Mutant deer
Every role-playing game and its grandma claims to change drastically based on decisions made in game, yet almost none of them live up to it. French developer Spiders (The Technomancer, The Testament of Sherlock Holmes) makes a similar claim in its announcement of GreedFall, a fantasy RPG designed using a 17th century aesthetic coming to PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
This darker-toned fantasy will have the typical RPG fanfare of magic and a large explorable world filled with secrets as well as characters to interact with. It will also feature “diplomacy” and stealth mechanics as alternative means to complete quests along with combat.
“Diplomacy” may possibly just be a fancy word to explain dialogue systems that can be utilized to convince or manipulate others like in Knights of the Old Republic, but it would be interesting if there is some sort of Civilization-style inter-tribal relations to manage.
Spider CEO states that along with affecting relationships with characters, in-game decisions ranging “from seemingly trivial choices to the most important political decisions, will influence and affect its course.” That sounds great, but forgive me if I’m a little skeptical after decades of games that promise as much but ultimately change little beyond a few lines of dialogue.
Realistically, games hardly have enough time or budget to make even a single complete game, let alone develop a significant amount of alternative routes. The closest I’ve seen is Heavy Rain, where character deaths and decisions ultimately determine if you catch the killer or not and which of of the various endings you get.
Nevertheless, GreedFall looks and sounds neat. I mean, a colonial soldier dude is chasing a Khajiit-looking cat woman before getting jumped by a giant mutant deer thing. It’s hard not to want to see more of that, so I’m looking forward to seeing gameplay.
GreedFall is a Fantasy RPG with Combat, Diplomacy, and Deception [PlayStation Blog]
