Februar y, while subsidiar y Bungie cut 220 in July ) A precarious environment indeed in which to be launching new hardware at eye-popping prices
ABOVE Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’s Performance RT mode (left), compared with the increased clarity of the revamped Pro version BELOW Spider-Man 2 in PS5 Performance mode (left) alongside its Pro equivalent, whose detail boost is most obvious in foliage
Double Dragon
Can Like A Dragon: Yakuza translate into another videogame-to-TV hit for Amazon?
Following the success of Fallout, Amazon has cranked up its interest in videogame adaptations, with intriguing anthology Secret Level coming this December Before that, however, comes Like A Dragon: Yakuza, a TV series whose name amalgamates the two monikers used by its source material
While there already exists a 2007 film adaptation, directed by Takashi Miike, this time the stor y of legendar y yakuza Kazuma Kir yu is told in an episodic series, which better reflects the chapterbased structure of the games And if there are any concerns over this distinctively Japanese series as an American co-production, executive producer Erik Barmack assures us this is something they wanted to get right “We were having a lot of conversations with Sega around making sure that it was going to be authentic, that it was going to be done in Japanese, that we were going to involve the right talent, and that, of course, we had the right broadcaster and distribution par tner,” he explains “The shooting itself was reasonably long, because the scope of the show itself is quite big All of that led to a process that took a couple of years, mostly because we ’ re dealing with a complex world that we wanted to treat authentically ” Nonetheless, the Amazon series is referred to as an original stor y, essentially giving the writers licence to reimagine characters and events rather than sticking to the plots of the games The most
“We had a lot of conversations with Sega around making sure that it was going to be authentic”
immediate dif ference is the Dragon Of Dojima himself, played by Ryoma Takeuchi Yakuza followers may find it hard to imagine someone not yet a teenager when the original game was released embodying the stoic, muscular, middle-aged Kir yu Yet that scepticism is nipped in the bud the moment he bares his physique – the iconic dragon tattoo visible on his back – while donning that distinct maroon shir t and grey suit Takeuchi hadn’t played the games before filming, and was instructed not to change that – something he argues has worked in his favour “There’s an immense respect towards the character, but at the same time you don’t want to be mimicking or copying exactly as depicted in the game, ” the actor tells us “Embodying the character more spiritually is more impor tant So, as a per former, that’s the sor t of focus that I had throughout production ”
Having Kir yu as younger than in the games feels like less of a wrench when you consider the show’s dual timeline, switching between events in 1995 and 2005, one of the key contributions from the Hollywood side of the production While the 1995 timeline is depicted only in the prologue in the game, it’s given almost equal prominence in the show, leaving room for Kir yu ’ s relationships with childhood friends Nishiki and Yumi to develop during his years at Sunflower Orphanage, and to explore how he
TOKYO VICES Director Masaharu Take seems an apt choice for Like A Dragon: Yakuza, given that another series he helmed – Netflix’s The Naked Director –similarly explored Tokyo’s underbelly How does this adaptation go about depicting the fictional red-light district of Kamurocho? “I would say that it’s very important that it felt local and authentic,” Barmack says “Then having it be enough like the game world, which is a little bit seedy, but also a little bit glossy – you need both of those things in harmony ” The Naked Director shares a penchant for comedy with the more recent games in this series; those expecting similarly surreal diversions here might be disappointed but a more dramatic tone is arguably more faithful to the original PlayStation 2 title
comes to join the Tojo Clan Takeuchi found this the most exhilarating par t of the production “Depicting the young days and being juvenile, we actually use that spontaneous energy that has a more lively, organic relationship between characters when they’re young, ” he says “ So the basis of the per formance in 2005 comes from the 1995 days ”
Even as it’s free to deviate, though, with Yumi playing a more prominent role than she does in the game, it may be a surprise how this original stor y follows familiar moments and plot points We can’t discuss specifics, but the treatment brings to mind the world of superhero comics: ever yone knows Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider and Bruce Wayne’s parents were murdered, but each retelling has a dif ferent interpretation or context “If you look at game adaptations [for TV] that have been successful over the last couple of years, they sor t of honour the legacy and the thought that went into the games, ” Barmack says “That being said, how do you distill this? This triangle that exists between Nishiki, Kir yu and Yumi, which is present in the game, we felt was an impor tant star ting point “
With the series being released in two batches, the first beginning on October 24, it won’t be long before audiences will be able to see the results If Like A Dragon: Yakuza becomes another hit for Amazon, the cast and crew see the potential for the show to continue on its own trajector y, and perhaps even create its own legacy alongside the games “We feel like we ’ re just getting star ted,” Barmack says “This is a really interesting world, and there’s a lot of stor y left to be told ”
Executive producer Erik Barmack
BEGIN AGAIN
Turning viewers into players with starter packs and ports
Given how player counts for the Fallout games soared after the show’s release, Sega is banking on Like A Dragon: Yakuza introducing newcomers to its series To help them find an entr y point, it’s released two bundles: the Yakuza Starter Pack, which includes Yakuza Kiwami and Yakuza Kiwami 2 starring Kir yu, and the Like A Dragon Starter Pack, featuring the two latest titles, with new leading man Ichiban Kasuga A port of Kiwami is also heading to Switch to coincide with the show’s premiere If the absence of the acclaimed Yakuza 0 raises eyebrows, it illustrates RGG Studio’s intention for newcomers not to play the prequel first
CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE Takeuchi with fellow actor Kento Kaku who plays Nishiki, Kiryu’s blood brother and eventual rival; brawl sequences capture the raw spirit of the games but without over-the-top Heat effects; tensions between the Tojo Clan and Yomei Alliance, not to mention the matter of a missing 10 billion yen, remain one of the key parts of the story; Ryoma Takeuchi largely sheds his image of ‘the nation’s boyfriend’ in the role of Kazuma Kiryu
One way to depict a younger Kiryu, before he’s become the Dragon Of Dojima, is to show him with an unfinished tattoo, the dragon’s eyes still missing
Fantasy star
In the booth with Ralph Ineson, one of the biggest talents working in modern games
From playing recurring sleazeball Chris Finch in The Of fice to his turn as Cid in Final Fantasy XVI, few actors boast a resume as unpredictable as the Leedsborn Ralph Ineson In addition to a memorable role in Rober t Eggers’ The Witch, he’s appeared in film series such as Harr y Potter and Star Wars, as well as prestige TV shows including HBO’s Chernobyl and Game Of Thrones Now, ahead of his role as Galactus in Mar vel’s Fantastic Four: First Steps, he discusses Diablo IV, Assassin’s Creed, and why working in games is so stimulating
Do you remember the first time you played a videogame?
and a couple of other British actors and spent a week in their motion-capture studio [Mocap] is brilliant, a completely dif ferent acting experience I always like to tr y dif ferent ways of working, so that was an amazing experience I wish that more videogame companies would use mocap, because I think the per formance stuf f in Black Flag is brilliant When you compare it to some of the later Assassin’s Creeds, there may be a little bit of facial capture, but they haven’t got the physical stuf f, and I think you can notice that My son – who is more of an exper t than me – said, “Dad, the one you did was by far the best one – they’ve gone downhill from there!”
“With games, for ever y minute
of ever y hour, you ’ re doing something –there’s no sitting around waiting”
I was quite into Atari when I was a kid, playing Asteroids and various ver y simple games, and then I kind of lost touch with videogames I go to my son and watch him play them now So I’ve been involved a bit since [the ’80s] but now as a spectator, not a player With Final Fantasy, I didn’t really realise the scale of it when I first got involved After three years of doing it, and then going to LA for the FFXVI launch last summer, I now understand completely how big it is
You were one of the first prestige British actors to work in games frequently, going back to Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag. How did that project work out? Well, that was a straight-up acting job Once ever y month, for about four months, I went out to Montreal with Mark Bonnar
How did you find the recording process for Final Fantasy XVI? Final Fantasy had one great advantage – which is quite rare nowadays –where I got to be in the booth with another actor, Ben [Starr, the man behind Clive Rosfield] Our first four or five sessions were completely together, so we got on really well, had a drink, became good mates, and that fed into the time we got to spend in the booth We could build a cer tain relationship Obviously as actors you are just supposed to be able to do it ar tificially, but, my god, it helped to be able to do it for real It really felt like we were bouncing of f each other, which I think really helped the game I think that’s one of the reasons why the two characters have been so well received
GET INTO GAMES
There aren’t many British actors of Ralph Ineson’s stature working in the field of games and we wonder if he ever tries to convince more of his peers to give it a try.
