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See small embers drifting across the screen, with a slightly gothic orchestral track, and the angular logo of the Four Horsemen of Revelation that remains in the background, is one of the the most unexpected things I've seen in a moment. And just above the words "Press Any Key", just in front and in the center of the screen: Darksiders III
The long-awaited sequel fell into the picture. After the trailer was released in May 2017, but just a few weeks ago, I was able to play nearly two hours of the last build at the Gunfire Games studio in Austin, Texas. It has evolved a lot since the first time I played it, but it's still, at its core, a post-apocalyptic adventure, hack's slash, filled with puzzles in a world full of angels, demons and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Honestly, I think that I am especially comforted by the fact that Gunfire – a team made up largely of the original group of Vigil Games that made the first two games – seems to have done a remarkable job of modernizing the series without having to play games. to remove pillars from the franchise at all. One of the designers told me: "It's a video game. I know it sounds strange, but it's one of my favorite things about it. We went through this process of, what are some of the tropes you get rid of, what are some of the tropes that you keep? We've sanded it, and we're here. "That makes perfect sense to me
Of course, there are significant changes.With a new Darksiders comes a new protagonist, and Gunfire assured me that Fury (voiced by Cissy Jones of Firewatch) At the strongest bow of any of the characters yet, even in the few cutscenes I've seen, Fury seems more motivated, more hungry and probably more stubborn than War or Death. She is desperate to be the leader of the Cavaliers – a role that none of the others has ever cared – and it seems that she will follow almost blindly. the orders of the well-established Charred Council of the series to achieve its goal. You can find out more about her in her character revelation. There were cinematics that I did not have the right to see and a lot of questions that the team would not answer to avoid the spoilers, but the team said that Darksiders 3 will "move the Needle "in terms of narration, and fans of the series should"
Beyond the components of history, Fury has been instructed to take physical representations of the seven deadly sins although I saw only two – Sloth and Wrath. Sloth is a giant insect, certainly rude, sitting on a throne held by other insects, buried in a kind of "dungeon" that has completely evolved from its original design "Terrestrial" to an area that is indicative of its rule . He's supposed to be a bit funny too, with odd liners and a cheeky attitude when you meet him. I know much less about Wrath than about his kind of Overwatch-Reinhardt-esque design, but Gunfire said that each of his sins had to be a bit caricatural, and totally separate one from the other. 39; other, and somehow, should reflect a part of Fury. Honestly, I am excited to learn more about them, and I think playing through the levels leading to each sin will be full of anticipation – what will it look like? How is it going to work?
The world is expected to become more difficult as one slowly goes down sins, which means that enemies evolve according to history. Each individual enemy is supposed to be a little harder than it was in previous games in the series, but there are fewer overall. This change requires a little more precision than the first two games, and this accuracy is accompanied by a very satisfactory counting system, which I gradually improved as I played. through the construction. If Fury dodges an enemy at exactly the right moment, there will be some kind of glow on the screen – which will look different depending on what elemental abilities it has activated – and then a short window so you can hit them hard with a counterattack. As each enemy has a variety of attacks and animations, and I saw 12 different types of enemies in my two hours of play, the counter system must be re-learned with each enemy .
often reacting a little too early. By the end of the demo, I was doing a lot more often, and I found each new enemy almost exciting, because it meant that there was a new timing that I had to learn. I do not know how many enemies Darksiders 3 will have overall, but I think that counter removes some of the repetition of combat that people have felt in Darksiders 2. It is also important to do well – since Fury is more of a mage, she's a bit Squishier than War and Death, and if you're not careful about dodging and countering, she's going to die a lot. I know it's almost a cliché at this point, but it's worth mentioning that Gunfire said, this time, that the fight is more inspired by Dark Souls than the previous games in the series [19659002]
there is an upgrade system, where the souls you collect act as currency to improve your health and your attacks, and it's relatively simple – it looks great more to the original Darksiders than to the Darksiders 2. A new intelligent addition to the upgrades is a creature called a Lurcher demon – if you die, one will appear in the zone of your death, and he will have consumed all your souls lost. There is a little puzzle to try to jump after, because it floats quietly with all the money you have collected, but it also acts as a neat checkpoint. If you kill other nearby enemies, it will devour their souls and steal them from you until you attack them. There is also a craft system, and although I could not see it in action, I was collecting artifacts for crafts around the world.
The most significant change in terms of combat is the introduction of Fury's elemental abilities. , which come from things called "hollows" that replace the Zelda style objects you've encountered in previous games. The only one I could see was the Fire Hollow, although I imagine there are four or five more (Gunfire would not confirm it). The Fire Hollow came to Fury during a cinematic that I will not spoil, and gave him three new abilities. She could walk in the fire and wash her without any damage. She had new weapons, which were nunchuck-style sticks, held in both hands, and could be loaded with Y to launch a complete flame attack. She also got an extended jump, where the A outfit would make her look a bit like a phoenix in the air.
