You hate their games for the low budgets and poor gameplay, but you are nonetheless intent on playing all of them?
E3 2017: First Look At GreedFall Promises a New World of Conflict
I always love getting to cover games made by Spiders. Unfailingly janky and riddled with bugs, I still can’t help but spend days trapped in their narrative webs. I’ve come to describe them as the Cannon Films of massive open-world companion based RPGs: full of heart, a fraction of the budget. The scale of what they manage to create has always been the biggest selling point. Even the relatively constrained Of Orcs and Men painted a picture of a much larger and more interesting world (still crossing my fingers for a sequel). They’ve gotten progressively more bold and expansive with every game, with The Technomancer my 2016 guilty pleasure. If you need a better sense of how I feel, go ahead and read the last paragraph of that review.
Spiders is looking to once again up the ante with GreedFall, a new IP set amidst the struggle of a colonial expansion. Familiarize yourself with the trailer, because it has guns and and monsters and is awesome:
So I’ve seen all kinds of comments like, “Bloodborne and Witcher mashup!” Where my mind jumped immediately was Risen 2, my all-time favorite grand champion guilty pleasure open-world companion based RPG (check out my ELEX coverage soon!). So in the realm of guilty pleasure RPGs, GreedFall is already starting at a high bar.
I usually like to be more prepared going into an interview, but in this case the trailer and a few sparse articles were really all I had to go on. Luckily the people over at Focus Home Interactive were able to set me up with two of the devs, Sébastien Di Ruzza and Marie-Cécile Jacq, to fill in the holes in my knowledge. I had the sense that the game was colonialists vs. natives, but the game actually has five different factions to align yourself with. Ranging from merchants to mercenaries to natives, each of the teams has their own morals, motivations, goals, and special companion to join you on your quest.
What quest is that exactly? Well the world of GreedFall has a bit of a plague problem. All along the mainland people are dying in droves, while the native and wild inhabitants of this uncivilized island are seemingly immune. The dominant church, longtime healers and practitioners of light magic, are none too fond of this. With a promise of reward and the looming specter of painful plague death, the various factions head to the island in search of a cure. Starting as a neutral party, it’s up to you to decide how to go about working with everyone to reach that end.
So standard RPG fair, but the people at Spiders are striving to make that experience feel meaningful. They stressed that they don’t want there to just be a best ending where everyone works together. Get everyone to work together? Good for you! There’s an ending for that. Want to be a murderous colonialist? Glory to the empire, death to the savages, good for you! Want to become a radical native and push back civilization in favor of the spirits of nature? Burn their cities, smash the relics of their church, good for you! They don’t want choices to be just right or wrong, but reflections of how you want to build your story.
It’s a lofty promise, and those that remember The Technomancer will regard this with much scrutiny. The Technomancer‘s greatest shortcoming was how constrained and linear it felt. You spent so much time locked into the main hubs, you didn’t get enough time to learn about the various factions outside of brief snippets in some of the quests. How the heck am I supposed to make an informed decision about the resistance vs the army if I don’t get to talk to their leader until way after I decide whether or not to defuse the bomb?
GreedFall seeks to remedy that by opening up your options both in and out of combat. First off, equipment will no longer be locked to certain characters. According to the devs, the only combat avenue blocked off to you is the native magic, which will still be available through use of their companion. You’ll be able to swap between two different weapons, giving you a choice in how you want to approach a combat situation. Do you want to equip an armor rending two-handed hammer, then switch to a dagger for some bleed effects? Or do you want to use two different firearms, allowing you to dish out more damage before reloading? Coupled with more easily readable and consistent indicators for status effects, it promises to bring the combat a level of choice and complexity unattainable in previous titles.
Combat, however, is more than ever a choice in GreedFall. While they are dedicated to creating a complex combat system for those that want to delve into it, they were adamant that players who want to focus on the diplomacy would find just as much to experience. Make deals between factions, help out various NPCs, wheel and deal your way into advantageous positions. Become a paragon for truth, or lie cheat and steal your way to victory. Once again, how you play is up to you.