“I’ve always said to people that I’ve had a great time [with games],” he says “I talk to other actors and they are like, ‘I’m sorry? Videogames? What on Earth is that?’ And I explain it to them I have worked in every kind of medium and genre since I started –commercials, games, voiceovers, audio books, whatever I just love to act I love to tell stories The more different ways I get to do that, the better If I just did TV, TV, TV, film, film, film, it would get boring ”
What do you find are the main dif ferences between acting for TV and film compared to videogames? On a film, you’ll be sitting around for hours getting your character together, getting into costume, and then you ’ ve got these tiny little moments of time where you get to be on set and do the scene, so it’s a lot of waiting around With videogame acting, it’s a three-hour session and it’s fucking exhausting and really intense for those three hours For ever y minute of ever y hour, you ’ re doing something – there’s no sitting around waiting You’re screaming, shouting, you ’ re beating yourself up, and I love that Having done plenty of days and weeks on film sets where you film an eighth of a page a day, videogames can be a brilliant antidote to that, where you can just do three hours of solid acting It can be great fun
You also played the par t of Lorath Nahr in Diablo IV – what was your time like working on that project? I loved it I really loved the writing in that game It’s fantasy, but it plays into a bit more of my tastes in horror films, and my taste in Satanism [laughs] I was quite a gothy teenager, and the writing of Diablo, and that world of devils and angels, I really enjoyed it I did an audio book for Diablo as well, the Book Of Lorath I was filming [for thcoming Rober t Eggers film] Nosferatu in Prague, so I was working on this terribly dark film all day and then going back and recording a really dark audiobook at night in my hotel room, so I was quite twisted for a few weeks [laughs]
“He’s got a lot of pain from losing people,” Ineson says about his performance as Cid, “ so it’s about finding a way of portraying that without being mawkish”
BEAR ARMS
An anthropomorphic historical fantasy made – but not actually played – in VR
The mix of historical accuracy and large, furr y-pawed characters might be the most surprising thing about Bogdan’s Cross, if its Templar grizzly weren’t the second animal protagonist to feature in this slot in recent months As it is, though, we ’ re more intrigued by the unusual creative process of Federico Breser
The 20-year veteran of TV and film VFX has always longed to make a videogame “However, the coding and programming side always felt way out of my reach, so I focused on animation instead,” he tells us His dream is finally possible, he says, thanks to
a changing development landscape where “tools and game engines have become so much more userfriendly and powerful” Specifically, Unreal and, more unusually, Quill, the VR illustration tool in which Breser creates all of the game ’ s characters and sets using motion controls as his paintbrush
“While I can’t say for sure if Bogdan’s Cross is the only game being made in Quill, it’s certainly among the few,” he says You can judge the results for yourself when this “narrative-driven”, non-VR action adventure comes to PC next year
“One of my big influences is the graphic novel series Blacksad, which brilliantly uses anthropomorphic animals to tell a gritty noir gangster story,” Breser says Paws crossed this fares better than the cat detective’s own 2019 game
Soundbytes
Game commentar y in snack-sized mouthfuls
“To put this in context, Grand Theft Auto V grossed, wait for it…
$8.6 billion. Ah, but think of the exposure… Go fuck yourself.”
There is literally no way Rockstar invited Heaven 17’s Mar tyn Ware to think of the exposure when offering $7,500 for the rights to include Temptation in GTAVI Nevertheless, feels like this one might not happen
“One time an exec said to me, ‘We want diversity. You know, elves with afros’. ”
ARCADE WATC H
Keeping an eye on the coin - op gaming scene
Exhibition Insert Coin Location Cleve Carney Museum Of Art
”This is good news – maybe Argonaut can pay the rest of the redundancy they owe me… ”
them
If it’s horror stories you want, Easy Games art director Michael Maurino has
“I’ve made some of the worst game-choice decisions… I passed on so many games that I could look back and say, ‘Argh!’”
At least Phil Spencer isn’t in charge of an entire game console ecosystem, where passing on Guitar Hero and Destiny might matter Actually, hold on
Former staffer Tony Gowland does the maths as Argonaut is reborn with a Croc remake
It says something about how game preservation is evolving that we’ve seen more finely curated strands emerge, such as Digital Eclipse’s Gold Master series This kind of thinking will soon extend to the world of museum exhibits via Insert Coin: Inside Midway’s Arcade Revolution, which aims to tell the story of the Chicago game label, home to classics such as Tron, NBA Jam and Rampage As well as video, artwork and interviews with former Midway designers, naturally the original coin-ops will be present and playable Importantly, while the exhibition is limited in size by definition, it’s not short on passion or insight, with a direct line to 2020’s Insert Coin documentary Staged at the Cleve Carney Museum Of Art, just outside of Chicago, it’s set to run from October 26 until February 16 of next year, and tickets are available to purchase now (bit ly/insidemidway)
GAME
Spelunky64
bit ly/spelunky64
As we write these words, UFO 50 is finally touching down for the rest of the world to play And so, with perverse logic, we pick up its funhouse-mirror image: another game from an imagined 1980s, one where Derek Yu and co were making games contemporaneously to their UFO Soft alter egos It’s worth the price of entry ($2 99 and the effort of getting a Commodore 64 emulator up and running) just to see see how this game has been squeezed into the console’s 64K memory, and its control reworked for the single-button joystick, and what developer Paul Koller has decided can –and cannot – be lost in the process But once that novelty wears off, what remains is the incredible moreishness of Spelunky A reminder, as with the finest cuts from UFO 50’s collection, that design trumps tech every time
VIDEO
Beyond The Shadows: Shadow Of The Ninja – Reborn! bit ly/beyond-shadows
A short documentary to tie in with Tengo Project’s latest retro redo, this is a charming conversation with devs who made their names at Natsume 30-plus years ago and again more recently remaking the same games Toshiyasu Miyabe (lead engineer), Shunichi Taniguchi (artist) and Hiroyuki Iwatsuki (music/sound) reminisce about the early days ( I had no choice but to live to make the most of this guy ’ s graphics,” Miyabe says of Taniguchi) before turning to the challenge of updating an NES title, all while oozing passion for retro game design
WEB GAME
Probably Art bit ly/probably-art There’s just something about jumping inside paintings, isn’t there? Mario 64 obviously but also Rayman Legends, Inkle’s Forever Labyrinth and, now, this side-on puzzle platformer A description the game itself might disagree with – “Not a game!” insists its gallery’s guide, a kind of miniature floor-bound moon OK, then, how about we file this next to Epic & Radiohead s Kid A Mnesia Exhibition? There’s certainly a Stanley Donwood quality to Schauermann s work, with loose abstract oils overlaid by pen scribbles But the frame is as important as the art, folding together the handsomely rendered 3D environment and 00s-Flashgrade pixels into a gently interactive audiovisual experience The best bits have our eyes widening in a way few more traditional showcases can manage
THIS MONTH ON EDGE
Some of the other things on our minds when we weren’t doing ever ything
BOOK
A Tale Of Two Halves bit.ly/tale-two-halves Bitmap Books gives 110 per cent to this breezy yet encyclopaedic history of football games A heartfelt foreword by Clive Tyldesley (for years the voice of FIFA) kicks us off, before an overview of the earliest crude simulations, then a season-by-season guide starting from 1981 Even ardent fans will struggle to find gaps here, with inclusions right down to curios from the likes of East Germany and it’s all cheerily wrapped in pixel art and end-of-season awards That the authors stop their annual review at 2010 is no sign of flagging energy either Rather it underlines EA’s Manchester City-like dominance since, and the loss of variety incurred along the way
Alan attraction
Remedy signs deal with Annapurna to make Control sequel and film/TV shows
Relative gains
Steam Families goes live, letting players share libraries within households of six
Together at last Unity finally cancels runtime fee pricing model after a year of “extensive consultation”
Aussie rules
Australia introduces age restrictions on games with “gambling-like content”
Artful escape Annapurna Interactive’s entire workforce resigns after failed negotiations with management
For the payers
Sony hikes the price of PS5 in Japan and DualSense controllers in key territories
Micro economics
Phil Spencer announces decision to “eliminate” 650 jobs across Xbox Gaming
Squad wipe
Rocksteady also makes job cuts, along with Evening Star and VR developer nDreams
Issue 402
Dialogue
Send your views, using ‘Dialogue’ as the subject line, to edge@futurenet com Our letter of the month wins an exclusive Edge T-shir t
Playing with mindfulness
I realised my game collection was giving me anxiety when I caught myself giving serious consideration to buying Final Fantasy VII on Xbox. I already own that game on Switch, but I felt the Quick Resume feature might give me a chance to actually play it
You see, unlike every other Edge reader, I’m now middle-aged and have a wife, child and mortgage Consequently, my gaming time has decreased from ten hours a day to stealing half an hour, usually in exchange for sleep Although the Xbox lets me pick up and quit a game whenever I want, it doesn’ t really help with the depressing effect my ever-increasing backlog has on my psyche I feel a responsibility to play the best games – to truly appreciate the medium I think this comes from my background as a film academic. To achieve a sense of the silent era could take a week: watch these ten films, read these three essays. If you wanted to understand every Assassin’s Creed, you’d be lucky to finish that project in a year. Readers of a magazine such as Edge may laugh at the casuals who buy a PS5 and play nothing but FIFA, but maybe these idiots are on to something.
