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Ash of Gods Previews

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Oof: https://www.pcgamesn.com/ash-of-gods-redemption/ash-of-gods-the-banner-saga

Ash of Gods: Redemption imitates The Banner Saga without improving on it

Ash%20of%20Gods.jpg


Some of the greatest games ever made are the result of imitation and the borrowing of ideas. Take a look at The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which sees Nintendo build upon and refine the ideas they picked from other games for their open world. But if you lift someone else’s formula and neglect to inject some originality into it the effort can easily backfire. That seems to be the case with indie developers AurumDust and their replica of Stoic’s strategic RPG The Banner Saga.

Ash of Gods: Redemption looks like The Banner Saga. It plays like The Banner Saga. It sounds like The Banner Saga. From its Ralph-Bakshi-style animation to its dour atmosphere fuelled by bickering allies and impending doom, Ash of Gods seems to tick its way through a checklist found at the bottom of an old filing cabinet previously owned by Stoic. The game flits from static conversations between desperately unhappy swordsmen to turn-based combat encounters that play out on isometric, chessboard-like battlefields. The absence of caravan does nothing to divorce the game from the muse it so desperately clings to.

Ash%20of%20Gods%20combat.jpg


In its best moments Ash of Gods is great simply because The Banner Saga is great. This is a stunning imitation and so it, too, is beautiful throughout, be that in its detailed static scenes or the nostalgia-inducing animation that pays homage to the likes of Fire and Ice, Wizards, and the animated The Lord of the Rings film. The combat, devoid of cover mechanics or other complexities, hones in on the importance of positioning and lining up character turns in the correct order. It also features a neat dual hit point system, in which you opt to either damage an enemy’s stamina to prevent them from performing strong attacks, or target vitality for straight-up wounds. It is almost a facsimile of The Banner Saga’s own dual system of armour and health, but works well enough to make battle a /slightly/ different spin on an already successful design.

Combat may be enjoyable, but outside of tactical moments, Ash of Gods comes across as a pale imitation of its inspiration. The quality of writing bounces between generic and cringeworthy, and fails to craft a tale - at least in its opening - that feels worth hanging on to. Aiming for dark melancholy, the script mostly lands on fumbled sentiment and excruciating exposition. When visiting the local store, the merchant’s dialogue crowbars unrequired details from the past three years of your protagonist's unseen life into a single, painfully unnatural exchange: “It’s been three years, my dear Thorn. We’ve run into each other now and then… but ever since you arrived in town - freshly retired - and bought a silver necklace with a garnet, you’ve forgotten all about my shop”. Several sequences later a character sobs into the corpse of her murdered “mommy,” begging her to “get up and stop pretending!,” despite previous scenes having established this character as a capable soldier and not a six-year-old child.

Ash%20of%20Gods%20conversation.jpg


Many awkward elements of the dialogue are almost certainly the result of author Sergey Malitsky’s script being less-than-perfectly translated from Russian to English. But even making allowances for that doesn’t prevent the story from feeling rough and poorly directed. The heavy exposition and unnatural speech appear to be concessions in exchange for packing in as much background lore as possible, establishing the universe and characters. Personally, I would have opted for slower reveals and a more poetic approach to the characters, especially considering the literary ambitions of its story-driven structure.

AurumDust are clearly chasing fans of The Banner Saga with Ash of Gods: Redemption, and the level of which they have paid respect to their influence will lead to two possible eventualities: those looking for more of the same dour, beautifully-drawn adventures will find themselves catered for; or staunch supporters of Stoic will strike out at a title looking to ride on their beloved game’s coattails. I find myself feeling cynical about the game’s intentions - rather than building on admired ideas, Ash of Gods’s creators appear content to make do with replicating them. Perhaps this imitation is flattery, but on this early showing it is hard not to see it as another studio making claims on someone else’s success.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.hardcoregamer.com/2018/...-narrative-against-beautiful-backdrop/289874/

Ash of Gods Boasts Compelling Narrative Against Beautiful Backdrop

To state the obvious, there is an element to good storytelling that has captivated audiences as far back as one can remember. A good story has something to say; there is always a truth to be gained, meaning to be had and treasure to be found. This isn’t to say every story must be serious or that all stories are trying to impart wisdom, they just have a way of doing that on their own. Bringing this to video games, what kind of story is Ash of Gods: Redemption, from developer Aurumdust, trying to tell and what does it have to say?

The most immediate thing is that Ash of Gods will be readily familiar for anyone who has played The Banner Saga, as both the art style and gameplay are a perfect match. Having familiar ground to play in means more focus towards the actual narrative of Ash of Gods Redemption, which will grab ones’ attention regardless. Ash of Gods opens with a cutscene that is as gorgeous as it is brutal. The hand-drawn animation gives way to an exceptionally pleasurable viewing experience, even with the amount of gore being laid down. After watching a group of individuals with pure black eyes sacrifice themselves to stop a group of even scarier looking individuals (which we’ll get to), the game jumps forward 700 years where it really begins.