GreedFall is an ambitious concept, made even more intriguing by the unique setting. On the border between magic and science, the era is one where schools of alchemy and medicine exist side by side. Industry and firearms are quickly pushing back the wilds and superstition, but very real magical monsters lurk just beyond the treeline. With the expansive world, unrestricted exploration, and multiple factions, the people at Spiders promise an experience that can keep you entertained for weeks.
So check back in for more about GreedFall as it develops. It won’t be out until 2018 (PC, PS4, Xbox One), giving plenty of time to learn more about this ambitious title. I’m curious, what do you all think? Fan of previous Spiders games? Do you think they will live up to all of their promises? Let me know below, and once again enjoy another art gallery!
GREEDFALL: AN INTERVIEW WITH SPIDERS' MARIE-CÉCILE JACQ & SÉBASTIEN DI RUZZA [E3 2017]
The world is suffering. A disease is ravaging populations far and wide and a remote island mired in mystery and mysticism may carry the cure. Naturally, doctors and alchemists seeking this cure, mercenaries and privateers seeking to profit from it, and many others come to try to crack the secrets of the island. They’re not the only ones there though. Native inhabitants and ethereal beasts stand ready to thwart those who would defile the island. That’s what awaits players when they enter the world of Greedfall, an upcoming role-playing game from Spiders and Focus Home Interactive.
It’s not just about grinding an exotic locale in Greedfall. Players will find themselves deadlocked in numerous factions clashing for supremacy with one another. Combat will help you survive while diplomacy will help you achieve, but where will you fall in this intense web of war and politics? At E3, GameWatcher had the chance to sit down with Spiders Gameplay Manager Sébastien Di Ruzza and Project Manager Marie-Cecile Jacq to learn more. They shared information about the exploration, combat, and balancing act of diplomacy that players will find when they step onto the unforgiving shores of Greedfall.
GameWatcher: So take us into the world of Greedfall. What is going on here?
Marie-Cecile Jacq: It’s a fictional 17th Century. We were inspired by art, music and Flemish-style painting, as well as the fact that it was a time of discovery and scientific growth, although alchemy was also still a practice. You’ve got this mainland continent of three nations which represent three of the factions. One is heavy into magic, religion, and faith. Another is all about science and alchemy. The last is a merchant nation that was once an economic power, but is starting to weaken. There’s also a faction of sailors that control most of the transportation across seas and a mercenary faction that is happy to jump in and capitalize when conflict is about. In all of this, there is an outbreak of a weird disease affecting the entire mainland. It isn’t long after that the sailors discover this uncharted island that is entirely free from the disease. It leads every faction to rush there and attempt to claim land and gain resources. Every faction has a big reason to be there. Meanwhile there’s native people on the island that are immune to the disease, take part in an old and nature-driven magic, and are heavily defiant against all of these sudden invaders.
GameWatcher: And who are you in all of this? What role does the player play?
Jacq: You are a prince or princess of the merchant nation and faction and you’ve come to the nation with a dual purpose. Your cousin has established a merchant town and needs help as the governor of the merchant presence on the island. Moreover, your family has suffered from the disease. Your mother is afflicted and you leave home with just as much in not more stakes in the cure than anyone. The disease kills almost everyone, so you’re assuredly leaving her to her death, knowing something must be done.
Sébastien Di Ruzza: It’s not just you and the merchants either. There’s going to companions and party members in the game that come from each of the factions, including the natives. What you do for their factions will gain you influence and trust with them, while doing things for other factions or acting against that faction could anger them. You could just as well bring the companion of a scientist to a place controlled by the religious nation and gain some notoriety for having that companion in your company when dealing with religious characters. There’s a lot of flexibility and depending on how you handle it, you could become great friends with a companion or lose them outright as an available ally.
GameWatcher: What about the wilds of Greedfall? Can we freely explore this island?
Jacq: It’s not an open-world game. Players will explore pre-determined locations around the island in Greedfall. That said, we’re adding a lot more space and content to explorable locations than we’ve ever had in previous games. You’ll come across various occurrences, such as magic animals that are far apart from the normal animals on the island and it will lead into a quest to explore new places and solve puzzles to figure out where that magic animal came from. It’s that kind of interactivity we’re aiming at to fill this island when you’re not among civilization.