Course and effect
Just by chance, the edition of Edge that I resubscribe to happens to be the one with an article about Tanya Krzywinska [E401], the professor who founded the very same course that I received my university degree from just last week (physically, that is – the course finished five months ago).
“As a child of the Internet, my attention span is shor t and my Steam librar y is extensive”
Sometimes it is hard to know whether the huge decisions in your life are the right ones, and the choice in university is one of them for me But when the magazine I have been reading for years does a piece on Falmouth University, it gives me hope When that same article cements my views on why game development is more than just programming or art, and more on the side of communication and teamwork, I’m convinced I made the right choice I hope that Tanya knows how many students she has helped with her course And while I’m giving my praise, I hope everyone at Edge knows that they have that same impact. Edge will always be the place I go to when I’m sick of looking at my own lousy work and want to see what other amazing people in this industry are doing.
While games take a lot of influence from other artforms, they can’ t be experienced as briefly. They demand more of you.
I’m now taking a more mindful approach to gaming An unexpected benefit of having a library of over a thousand games is that I now feel liberated to stop playing a game if I’m not enjoying it The first 20 hours of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla were wonderful. The subsequent 90 made me hate myself Videogame players need to be more selective than cineastes and improve our ability to recognise our own personal endings.
Alex Vanderweide
Ah, the sweet release of letting a game go. If only we could do that for reviews sometimes
Tanya’s course is the reason I went to university, and it has been the closest I have gotten to the videogame industry. And I couldn’ t be happier with my choice!
Michael Bull
More power to your elbow, Michael And an Edge T-shirt for the rest of your torso, too
Unreal engines
I pored over every detail of the excellent UFO 50 feature in E397. The narrative behind this fictional game company and the story of their defunct console hanging over this collection of 8bit games excited me more than any of the games on show if they were released in isolation This got me
thinking about the concept of fantasy consoles. Obviously, we have UFO Soft’s Lazer-X console, but there’s also the Kinmoku Shark from the brilliant Videoverse, released last year, and the entire fantasy console platform of PICO-8.
We are constantly seeing releases of games with nostalgic throwbacks to the 8and 16bit eras, be it through their graphics, music or sensibilities As the line between the major gaming platforms gets blurrier, I wonder if the next step for those wanting a different experience from their games will lead to more of these imagined gaming companies being brought to life. As an apologetic Dreamcast fan, I can only welcome a new underdog console to root for, even if it’s one of pure fantasy Ryan Lloyd
Yep, we’re into this Coming soon: Fantasy Console Monthly. (Maybe not to WHSmith shelves, but our imaginations, at least )
Cover stories and chronology
I was interested to read Seb Eder’s letter in E401, as it kind of reflects my feelings about some of the large cover stories you do I love their depth, but chronologically it’s sometimes a bit off for me. It’s rather like watching a making-of documentary on a Blu-ray before watching the actual film I sometimes have to make a mental note to revisit the article once I have actually played the game
I found the recent epilogue to the wonderful Psychodyssey fascinating , and I think it’s because the Double Fine team were reflecting on the process of making Psychonauts 2 with the benefit of hindsight. Might it be more insightful if some of these features talk to teams once the game is out, rather than when they are in the middle of making it? Plus, we will then have had the benefit of actually playing it
While I am interested in reading about ‘bad’ games or ‘failed’ games, it is sometimes frustrating to read a huge, in-depth feature
on a game which turns out to be a bit rubbish or just another average online shooter –especially when that precious space could have been dedicated to one of the hundreds of fascinating games that grace other parts of Edge I know I’m probably coming across as a backseat editor, and I do enjoy these big features. But it has got me thinking. Joe Crook
When it comes to cover games, history shows that unfortunately there has to be a Rise Of The Robots every so often, regardless of how much we’d like an Astro Bot every time General feedback on this topic hasn’ t asked for smaller cover stories, though, so we’ll maintain course at least for the time being
Silent runnings
Having never experienced Silent Hill 2, my friend streamed the game for me recently and over a few evenings I watched him play through the whole thing Great game – no update there. But I did find it really striking. Silent Hill 2 is a game that doesn’ t hand-hold and chooses not to whisk you along It’s arcane, often difficult to parse, and a little janky Some of this is deliberately in service of the horror, some of it probably comes down to technical limitations, and some of it, I reckon, is prevailing design wisdom circa 2001.
As a staunch advocate of the PS2 era, my friend is right at home in that territory When he needed to search for the next clue, he wasn’ t afraid to backtrack When it wasn’ t clear where to go, he methodically explored every nook and cranny. He understood that sometimes playing a game means laboriously testing every limit
In E399’s Dispatches, Nathan BradyEastham wrote about how games nowadays are far more approachable There is a desire in many a (big-budget, thirdperson) release to keep you on a breezy yet exhilarating rollercoaster, with as few losses in momentum as possible “Player-success positive,” said Stephen Lumkin, combat designer on Horizon: Forbidden West I get why you’d want that for
your game, hoping that as many people as possible will experience your artistic labour, from beginning to end
I also understand Nathan finding it “confounding”. Sometimes there’s just no friction to these experiences, and they either feel like they play themselves or they fail to give a sense of achievement as you progress. It’s a fine balance to strike But, as a child of the Internet, my attention span is short and my Steam library is extensive The wrong kind of friction can jettison me from an otherwise brilliant game and it can be hard to go back
I am not as good at games as Nathan I did die playing the Resi remakes, and I’m not ashamed to say it I am not as patient as my friend I sat watching Silent Hill 2 with a guide open, ready to help navigate the arcana. Of course, the distinction isn’ t rigid –sometimes I find the labour and the friction essential and enjoyable. Like Nathan, I had a wonderful time with Animal Well (yes, I used guides, but not until late in the egg hunt) And I was thrilled to see Edge describe Dragon’s Dogma 2 as ‘wildly off-trend’, referring to this exact topic But I do love good, approachability-design, such as when levels connect in just such a way that a new key opens a door back to yep, just where you needed that key I find myself having more significant experiences with games that have a kind of ‘momentum assist’, maybe just because I play them for a significantly longer period of time.
Of course, Silent Hill 2 is about to return It does so in a very different gaming landscape I can’ t help predicting that it might disappoint both Nathan and my friend, streamlining the classic experience beyond recognition But maybe some of those old design principles will make a comeback and it will be me cursing the mist and getting grumpy because the answers aren’ t right in front of my face Ben Jackson
Honestly, you young people and your day-one game guides. Did you ever hear of POKEs? Hold on, where’s our medicine? Nurse?