Fury's hair and some minor parts of his armor changed to reflect the Fire. Hollow too, which should make it easier to identify the capacity you have activated at a given time. The extra weapon was a bonus, especially if it was considered that it was a little faster than the whip, and I arrived just when I started to annoy me. a little. That said, the coolest part is certainly the way the ability is integrated into the crossing, which allows you to come back to the environments and approach them in new ways. The things you needed to burn could be burned just with his abilities, things that were too high to jump could now be skipped, and walking in the lava meant that there were shortcuts and secrets hidden in them. environments that might have drawn curiosity the first time you saw them, because you could not reach them.
In fact, approaching the world is both my favorite thing about Darksiders 3 (so far), and probably the biggest improvement in previous games in the series. It is in some way akin to itself, with the six separate dungeons being filled with connecting passages and slowly passing from one environment to another. There is a lot of supposed overlap, including the fact that Gunfire does not consider the game as linear, and that you can approach some sins and their lairs in different orders. I saw only two environments – the insect-infested metro that Sloth was living in, and what I would call a "fire dungeon", but both remarkably varied even inside of me. Themselves that I am deeper. It seems that there is a lot of verticality there too, with the depths of the dungeons completely reflecting the sin that lived there, while the anterior parts still reflected the Earth.
They are all ultimately supposed to feel less like compartmentalized areas, and more like coherent, lived and connected parts of the same world. The way Fury's abilities are related to the exploration of the world is also intentional, and when I asked the team how to explain Darksiders 3, the first thing they said was was "it's a cool world that you can explore". or style, and this focus sounds true. In the first game you would mostly see a chest that you could not access because you did not have the right object, but now there are more elaborate secrets, different paths, and an abundance of ways to give the players a chance to explore the spaces that they will cross. It is designed so that players can completely but gradually digest each environment – if they want it – until they are in the end.
To add to that, if there is a puzzle present in Darksiders 3, it fits quite naturally in the environment. There are no puzzles carefully put in place, there are no strangely open chests (which keeps putting those!), There are no coins with doors that unlock only when you have killed all enemies there. Basically, all that exists in the world should have the impression that it would be there even if you were not there, starting from the feeling that the enemies were just there to wait for you to appear. For example, the skeletons scattered in one of the dungeons that I was exploring often prayed when I introduced myself, usually in the direction of important quest objects with which I could interact.
This is a really subtle touch, but it adds to the idea that every corner of the world has a purpose and a context. Gunfire has been thinking a lot about building puzzles, with the goal of making every new puzzler a "tutorial", but getting more and more complex as a dungeon gets bigger and bigger. continues. I want to be clear – there were no tutorials on the screen, so the first few times that I found a new kind of puzzle, it took me some time to understand what I had to do. Once I did, they just kept adding layers and diapers in addition to what I could do with these solutions, but without ever having the impression that they were too much developed to exist naturally. The puzzles in Darksiders 3 were designed so that they make sense in the environment in which they are located, with more context than they had before.
My favorite two hour puzzle I played was centered around a stone giant. Gunfire decided to name the "Causeway Colossus". while I was in the room, so this name might be subject to change. I entered an area that looked like a dungeon in a dungeon, and I found myself facing a giant stone statue that seemed a bit too dramatic to simply exist there. The dungeon took me through a bunch of different pieces with their own puzzles – which could be approached in any order – to collect the swords that would act as a source of energy. I will not say what happened, but I think that illustrates a lot of what I felt while playing; I would see something different and cool, and I would wonder what he would end up doing, or how, even if it could happen a few hours later. He feels threatening and exciting at the same time.
So while I've written a lot of things that I know or love about Darksiders 3 here, it's also worth mentioning that J & # 39; have often encountered frequency drops and some problems to cross this world. A particular jump that I should have made was difficult because I was hitting some sort of invisible wall that should not have been there, an enemy kept knocking me off a platform when I I tried to fight him, checkpoints a bit distant, and some of the solutions to the puzzles seemed a little blurry because I had not learned the language enough for them. I do not think that one of these problems has a lot of weight just because Darksiders 3 is still actively refined and worked (and the developers have noted the problems I've encountered when I met them, even saying things like, "Oh, we have to fix that"!), but they still deserve to be mentioned at this point.
Ryan McCaffrey is the editor of Previews and the Guru-in-Chief of Xbox. Follow him on Twitter @DMC_Ryan catch him on Unlocked, and drop him Taylor's ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.
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