GameWatcher: Greedfall is a role-playing game, but what kind of mechanics come out when things get intense and the swords come out? Is it going to be an action-RPG, turn-based, or something else?
Di Ruzza: It’s a third-person tactical RPG. We’ve approached this game from the ground up with new and revamped systems for AI, difficulty, and progression, as well as versatility. Combat is tactical and takes place in real-time where players will challenge enemies with various skills and strategy on the fly. Meanwhile, we’ve added a new system to this game that has to do with what we’re calling “critical effects”. There’s a new bar that allows you to activate a critical effect on most characters to do more damage or other bonus side effects. There’s an upgradeable skill tree with options that add all sorts of tweaks to these critical effects as well. For example, if you have a spell that normally effects one enemy, you can tweak it to hit multiple targets, or you can tweak a gun with a critical effect to break enemy armors in one shot. We’ve taken up feedback to try to make this game an enjoyable tactical experience where players will be able to play with all kinds of variety in their strategies.
GameWatcher: And exactly does our player progress? Is it simple grinding? Will there be bonuses based on which factions align with?
Di Ruzza: There’s going to a skill tree for leveling your personal character based on combat and a different leveling for relationships. Some of your companions will gain abilities if you improve your relationship with them. As for you, you can build yourself in just about any direction you want. Any weapon you find, even all those used by any enemies, can be used by you and developed with your playstyle. Armor classes and other factors such, alchemy and lockpicking, have progression through various skill trees as well.
Jacq: It’s going to be an experience points-based system. That said, it’s not a class-based set-up. You won’t have to adhere to an archetype or favor one style if you don’t want to. You can really pick and choose which skills you want to develop and build characters with a little bit of everything. If you fight, you’ll get skill points and you can put it anywhere you want. As an example, you won’t just get points in heavy armor for wearing it, but the fact that you are using it might incentivize you to put a skill point in the heavy armor skill tree.
GameWatcher: What about your faction companions? What kind of depth do they bring to your interaction with the world?
Jacq: There’s two levels of narrative we’re building with Greedfall. One is your personal story and how the world sees you for your actions. The other lies in diplomacy and relationships. The more you become friends with one companion, the more they’ll step forward to assist you when it comes to dealing with their people. Moreover, you don’t have to favor anyone. You can just push to keep the peace between sides or gather them against one faction in particular.
GameWatcher: So there’s ways to work with all factions or stay neutral of all of them? Can you stay neutral without punishment?
Jacq: Yes, it’s definitely a path. We don’t want there to be any sort of binary thing here. We don’t want something as simple as you being good gets you the good ending or being bad gets you the bad ending. Instead, we want something that allows the player to build a story that fits them. The ending that you get won’t necessarily be good or bad so much as reflect what you’ve done and the factions of which you made allies or enemies.
GameWatcher: Is there a way to make everyone angry?
Jacq: Yeah. Everyone could be balanced, or they could all be bloody angry.
Di Ruzza: It can get to the point where a faction’s presence on the island can be altogether destroyed and they can be shoved off the island entirely.
Jacq: We really want there to be some heavy impacts that don’t just come from the dialogue choices. It will also depend upon who is with you when you’re meeting people and what order in which you take on events as you go. If you like a companion a lot and you do their sidequests first is something that other factions will notice. They’ll see you favoring that companion and take note of where you establish loyalties. It’s in ways like that we’re making sure that every action and choice will change the way the following events happen.
Role-playing games come at a dime a dozen to be sure, but it’s not very often that an RPG pushes you into such a hefty web of intrigue right out of the gate as what Greedfall promises. Playing, bolstering, or dismantling the political relationships between all of the island colonies and the native people sounds like a trip to take more than once if you have the time. Between tactical strategy and dynamic storytelling, Spiders has us interested enough to take this island getaway and see more of what Greedfall has to offer.
Technomancer have really good world building mate. I really enjoyed their games as a whole. Still yeah there was a lot of corridor fighting.
Mars wars and Technomancer are their best games mate. Backtracking and linearity are because lack of resources in my eyes. Would recommend at least trying them out,at least the games have soul,unlike most modern AAA shit.