DISPATCHES PERSPECTIVE
STEVEN POOLE
Trigger Happy
Shoot first, ask questions later
You will remember for a long time the soldier wearing red plastic sunglasses, standing on the edge of a gravel pit, and insistently asking the journalists what kind of Americans they are It is a scene of crawling tension punctuated by savage and unexpected horror. If it were in a videogame, you’d be armed with twin MP5s and encouraged to murder this guy and his friend at the earliest opportunity. But it’s not a videogame: it’s Alex Garland’s latest movie, Civil War
This didn’t stop the usual idiots – by which I mean, with due fraternal respect to all my writerly comrades, film critics – from lining up to denounce Civil War on the basis that it was like a videogame Even like a Call Of Duty videogame, wrote one. “It reads like a video game,” complained another who obviously learned everything they know about the medium 40 years ago, “something a teenager would be playing on his Nintendo hand set ” Bless! Critics also lambasted the movie for failing to take a clear political viewpoint (but that’s exactly what Call Of Duties do!) or explain why the US was in a civil war in the first place. Instead, the story of Kirsten Dunst and her fellow hard-bitten war photographers and journalists, plus one nervous newbie, hurtling full-speed towards the most dangerous part of the country is left, at least for these critics, bafflingly undercontextualised If only, at the end, Dunst had unfurled a banner reading “Democrats are better than Trump!”, maybe their tiny minds would have been more gratified
But what’s interesting in this stupid critique is how its perpetrators, while the movie was flying far over their heads, missed something rather close by: for Civil War is, in a way, a bit like a videogame Just not an infantry-themed bloodbath or postapocalyptic faceshooter No, what it’s like is survival horror. I mean the relatively pure, old-school kind where the player exists in a state of nervous tension only to be ambushed by violent threats that she does not necessarily outgun, if she even has a gun In
Civil War is, in a way, a bit like a videogame, just not an infantr y-themed bloodbath. What it’s like is sur vival horror
Civil War they have only cameras, and it’s a question the viewer might ponder as to whether, when snapping away during a firefight to capture still images of enemies or friends being killed, they are in a way contributors to the war they ostensibly only document (In a nice touch, Kirsten Dunst uses a Sony digital camera while the twentysomething tyro who aspires to be like her uses an old-fashioned film camera, and develops her negatives in the field ) Civil War doesn’t take place in a haunted asylum or a spaceship but it is for these reasons much more like Outlast or Alien: Isolation than it is
like Call Of Duty. Paul Schrader, screenwriter of Taxi Driver and director of American Gigolo, wrote that it was “terrifying” “Forget zombies and space aliens,” he said, “this is a HORROR FILM ” He gets it
I’m not saying that Alex Garland deliberately conceived of Civil War as a survival-horror twist on the war movie, though he does know the genre (His screenplay for 28 Days Later, he has said, was inspired by wondering how scary it would be if all the zombies in Resident Evil could run as fast as the zombie dog ) But this comparison also reminded me of Jazzpunk designer Luis Hernandez’s highly perceptive comment on Twitter earlier this year “My theory as to why horror games are abundantly popular,” he wrote, “has nothing to do with players’ enjoyment of ‘being scared’; rather it stems from: horror games were the primary genre to prioritise mood (vibe), psychogeography, and unorthodox or peripheral spaces, over combat.” He went on: “In a medium hyperfixated on combat, making games where you walked around claustrophobic, moody, or surreal architectures and contemplated depressing subject matter was entirely antithetical to the typical power fantasy being sold to gamers ”
And this, too, is Alex Garland’s twist on the clichés of the war movie In a genre that usually depicts a power fantasy about a few brave men facing off against subhuman rifle fodder, Civil War is a war movie in which the protagonists aren’t warriors, and are at the mercy of the events they run towards, sometimes fatally It dramatises a microcosmic version of the truth that, for the vast majority of people in a warzone, war is something that happens to them, over which they have no control More generally, too, being a human being is, for most of us most of the time, much more like a survival-horror game – albeit with fewer zombies – than it’s like COD Blops 6
Steven Poole is a writer, composer and author whose books include Trigger Happy 2 0, Unspeak, and Rethink
DISPATCHES PERSPECTIVE
ALEX
SPENCER
The Outer Limits
Journeys to the far thest reaches of interactive enter tainment
On a family holiday, of the parentssiblings-and-spouses variety, it’s hard finding something everyone can agree on. What a meal out should cost; the necessity of renting a car; god help us all, politics Thankfully, though, everyone agrees on the importance of games. Just not, necessarily, which ones
Table tennis, my father’s preferred option, is ruled out by the fact he once compared playing me to doing a pub quiz against a team of toddlers I may have said something similar about the old man’s abilities with a game controller in my teenaged years, so any digital offering more complex than Jackbox is out And I’m far too self-conscious of my newly minted brother-in-law’s aura of cool to bring any plastic goblins, many-sided dice or cardboard German merchantry to the table
The eventual compromise is a deck of playing cards, found in one of the rental villa’s drawers, and the pouch of standard (nerdwhiff-free) six-sided dice my mother carries in her handbag For a long time I’d eschew such games, a prejudice formed in childhood, during endless wet caravan-holiday games of Ludo and, years later, tedious poker nights where schoolboys sipped tall cans of bad lager and played at manhood Frankly, when there was a PlayStation available, it never seemed like much competition But I’ve grown up since then, and embraced a wider range of childish things.
In part this stems from videogames’ increasing willingness to embrace analogue forebears. Just this year, Balatro finally taught me the poker hands I could never remember through the Carlsberg fog , while I’ve been appreciating how many of UFO 50’s games could be played with technology considerably older than an ’80s console Sat on my bedside table, meanwhile, is Marcus du Sautoy’s Around The World In 80 Games, a wonderful potted history of humanity’s long fascination with play, and the rules and totems we’ve constructed around it. So now, cards and especially dice make me feel like part of this
Once you have the hardware, the software is hosted in your head, free to carr y around and share with anyone you like
millennia-long continuum From carved knucklebones, the oldest gaming hardware we know of, to these neat plastic cubes. It’s not an enormous generational leap, really
In this case, the dice are being used to play a game my parents insist is called, simply, Dice It’s a basic push-your-luck game, one that reminds me of pulling the ‘invite guest’ lever in UFO 50’s Party House, and in both cases I can’t help but test the odds once more than is strictly sensible (A habit that, I’m pleased to report, infuriates my dad ) In return, I teach them Skull, a bluffing game I own in the form of a boxed edition at home,
complete with gorgeous beermat-esque cards, but which can be played perfectly well with a standard deck of 52
Something Dice and Skull have in common – apart from their tendency to invite poor decision-making – is how quick they are to teach, and how readable their results And thus, how easy it is to get invested in them Within minutes, a handful of ones rolled at just the right moment, or a face card flipped over at the wrong one, can provoke cooing and/or wincing from all the assembled players, even if they’d just been glancing down at their phone screens.
The only videogame I’ve ever seen take hold so quickly over its spectators is Street Fighter. For the esports benefits of that game, I’d direct you back to Nathan Brown’s Big Picture Mode columns within these pages, but the first time I really saw its magic in action was at a videogame tournament I hosted earlier this year A good share of the players had never even seen a Hadouken before, but they were yelling along at every punch with the rest of us after just a couple of rounds of Street Fighter 6
But I don’t think any of those people went home, ordered an arcade stick from Amazon and started drilling half-circles This is something these simple, reusable gaming components will always have over their digital cousins – unless, I suppose, cloud gaming services ever manage to realise all of their promises As it is, almost everyone can lay their hands on a deck of cards or a few dice at short notice. And once you have the hardware, so to speak, the software is hosted in your head, free to carry around and share with anyone you like Dice was a habit my parents brought back from a holiday aboard a cruise ship some years ago; on their next trip, I’m told, they’ll be transmitting Skull around the place. Just a few more links in this very long chain, helping people while away the hours and the millennia
Alex Spencer (@alexjayspencer) is Edge’s deputy editor
Except on holiday, when he’s a super-spreader for card games
DISPATCHES PERSPECTIVE
JON INGOLD
Narrative Engine
Write it like you stole it
So I played a game today that had a pretty linear opening and roll-based skill checks for doing stuff I had to do this thing to proceed; I rolled my dice; my dice said no Don’t worry, the game chimed in, you can gain XP doing random side stuff and then you can try again. So I did some random side stuff – laundry, emails, made myself a coffee – and I put the game aside
It could be worse. I played Knights Of The Old Republic when it came out on iPhone, ran down the first corridor, died immediately, reset, ran down the same corridor, and didn’t die. OK, game, I preferred the second version, so let’s use that take from now on, OK? After all, dice exist in tabletop D&D to give the gamesmaster a challenge, not the players, and in a computer game the GM has already moved onto the DLC
In my head, computers are simulationist, deterministic environments, which is to say that when I use a computer I feel goddamn entitled. Anything that gets in the way of that simply isn’t welcome I played Sim City with disasters turned off (and so did you) It’s different out here in reality: if a physical dice comes up six, I feel like Jude Bellingham, but when a computer dice shows a six, it feels that things are only as they should be When it fails, I want my money back.
Years ago, I went to Las Vegas, where scores of old people feed slot machines with huge bags of change. These were streamlined digital machines, with no spinning wheels or mechanical levers I can understand the appeal of a contraption, of believing that if you pull the lever with the right force you can get the outcome you want, the way a child playing Ludo will blow on their fist and entreat the dice for a double six But these Vegas machines had only a coin slot and an LCD strip that said ‘NO WIN’ Occasionally, the screen would say ‘WIN’ and fewer coins than the player had inserted would fall into a drawer, for the old person to feed back again I’m not saying the players weren’t having fun (although they visibly weren’t), but I simply
I want the wrong/right choices to be clearly marked, where players are complicit in, not subject to, the whims of fate
couldn’t understand it Surely litter-picking in a park would be more satisfying?
Roll forward 20 years, and dice rolls in games seem commonly accepted as a fair way to decide what happens next, so the player feels they always have a chance without cheesing through the story With the difference that players also use savescumming to… well, to undo the effect of dice rolls they don’t want – to cheese through anyway, same as we all did when battling monsters in Fighting Fantasy books
Perhaps it’s really a matter of framing? Certainly, if I’m playing a card game with an
NPC, I won’t object to a random deal (although, when we put a poker game into 80 Days, we rigged the deck to produce more exciting hands because poker is a boring game where two Jacks beats two Eights every damn hand, and the main skill is, apparently, in controlling the excitement on your face).
Randomness – variety – in dialogue barks is, of course, always good And there are a lot of games that use randomness to introduce an unpredictable friction you can overcome via skill or the use of resources If there’s something with consequences I can do to scrub the ‘NO’ from the ‘NO WIN’, then that’s a meaningful gameplay element But randomness in a gate? That’s just a dead end, what, 60 per cent of the time?
Imagine turning every 60-per-cent skill check in an RPG into a five-way dialogue choice with two wrong answers, three right ones, and no logic That sounds awful, and yet the odds are much better than the random version because the probability of succeeding in three goes is 100 per cent Wait, I got an email: user testing says, ‘Can you mark the correct lines in a different colour, please?’