Ash of Gods follows the story of three individuals through what is understood to be “The Reaping,” an event that comes around through the centuries, which the opening cutscene was an introduction to. The Reaping is shrouded in mystery. All that’s known is that Reapers, which are the extremely scary people, are bad news with god-like powers of life and death, but most common folk believe these stories to be mere folklore. Ash of Gods proves fantastic at grabbing the player’s attention with a compelling narrative by answering questions as it lays more down.

The only downside to all this excellent world building is that it is all unique to Ash of Gods, which doesn’t do a great job explaining what everything is. Too many names of people, places and things are thrown around with no annotations in sight. Now that more narrative driven games are using annotations, such as Pyre, it would be nice if Ash of Gods had included this to not only feed a curiosity of its world, but help explain much of it at the same pace as the game moves.

The beats between story and battle are nice, and with a permanent choice system it becomes vital to take every action and interaction into consideration. The world of Ash of Gods is one that, while gorgeous to look at, has a shroud of darkness that hangs over it. Every dialogue beat counts, and much like The Banner Saga, Ash of Gods isn’t so much about doing the good or bad thing but instead making decisions as best one can with the situation on hand. It gives a sense of reality that games of the past have tried to match but due to a baked in good/evil morality system it becomes more about player choice, not narrative of story in game of the characters themselves. This also is helped by how set in stone the characters are. Ash of Gods gives of sense of who these people are through dialogue choice and interaction with others.


The battle system is a grid based where the player and NPCs will take turns moving about the battlefield to fight it out. Even in battle the animations are a pleasure to look at, conveying that same sense of brutality found elsewhere in Ash of Gods. There’s a bit of confusion around character death in the game; I had two main characters perish during two of my battles, and while Ash of Gods states character death is permanent, they were right there ready to move the narrative along after the battle. It would seem, for now, that character death might only apply to the narrative moments of the game, which is fine, it was just nerve wracking in the moment. The battles will prove a fun challenge for anyone who likes turn-based combat strategy. It will be important deciding who joins each encounter not only for narrative reasons, but due to certain skill sets, motivations and loyalties.

As stated earlier, Ash of Gods is in the same wheelhouse as The Banner Saga. It’s hard not talking about The Banner Saga without talking about the art and Ash of Gods is no different. Not only is each backdrop and character a pleasure to look at, but the music is on equal footing. In fact, both the art and music will be the first thing anyone notices. The title screen could be left on all day and it would be just fine. Ash of Gods is so confident in the music, which they should be, that it’s even for sale in the game.


Ash of Gods: Redemption is looking to be an excellent addition to the recent wave of quality RPG strategy-adventure games. It’s telling a compelling narrative filled with interesting characters; a world that begs to be explored matched by combat that is engaging while fun. There are a few things missing from Ash of Gods, such as annotations which would help fill in the world more and certain prompt tutorials for gameplay would be useful, but these things don’t bring it down that much. Ash of Gods comes out this March for PC and will be worth anyone’s time who likes The Banner Saga, dark fantasy or a good strategy game with an intriguing story.
 

Sneaky Seal

Aurum Dust
Developer
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Sep 14, 2016
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Oh, boy.

Well, for starters, you do have a key to the same version - so you can play it and decide for yourself.

It is also somewhat odd to pick one negative preeview out of several we've had so far. Here are some:

- https://www.hardcoregamer.com/2018/...-narrative-against-beautiful-backdrop/289874/
- http://www.gamerassaultweekly.com/2018/02/ash-gods-redemption-impressions/
- http://www.capsulecomputers.com.au/2018/02/ash-of-gods-redemption-preview/

Last, the preview version this guy played only lasts for an hour, so it doesn't really show character and story development, the choices and consequences, party development and character skills leveling. Still, there are good insights there, we do pay attention to them, looking for places to improve. However, it is just 1 opinion, we are looking forward to the reviews from the big shots: IGN, PC Gamer, Rock, Paper & Shotgun, and hopefully RPG Codex :greatjob:
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I post the previews I happen to find, which includes the first one in your list.
 

Sneaky Seal

Aurum Dust
Developer
Joined
Sep 14, 2016
Messages
346
Location
Sealand-upon-Duck
I post the previews I happen to find, which includes the first one in your list.

The IGN one is up, I told you! http://www.ign.com/articles/2018/02...nner-saga-mixed-with-a-classic-adventure-game

:evilcodex:

If it doesn't feature alternating turns, then it's already a yuuuuge improvement over The Banner Saga.

It does, but the powerful attacks use up HP or MP, so even taking turns your opponent will either run out of resources fast or won't be able to do any real damage. You wouldn't need to leave injured enemies alive to prevent healthy ones from attacking you.
 

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