Maybe it’s just me, but even though I perfectly remember the impressive announcement trailer for this game and its plot, for some reason I thought all this time that this would be another “dialog adventure” in the style of Life is Strange, the creators of the French studio Don ‘t Nod is perhaps the most famous. While you’ll also find this style of storytelling and gameplay in the game, it’s actually quite a massive action-adventure where you’ll explore a vast wilderness and fight with sword, rifle, and magic against all sorts of supernatural monsters.
I was given the opportunity to try out almost the entire second chapter of the game on PC, and I must admit that this was not the only surprise I received. The game tells the story of lovers named Anthea and Red, who, in the fictional location of New Eden (set in Massachusetts in 1695), engage in exorcisms that sometimes involve spells and rituals, and sometimes old-fashioned sword or rifle work. The situation of the couple is somewhat complicated by the fact that during one of these hunts, Antea dies. But this cannot separate the lovers, and Anthea now continues to accompany Red, although he is the only one who can see and hear her spirit. By the way, the entries in the main menu indicate that we will see Antea’s death in the first chapter of the game, but she was not included in this demo.
The basic structure of the game involves a journey between the homesteads of this “New Paradise” in the American desert of the 17th century, where you will gradually investigate and then punish the attacks of all kinds of ghostly entities – the game divides them into slightly different categories and has different nomenclature for them, even weapons or rituals. Although each such hunt represents one chapter of the story, the main plot takes place in the background, in which you have the opportunity not only to find out the mysterious causes of Anthea’s death… but, depending on your decision-making process, you can also decide whether to resurrect whether your darling at the end of the game, or vice versa, you will help her to calmly “rise” to the next level of existence and thereby grant salvation to her soul. This in itself may indicate that the resurrection will have some unfortunate side effects – as far as I have been able to see, it may involve the elimination and absorption of those who may not deserve it. I dare to reveal all this, because the creators and characters either do not hide it, or maybe they deliberately lead the player in the wrong direction.
In any case, in the second chapter, you must first carefully agree on the terms of your mission, which will be to hunt down a mysterious “wolf beast” that is terrorizing one of the local settlements, with the right choice of dialogue. The settlement is run by a pair of sisters, the older, wounded “Thick-skinned Newsmith” who is very ruthless in order to help a handful of settlers survive in the harsh environment of the wilderness. However, the younger Kate is very upset by her sister’s behavior, and you will have to carefully sort out the relationship between them, not least in order to get her younger sister to lend you her musket for this dangerous mission. The game also has an inventory, collecting all sorts of raw materials and upgrading your clothes, weapons and talismans, as we are used to in role-playing games (including a color scale that differentiates the level of a given item).
After this tense episode, when you have to choose your words carefully when communicating with two sisters, I went to the desert to look for traces of a mysterious beast. By the way, you control only one character at a time, but you can switch between Red and Anthea at any time – each has its own unique abilities both during exploration and during combat. For the next hour or so, I explored all sorts of footprints in the desert (destroyed stagecoaches, corpses of colonists, suspiciously large wolf tracks, etc.) and made my way through a small cave labyrinth along the way. It all culminated in an encounter with a really huge wolf, part tree, part corpse. This boss had three different (but pretty fast) phases where I had to direct attacks to different places on his body. After defeating him and finding out the reason why this evil spirit appeared in this region at all, I had to make a decision and pass judgment on two sisters who had a great deal to do with it.
I was extremely impressed with the overall setting of the game and all the characters, not just the central couple. All of the dialogue is written in a very historical and crude way, which gives it a lot of humanity and helps you stand out from the tough choices you have to make all the time. I also really enjoyed the exploration and combat, there’s nothing groundbreaking about it, but it’s always the right amount of time and the right level of difficulty, at least in the second chapter. By the way, the game has five customizable difficulty levels, so it can easily appeal to both players looking for action and challenges, and those who are only interested in the story. Artistically, the game reminded me a lot of the style of Life is Strange, although of course it has a much cooler color palette given the setting and genre. Technically, she pedaled relatively well, but it is clear that she still lacks some performance optimization. Either way, I quickly fell in love with both main characters and will be very excited to see how their story unfolds when the game launches on PC and new consoles on November 7th.
Source :Indian TV