At Inkle, we’ve historically designed away randomness Initially, our scripting language didn’t implement random numbers at all We generally tried to allow players to ‘fail forward’, so that failure is actually the start of something new I want to go further I want games where the wrong /right choices are deterministic and clearly marked Where players are complicit in, not subject to, the whims of fate. Where they choose the wrong thing to say because it’s funny or satisfying , or it makes for a more interesting story (80 Days does this, with the mechanically correct choice for Passepartout always being ‘sit in the hotel room’ ) I want players to be part gamesmaster themselves Because the thing we should be taking from D&D isn’t dice, it’s that, even when you ‘fail’ a roll, something cool should always happen next
Author and narrative designer Jon Ingold is the co-founder of Inkle Studios, whose A Highland Song is available now
O N S A L E N O W
Show and tell
Our demo session with Supermassive Games’ Little Nightmares III at Gamescom gets of f to a confusing star t Repeatedly failing to sneak past a par ticular enemy, we glance at the journalist on the console to our left and note they’re also stuck on the same hurdle, dying almost exactly as regularly as we are. Having finally figured out where to hide, we ’ re then frustrated as our AI companion refuses to follow our lead, until the penny drops – we ’ ve been playing co-op with the other journalist all along, each spoiling the other’s ef for ts to proceed
MOST WANTED
Metro Awakening PCVR, PSVR2, Quest
Naturally, we ’ re always keen to get hands-on time with for thcoming releases, and Gamescom is one of the calendar’s best oppor tunities to do so But this breakdown in communication isn’t the only time we wonder if the conditions don’t do the games many favours. Our time with vast RPG Crimson Deser t, for instance, gives us plenty of insight into its multi-stage boss fights, yet ver y little into what happens in between. Likewise, Avowed’ s show demo is set inside a network of caves, providing a whistlestop tour of the game ’ s combat, exploration and dialogue choices, but no real impression of its wider world Bot-filled sessions of multiplayer hero shooters, meanwhile, simply can’t convey their fundamental joys.
A demo session is enough to convince us that Metro’ s VR experiment has dank atmosphere to spare, and the mutants scuttling about should get the blood pumping We’re fascinated, and afraid, to see what else Vertigo has in store
Europa
PC, Switch
We’ve had our eye on this lush production for some time, and it’s good to see a release date announcement put it ver y close indeed The latest trailer, showing off yet more green and pleasant lands, hasn’t dampened our appetite
Wilmot Works It Out
PC This surprise sequel to Wilmot’s Warehouse seeks to answer the question of what Wilmot does in his free time And it turns out that he spends it mainly assembling pictures broken into pieces like jigsaws, which is somehow much more engaging than it sounds
At times, though, for the right kind of game, this is an ideal setting. Dropping in on The Game Bakers to tr y Cairn, we get a feel for its intricate climbing mechanics within a handful of interactive minutes, and an over view of the entire game loop in not many more And in sessions like this and many others, we also appreciate that the most impor tant par t of Gamescom is meeting the people behind the games, chatting to them even as we play about the thinking behind the decisions they’ve made, and sharing the wisdom It’s arguably enough to make up for the delayed flight on our way to Cologne, and the horrendous bout of COVID we bring back
Developer/publisher
ABOVE Medieval cities litter the land of Pywel, and each new township offers Kliff a chance to rest – although not every face is friendly MAIN Swordplay is the backbone of Kliff’s monsterhunting escapades, with an emphasis on combo attacks
BELOW LEFT The Reed Devil offers a formidable multistage boss battle laden with illusions that will catch you out at least on your first try BELOW RIGHT Crimson Desert’s attention to visual detail applies to both its grotesque creatures and their battlegrounds full of effects and flourishes
CRIMSON DESERT H Y
Within seconds of starting Crimson Desert, we’re thrust into a fiery battle and insulted by a chorus of roaring brutes in bear-head hats As swirling embers fill the air and illuminate a grassy arena, a slick cutscene blurs into frenetic combat, but not before we’re led through a breakneck tutorial – a crash course in dodging , swordplay and a surprising Spartan kick It’s a harsh first lesson, covering Pearl Abyss’s new vision for combat post-Black Desert Online. Yet, even with such a punishing first impression, we can’t help smiling as we’re pounded to death with bats, axes and good old-fashioned fists.
Unlike its older MMORPG sibling , Crimson Desert is growing in a more focused direction A singleplayer campaign centres on a gruff protagonist, Kliff, exploring the expansive land of Pywel along with his band of merry mercenaries But Crimson Desert doesn’t leave everything behind: as well as a slew of life-simulator systems such as cooking and crafting , Pearl Abyss has promised extracurricular activities such as hunting and animal taming at launch It’s an ambitious swing framed in a textbook fantasy setting that’s difficult to get a bead on during our strictly combat-focused session In lieu of any meaningful preamble, we’re dropped into an ethereal hub and asked to pick between four boss fights that will appear ambiently in Crimson Desert’s open world
Our f irst expedition takes us to a lush meadow, sparsely decorated with veins of gemstones and a suspiciously large rock that soon reveals itself to be a giant crustacean. Instead of swiping and dodging , we’re urged to scale the beast and smash the gems on its back, balancing our decaying stamina wheel as Kliff holds on for dear life On the ground, the earth-shattering crunch of the bucking Queen Stoneback Crab – her official title – sends us hurtling into the distance, while geysers bursting from her back launch us on a similar trajectory. It feels like an overwhelming set of obstacles, yet with time a natural rhythm kicks in and we make headway A booming orchestral soundtrack amplifies the chaos as we mine our moving target, periodically snacking on healing meals to stave off the
crimson vignette of certain death Akin to the (more equally balanced) battles of Dragon’s Dogma 2, it’s both an exhilarating and frustrating process, until a dramatic aerial strike signals the end for the rocky Queen, and we’re teleported to our hub once again.
This time, we visit a sprouting grainfield, which doubles as the home of a warble-voiced Reed Devil. Shifting from the grand scale of our previous bout, the Reed Devil is a spritely humanoid figure who dictates the story of their existence in cryptic cutscenes during the illusion-heavy assault A shift from the bombastic crab fight, here we have Kliff dive and dodge out of range, using light attacks and swift combos to chip away at the devil’s health Across both battles, Crimson Desert is prepared to watch us fail, rewarding us for our tenacity like any good FromSoftware outing. Yet without a greater context for the world around these scraps, it’s hard to imagine how
We can’t help smiling as we’re pounded with bats, axes and good old-fashioned fists
rewarding this perseverance will be – and ultimately whether we’ll be convinced to endure the challenge and cross the finish line
What we can see amid the carnage is that Crimson Desert’s visual identity is striking , taking advantage of Pearl Abyss’ detail-heavy BlackSpace Engine. Swaying plants and craggy cliffs add flourish to boss habitats, even if it’s unclear how this will all come together in an open-world setting. Visual care also extends to environmental effects that fizz across the screen when Kliff whips at an enemy or boots a flaming log across the battlefield. It’s a richness that has us keen to leave the parameters of our demo and head towards the sprawling horizon in search of adventure
Exactly what that will entail, however, is unclear Despite the beautiful surroundings and creative monster mashes, what we’ve seen provides no exploration or narrative substance. This boss-rush sample works well enough, but we’ll have to wait and see how that folds into a full campaign with ambitious resource management and survival systems
Soft rock
During our time with Crimson Desert, Kliff’s limp body blunders into rocks and off cliff edges on a multitude of occasions Despite the game’s acute focus on realistic and reactive combat, as soon as the protagonist takes a good hit, his robust frame becomes a flailing ragdoll It’s an undeniably amusing aspect of combat, running counter to an otherwise serious tone But surprisingly, enemies can take advantage of Kliff’s flaccid form as he flies through the air, and fall damage adds the final insult to injury Due to the frenzied nature of enemies such as the tutorial’s bearskin-clad warriors, then, paying attention to your surroundings – such as the space between yourself and a headcracking boulder –could spell the difference between total annihilation and the chance to finish the fight
L I T T L E
N I G H T M A R E S I I I
The smallest of horrors gets the Supermassive treatment
Even by Little Nightmares standards, this feels like a slow buildup We start by trekking across a desert, two children chafed by blowing sands, signs of some kind of wreckage, or perhaps an exodus, strewn over the brown expanse Suitcases make up most of the debris, piled up or flung open, except for a single bloated body, face down, slow-cooking in the dull sun A stone wall signals the end of the walk, and we enter a ruin, yanking a crate of unidentified offal around to unblock a path forward Beyond lies a dead city, scattered with expired people and clattering mechanisms – pulleys and boxes in the foreground, giant wheels turning out of shot, shaking the structure We’re grateful that everything bar the loitering crows here is deceased, especially when we step across the cadavers of some giant beetles
It’s a drip feed of an opening that luxuriates in incidental detail, demanding that you drink it all in when there’s little to do but push on from left to right. Yet if this extraslow burn is set to be a signature feature for the series after its switch of developer (from creator Tarsier Studios to British horror maestro Supermassive Games), it’s far from a major departure In part that’s because there is continuity from publisher Bandai Namco, the game’s key producers having worked on the previous games But also, there’s a
concerted effort here to recreate Tarsier’s dank atmosphere “The main [concept] is childhood fears and the way you feel very small in a world that’s not made for you,” producer Coralie Feniello explains Maintaining that feel meant studying the first two games, not least their environmental design It’s the “craftsmanship” that matters, she adds “Each room is tailored A lot of care is taken to get the narrative inside it.”
Rest assured, that narrative will remain as oblique as ever, implied through themes in the pieces of this ‘Nowhere’ world, but never made explicit. “We love looking at what the community is saying , ” Feniello says, “because they have a lot of theories It’s important for us that everything links together, but we don’t want to give too much away ” A second section we’re given to play, known as ‘the candy factory’ – an ominous title in this context – is illustrative on this count It is again industrial, a symphony of clanking and whirring playing as we skulk in the back rooms. When we emerge onto the factory floor a great machinic vista stretches backwards, with numerous adults, exactly like that body in the desert, pulling the levers of mass production while suspended from the ceiling Later we’ll see that the millions of lollipops parading along the conveyor belts are merely dumped elsewhere, like sticky landfill It makes
Supermassive Games
Bandai Namco
PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series
There’s been a lot of back and forth between Supermassive and Bandai Namco, discussing the childhood nightmares that should feature in this game “We liked having everyone in the team involved and sharing their fears,” Feniello says
LITTLE NIGHTMARES III H Y
perverse sense in a world that clearly despises children, while gesturing toward the very real horrors of consumerist waste
That the nightmare continues to centre on children is a given, but one change this time is that you’ll pick your protagonist from a pair that sticks together throughout As ever, both are distinct in appearance and equally mysterious, their faces masked – the “shape” of the characters an important aspect of the series, Feniello says. The first, named Alone, wears a green boiler suit, sprigs of orange hair sprouting from behind a gas mask Their partner, Low, is crow-like – spindly, dressed in a cape, head covered by what looks like a bird’s skull The idea is to make them distinct as personalities, Feniello says, but also explore their bond. “They are friends,” she emphasises “The way they care for each other is different from previous games ”
The Necropolis is home to something ver y large indeed, a single arm filling the screen
One reason they need to be friends is that Little Nightmares III has another new trick up its sleeve, allowing you to play with a friend in online co-op “It was the most requested feature from the fans after Little Nightmares II, ” Feniello says With so much of the previous game revolving around collaboration with an AI companion, this was a natural evolution Our tour of the candy factory gives us a taste, as we take on the role of Alone while a nearby player on a local connection plays Low Teamwork is required not only to trigger various puzzle mechanisms and to move between rooms – heavy barriers act as gates to keep you in the same room – but also when faced with instant-death situations. If one of you sticks to cover and the other pokes their head out at an inopportune moment, it’s curtains for the pair of you You can play solo if you prefer, with a computer-controlled companion doing their bit, something that has been a challenge to balance, Feniello says “You want to build more co-op puzzles, but you also need the puzzles to be accessible for
the AI and make sure the AI isn’t too robotic You don’t want it to lead the player too much ”
With or without a partner, though, the one thing we don’t see a great deal of in these sequences is the main event of these games –the grotesque and murderous adults that dominate each area Up to now, after all, recounting series highlights tends to boil down to mentioning job titles – the chef, say, or the teacher It’s understandable that Bandai Namco wants to keep its antagonists largely under wraps at this stage, given how crucial their identities and methods are to the tenor of a first full playthrough But we do discern that the desert fortress – or Necropolis, as it’s officially referenced – is home to something very large indeed, as a single arm fills the screen The candy factory then offers a little more direct contact; the place is managed by a severe Victorian headmistress type, with the added unpleasantness that she seems to be part insect, sporting an extra pair of arms and a scuttling gait For a few tricky rooms, we’re forced into close proximity, tasked with staying out of sight, then tiptoeing by when her back is turned.
We probably won’t know until the final release whether these creations will match the horrors of escaping previous psychopathic fiends, but in the moment they are introduced, the scenes we play feel much more fraught. And in a way that’s a relief, because along with its patient buildup, we otherwise feel that there’s something a little too neat and logical about what we’ve seen so far. The activities in those early stages – hitting switches, hiding behind pillars, positioning crates to use as steps – are pedestrian routines that barely hint at the devil in the series’ most memorable puzzles, while perhaps travelling with a reliable partner might never quite be as scary as surviving on your own If it didn’t do the previous game any harm, surely that was in part because Six remained so enigmatic a companion, with their own unknowable motivations
That said, we expect Supermassive to find good answers to at least some of our lingering questions, not least since it knows all about co-op horror “We’re making sure they keep the series DNA,” Feniello says, “while also having the space to express themselves ”
A spanner darkly
Puzzles will have a greater emphasis on item use this time around An umbrella, for instance, will send you flying upwards on gusts of wind, while a torch helps you scare a path through puddles of hungry insects On top of that, each character carries a different tool –Alone’s hefty wrench can be swung to slam down switches or used for its intended purpose to rotate devices, and Low’s bow and arrow can sever ropes or target switches from farther afield We’re immediately suspicious here that these tools look rather like weapons, which might make the kids feel a little over-prepared You can use them against smaller enemies, Feniello confirms, such as beetles, but they’re useless against the main villains “We don’t want the children to feel too powerful ”
TOP While you ’ re still confined to the foreground of most scenes, some larger open areas give you freedom to go deeper, shrinking into the distance FAR LEFT One thing that distinguishes Supermassive Games’ approach to horror, Feniello feels, is in how the developers use the camera, in a way that can be “ a bit more cinematic” ABOVE Like the TV sets in the previous game, mirrors will feature as a running motif, with the children arriving in a new area by smashing through the glass As if they needed more bad luck LEFT There’s still room for easy jump scares, such as this tethered corpse falling from a closet you have to open
B E A S T I E B A L L
The Chicor y team return
for a whole new ballgame
For a long time, Pokémon existed essentially in a category of one While that’s changed in recent years, with indie games offering everything from traditionalist to trolling takes on the genre (Coromon, Cassette Beasts, Palworld), we’ve not paid any of them much mind – Game Freak’s prolific output being more than enough to scratch the creaturecollecting itch But we’re willing to change that policy for any game whose description includes ‘from the team that made Chicory’
That game boasted a rare mix of Nintendo magic and unique personality, reinventing the top-down Zelda format as a story about art and self-doubt Beastieball reunites designer Greg Lobanov, artist Alexis Dean-Jones, musician Lena Raine and A Shell In The Pit audio maestros Em Halberstadt and Preston Wright for another colourful tale, riffing on elsewhere in the Nintendo canon. Not that this was the original intent, exactly – Lobanov sought to make a game about teamwork in a sporting context. “The creature stuff just turned out to be this amazing solve for so many problems,” he says “It just fit so naturally, like a glove, for all these other things we wanted to do.”
Key to those aims is the way relationships develop between Beasties As teammates play together, they can become partners, besties, sweethearts or rivals – a decision that is kept out of your control “We’ve seen some players
where every Beastie on their team is in love with each other,” Lobanov says of the game’s playtesters “And others where there’s no other relationship but rivals – they all hate each other ” It’s intended to feel organic, a form of “emergent storytelling” that’s equal parts XCOM and pet sim. This harks back to why Lobanov fell for Pokémon in the first place, squinting at Game Boy visuals that were barely more than liquid-crystal smudges. “But I would project so much personality and story into those characters And so this game is kind of riffing more on that side of it ”
As for the sport of Beastieball itself, it’s roughly equal parts monster battler and volleyball. The two-by-four grid is bisected by a net, with the duos on either side taking turns to hit and receive After an opening serve, each turn the attacking player has three actions to pass the ball between their Beasties, often applying buffs along the way, before spiking it over the net. The defenders have just a single action before the ball’s in their court: you might bench a weakened Beastie to sub in a teammate, or move one player up to the net, where next turn they’ll be able to block a rival’s shot and reduce its effectiveness
This effectiveness is measured in stamina (the game’s equivalent of HP), based on the relative strength and defence stats for one
Designer Greg Lobanov and artist Alexis Dean-Jones
Finding a musical approach was a hitch until Lena Raine began toying with a theme based on N64 sounds “The game became about nostalgia in a big way, ” Greg Lobanov says “We started riffing on that in the story, but the music found it first”
BEASTIEBALL
of three attack types: Body, Spirit and Mind It’s a more mathematical approach than Pokémon’s elemental game of rock-paperscissors – as one character we meet in the world explains: “There’s no ‘super effective’ or ‘not very effective’”. It takes a while to adjust, not least because Beastieball throws all sorts of other concepts into the mix alongside Status effects are a genre standard, though here they’re realised as ‘Feelings’, with characterful names A Beastie might be Jazzed, boosting their attack power; Shook, so that they can’t do anything but pass the ball; or just plain Sweaty, dripping stamina every turn they stay on the field. On top of this you’ll need to consider positioning Players at the net deal and receive more damage, but there’s also the matter of whether shots arrive along the grid or across it. If one lands in a row or column without a Beastie waiting to receive? That’s a point for the attacker, without having
A Beastie might be Sweaty, dripping stamina ever y turn they stay on the field
to bother with any of that damage-value business – making it possible for smart, tactical play to overcome level advantage.
This last bit is vital, since you’re free to explore this world in any direction you like To the north and south of the starting town we find two ‘ranked coach’ bosses waiting in their gyms, and best them both before starting to widen our net But, relaying our progress to Lobanov using the traditional gym-leader yardstick, it turns we didn’t need to do this at all “You could skip them, totally,” he says mischievously. “You could never play them.”
The only strict requirement to reach Beastieball’s credits is beating four of the eight ranked coaches, in any order. “This kind of takes the place of having difficulty settings,” Lobanov explains “If you want a harder game, you can just go past those first two bosses and go find a boss that’s way too high-level for you ” A little stubbornness may be required, since paths to tougher areas will be blocked by a ‘guardian’ team of Beasties at the recommended level These act as an “if you
are not this tall, you shouldn’t ride” gate, as Lobanov puts it “Because you’ll get smashed, basically. But there are ways to cheese those.”
Though he doesn’t elaborate, we do find ways around these guardians, whether through tricksy platforming or solving navigational puzzles that put us in mind of Chicory
Speaking of which: beyond the genre shift, Beastieball’s open structure might actually be the single biggest departure from that game. Chicory was “actually quite linear compared to this one,” Lobanov points out, and that’s created challenges for him as a storyteller. “It’s just a fact that this game is not going to hit the same way that Chicory hit, because it can’t all be written to the location and the character Like, you’ve just beaten the third boss. We don’t know which boss it was. We don’t know if it was an easy fight or a hard fight We don’t know where you are ”
So why do it this way? “I mean, I really like Breath Of The Wild, ” he laughs But more than that, it speaks to Beastieball’s grander aims “Because this is a game about picking your favourite creatures, I’m seeing it as an engine for self-expression That ability for your story to be really different from your friend’s story – ‘my creatures all fell in love’; ‘my creatures were all rivals’ – but also just, ‘I went here first’. When I play those Zelda games, that’s what I do The most obscure corner of the map that you’re not supposed to be at, I set that as my first destination ” As a metaphor for this team’s ambition in taking on the genre champ, it’s irresistible And it’s clear that this is where their sights are set “We’re both huge Pokémon fans,” Dean-Jones says when we ask about the recent wave of indie games in this space “But we don’t really play a lot of other creature games.” Lobanov clarifies: “I have now, as research for this game, played a whole bunch of stuff, just to tastetest what was out there.” So, having sampled the competition, does he have any concern about Beastieball standing out? “I didn’t even think about that as a challenge I was like, we’re going to make our version, and it’s not going to be like anything anyone else would do because we’re too fucking weird ” In a genre so long defined by one series, a dose of weirdness might be just what the doctor ordered
In the wild
With a hundredstrong bestiary of creatures, all of them beautifully animated, Beastieball has been a major undertaking for artist Alexis DeanJones As she puts it, “there’s a lot more line mileage” in each of these designs than any of Chicory’s characters This is one reason the game is launching in early access – but how, we ask, does that fit with the ‘go anywhere’ design? “Early access will be the entire game,” Dean-Jones explains “It’ll just be missing some animations ” And indeed in our build we encounter a few creatures who are still just sketched in, though this doesn’t stop their personality shining through Art considerations aside, though, early access is a way of gauging player interest, Lobanov adds: “Like, should we move on to the next game soon, or do we want to keep building up for a long time, like Baldur’s Gate did?”
TOP Beastieball’s battle system was designed first, to support a robust PvP multiplayer, before the team went on to adapt it for solo play
ABOVE Becoming friends (or possibly rivals) is the just the beginning of Beasties’ evolving relationships, with on-court drama following your team around, and vice versa
TOP Dean-Jones has led a team of external designers: “I could have designed all the Beasties, but we would have ended up with a much less diverse bunch ”
ABOVE Beastieball-fixated NPCs might be able to offer a strategy tip or two – or else complain about the sport’s cultural dominance
LEFT Among the Beasties roaming the landscape are other trainers’ teams, identifiable by their player numbers and bespoke names, which generally follow a specific theme
Kai, a blue-skinned ex-soldier, proves a useful companion throughout our session – handy to have around in a fight, and a voice of reason in dialogue
A V O W E D
Is Obsidian’s next RPG a little too by the numbers?
Our hands-on demo of Avowed can be seen as a microcosm of the game as a whole, game director
Carrie Patel explains Certainly what we play through covers the bases we’d expect from an Obsidian RPG: exploration, combat and, yes, decisions with consequences
Ushered through a system of caves, however, we don’t get much impression of the wider world (the game is set within Eora, the setting of Pillars Of Eternity) Nor is there sufficient time to get to grips with the apparently detailed character-progression systems And we have to hope these areas are where Avowed will really shine, because
what we’ve seen of the game so far feels a touch underwhelming
As an envoy from the Aedyran Empire sent to the Living Lands to investigate a spiritual plague, our character’s immediate task is to track down a lost expedition In the event, we find only one of their number alive, a young man struggling with injury, whose survival we ensure by giving him a healing potion It’s a minimal sacrifice on our part, hardly the thorniest of choices, yet these minor decisions are designed to add up “It’s about giving the player moment-to-moment opportunities to express and explore where they’re leaning , ” Patel says Later in the game,
According to Patel, Avowed is similar in scope to The Outer Worlds, but it’s impossible to max out every skill tree in one playthrough
you’ll make much more momentous decisions around where your allegiances lie, weighing up your role as part of a political body. “Giving players things to dig into – that’s what makes it meaningful roleplay It’s about who you want to be in this world, and how these situations prepare you to express that ”
We soon run into another character, Sargamis, a scientist-cum-wizard who looks
“It’s about who you want to be, and how these situations prepare you to express that”
especially splendid thanks to his patterned metallic gold skin He claims ignorance of the expedition, but does want us to fetch a relic from deep within the caves, so that he can finish the contraption he’s working on, shaped like some sort of effigy of a god We don’t trust him, but decide to keep an eye out for the special trinket since we’re heading down into the depths anyway
The caves, for their part, are particularly colourful, adorned with ivy, gleaming crystals and radiant fungi Beneath that decorative surface, though, the network of rocks, roots and magically sealed doors feels largely
characterless, and deliberately arranged Exploration is heavily guided both by the layout and by icons hovering over objects, denoting when we can break a barrier with a weapon, trigger a switch with electricity, or hide in not-very-long grass to sneak up on an enemy. “The choices you get and the outcomes in front of you are going to depend on what you’re able to find,” Patel says Here, at least, it’s difficult to miss much. So it is that we stumble upon the rest of the expedition, lying dead in Sargamis’ workshop We also find the relic, not much farther on, although it’s clear why Sargamis didn’t fetch it himself when we’re ambushed by a pickand-mix squad of skeletons, with warriors, archers, healers and an oversized champion
Undead dispatched, we return to Sargamis understanding that he’s responsible for the deaths of the expedition crew, and with no intention of handing over the relic. To cut a long discussion short, we end up in a fight with golden boy and, after some scruffy swings from our dual-wielded sword and axe, emerge victorious. Given our dialogue options, it’s easy to see how this quest could have ended differently, but again, we’re not sure what would lead us down the alternate path other than curiosity Perhaps in the context of the wider story, we’ll find reason to side with Sargamis and his experiment. Perhaps we’ll also be engrossed in the trajectory of our build to make the treasure hunting more meaningful. Patel, for one, is confident that will be the case when we play through the entire game “The abilities you can scope into and the weapon loadouts you can choose give you a very different experience each time you play ”
A fighting chance
The game’s default firstperson close combat feels imprecise at first It seems odd that we aren’t introduced to any sidestep or block mechanic, leaving us to run backwards or jump to avoid attacks Patel explains, however, that measures have been taken to ensure a smoother ride: “You have to make sure you’re giving players full awareness of the area around them ” To that end, directional indicators show where enemies are coming from, while companions shout warnings when action is required The AI is also manipulated to ensure you don’t get swamped “It helps the player feel the pressure without feeling like they’re being hit from all directions by things they can’t see ”
At times the scenery implies a rich history that demands to be explored. Inside caves, the draw is far less evident
Playing as a mage allows you to ping magic at enemies from a distance, while spells such as a circle of ice are powerful up close
C A I R N
The mountain is the boss in this exacting ascent
Climbing a rock wall might feel like a boss fight in Cairn, not least in the sense of satisfaction acquired on reaching the top. Of course, the two activities have always had their parallels Why do we put so much effort into beating a fiendish boss, after all? Because it’s there. Because, like a climber, we decide to test our abilities even though we don’t have to Emeric Thoa, Cairn’s creative director, wants to capture these motivations in main character Aava, an individual pushing beyond her limits, determined to reach the peak And, as her guide, you will also toil, fall, try another route and eventually surmount the vertical face “We want the character and the player to be aligned,” Thoa says.
That The Game Bakers is taking on a new challenge of its own here is no surprise, given its history of genre hopping. Yet, Thoa explains, Cairn follows a common throughline of reimagined sports – martial arts in Furi, snowboarding in Haven, pool in mobile title Squids The only difference this time, he says, is that, “I chose a sport that I would never dare to do.” He also sees Cairn’s story of obsession, dedication and sacrifice as part of “a thematic trilogy”, based around the concept of freedom “Furi was about fighting for freedom. Haven was about being free to love who you want This is about freeing yourself from your own limitations ”
As we take control of Aava under the watchful eyes of Thoa and Game Bakers CEO Audrey Leprince, then, we’re prepped for a denser treatment of climbing than that found in the likes of Jusant And while the tutorial walls are kind, studded with protrusions that easily take our weight, the control system requires immediate care You move Aava’s limbs independently, one at a time, placing the current hand or foot before taking on the next The order of limbs isn’t a simple rotation, however, but is selected based on your posture and the weight put on each. “If you have all your weight on your left
foot,” Thoa explains, “the game is never going to pick that one, otherwise you would fall ”
If you plant Aava’s hand or foot near a ledge or crack she will grab or wedge into it as best she can, but land on a sheer surface and it becomes little more than a pushing off point. From there, any imprecision can quickly leave her in a pickle On a few occasions, as we attempt the first climb proper and begin to improvise a route, she’s forced to awkwardly cross her arms or ends up nearly doing the splits thanks to our poor forward planning As we start to feel her breathe harder, her limbs visibly shaking as the controller rumbles, we thus have little choice but to plant a piton and effectively reset, dangling loose for a moment, recouping stamina It’s a welcome checkpoint, in short, but pitons are a finite resource that you can’t afford to deploy frivolously.
Finally, we ascend onto a plateau and spy our first cairn, the little stacks of pebbles that here signify save points. As the game goes on and the wall becomes steeper and smoother, the sight of these should be an increasing
Aava’s limbs shaking as the controller rumbles, we have little choice but to plant a piton
relief. “In the demo, you’re lucky – it’s always good weather,” Leprince says But later you’ll face high winds, lashing rain and other conditions. “It gets really cold towards the summit You’ve got ice and snow, as well as the variation in the landscape itself ” For now, it’s time to admire the view, perhaps meet a fellow climber, or forage for foodstuffs
“There’s a lot of secrets to discover,” Leprince says “They tell a story – your story and the story of everybody that’s been on this mountain ” The crucial factor, though, like climbing a mountain, or overcoming a boss, is that no two stories are the same.
“Everybody takes a different route ”
Take shelter
Once you’re on flat ground, you can find a camping spot and pull a tent out from your bulky backpack In some cases, this is an opportunity to wait out a storm or rest until daylight, trying to work with the game’s weather patterns or light-dark cycle Before you get some shuteye, though, there may well be other issues to take care of, not least the matter of cooking, eating and drinking Aava carries some supplies by default – we make a welcome hot chocolate on our first stop – but she’ll have to scavenge for more if she’s going to stay nourished After a particularly gruelling ascent, she may also need to treat injuries or repair equipment, otherwise the next leg of the climb may prove to be beyond your reach
RIGHT Aava’s movement isn’t locked to prerecorded animation sequences “It’s all mathematics and biomechanics,” Thoa says BELOW Your carrying capacity is a matter of space rather than weight The physicsbased objects fall into place, and you can shuffle them around to create more room
BELOW RIGHT You can zoom out to look at climbing routes you ’ ve already tried (and failed), or plot your next course of action
LEFT Pushing up on the left stick while climbing sees Aava straighten her legs as much as her posture allows –a means to reach more distant handholds quickly
T
I T A N Q U E S T I I
The legend returns, in new hands
An action RPG inspired by Harryhausen stop-motion animation with a script by the writer of Braveheart, Titan Quest had ‘cult classic lost to time’ written all over when it launched in 2006 Yet remarkably, this history-hopping Hoplite game, and the unwieldy proprietary engine it was built on, were supported well into their adolescence. As well as a ten-year anniversary edition, Titan Quest boasts four meaty expansions, the last released in 2021. So while Titan Quest II is being developed by a different studio, in Unreal 5, it’s far from a case of the developers unearthing an ancient past. With a sense of continuity, Grimlore Games is keen to display a renovated but restrained vision for its sequel
As we’re guided through an early sequence, environmental detail is the obvious draw Our protagonist, an orphan of divine origin, emerges onto a ship-scattered coastline and soon makes a mess of the local Ichthian population, a faction of frilly fish-men armed with net traps Grimlore’s grimy take on ancient Greece is what grabs our attention, though – globs of flesh floating scum-like on the glistening water, orbiting the vibrant coral
where crabs dwell. As our hero charges forward, talking-horse companion in tow, it becomes clear that the Ichthian invasion has extended towards civilisation, leaving a string of abandoned homes in its wake. Gangs of enemies now lurk near colonnaded verandas as dusk falls in the day-night cycle
As for the fights themselves, while the spectacular ragdoll physics that made lamping a low-poly satyr so satisfying have been toned down a touch, there’s much to enjoy Beyond spellcasting and hack-and-slash melee, you can attach modifiers to Titan Quest II’s triggerable
Our protagonist soon makes a mess of the local population, a faction of frilly fish-men
skills, each with an upgradeable capacity that encourages specialisation. A leaping stomp, for example, can be tweaked to add a stunning effect on impact, or you can turn it into a zone-trekking mobility skill at the cost of its damage-dealing capacity. Titan Quest’s mastery system also returns, enabling you to pull from two pools of abilities simultaneously, leading to a cavalcade of synergies.
The malleability extends to Titan Quest II’s difficulty, where, in a stroke of clever narrative design, in-game rituals enable you to personalise the challenge “You can ask for favour from the gods to reduce the difficulty,” lead systems designer Balint Marczin tells us. “But you also have the option to raise the minimum level of all creatures in the world, so you can go back to the beginning areas and farm for valuable items.” And if the prospect of farming makes the adventure sound a little
Ichthian encampments present an opportunity for Grimlore Games to show off its eye for detail, from skull-topped gateposts and tanning racks to some Riven-like abodes
TOP LEFT We don’t meet with anything absolutely enormous during our demo, but there will be sizable beasts to tackle, such as this giant enemy crab TOP RIGHT It’s not all seaside and sunshine in Titan Quest II’s ancient Greece –there’ll be gloomy boneyard larks, too, illuminated by pyres and the spells of winged necromancers
ABOVE Ichthian squads appear in tactical formations Spear-toting fodder harass as the hunters encircle and attempt to snare you, so that shieldtoting brutes can pile in
baggy, the semi-open world otherwise promises to keep your journey focused –your time seemingly split between optional, structured cave jaunts with light puzzles and specific tasks, such as helping a world-weary scholar crumble a connecting bridge to halt the Ichthian press This and other NPCs we’re shown all appear quite charming to chat with, an ambient dialogue choice never too far away Pleasantries aside, a skeleton warlock acts as this section’s crescendo, blasting a vortex of bones at the hero as they attempt to elude the attacks of damage-boosted minions Meanwhile, clusters of guards refuse to rush in like cannon fodder, holding defensive positions to guard nearby enchanters, which demands a
renewed approach to the combat puzzle It’s a challenge that takes several minutes to overcome, and speaks to the slower pace offered by Titan Quest II
With an early-access release closing in, Grimlore will take its time stuffing more characters and monsters into these realms, while post-launch it plans to assume a similar model to the original game, with an emphasis on paid expansions rather than an onslaught of microtransactions. In terms of what may eventually be included, then, the sky’s the limit “Up to 1 0, we’re going to focus on Greek mythology,” Marczin says, “including the mythological realms. So Olympus, Hades – all these places are up for discussion ”
Aegean arsenal
As well as the loot of scaling rarity and varied perks that spew out of enemies when they die, Titan Quest II will feature ‘Uniques’ – legendary items with specific and potent properties. Apparently by chance, one appears during our demo session, randomly falling from a beaten foe It’s a fine weapon, an axe known as the ‘Raging Bull’, complete with golden greebles and flavour text associated with the myth of Theseus and the Labyrinth In addition to extra health regeneration, the weapon boosts rage, a stackable attribute that improves your primary weapon’s attack speed and damage Applying rage-based modifiers to each skill thus creates a menacing build that should strike fear into the heart of any minotaur