Godfall

Daedalus & Son

If you cast your memory all the way back to the very first hints of the next generation of console gaming, during the VGAs and long before the 2020 blowouts, you might remember 'Godfall' as being one of the games that won a lot of coverage at that event. Now for my part, I can't exactly imagine why such attention was paid toward 'Godfall' given how, as I described in my blog on the topic, I found the trailer to be utterly devoid of anything resembling unique creativity or technological complexity. The game looked too clean in it's textures, too messy in it's designs and too vague in it's trailer, for me to muster anything more than a half-hearted sniff in it's direction. I was unwilling to give the title more than my precursory time of day until such a time where we heard anything more concrete about how the game played. Well, I guess today is the day for judgement as 'Godfall' hit the PS5 event with some honest-to-goodness gameplay; so let's see how Gearbox's new franchise is shaping up.

Before I get into it, however, allow me to share the description on this game on the off-chance that it rings a bell with you as it did with me. Godfall takes place in the world of "Aperion - a world on the precipice of ruin." The player stands up for this world in the form of "the last of the Valorian knights", ('Valorian'... really? That made it to the final script?) "god-like warriors able to equip 'valorplates', legendary armour sets that transform wielders into unstoppable masters of melee" blah blah. So let's asses; We have a fantastical, yet ruined, world with 'god-like' influences being involved and the player being put into the shoes of 'fantastic warriors' who need to hide inside of metal suits in order to defend their country. (Also, the game is a looter-slasher) Isn't this just 'Anthem' with weaker Javlin design? I can't be the only one who sees the parallels, right? Did Gearbox seriously just yank Bioware's blueprint for their failure-of-a-game under the assumption that they could do it better? Probably not, it's likely just coincidence, but I'll throw some healthy scepticism on this fire.

My first takeaway from this game as of the new trailer is that this title suffers from a little bit of an identity crisis that stems from a 'like me' syndrome. By that I mean, in the 2019 reveal trailer the game seemed set on establishing itself as some grand 'David v Goliath' type game with the typical accoutrements one would expect from that sort of world. You had cinematic action, dynamic camera angles and a dramatic soundtrack; all of these elements came together to put up a rather mediocre looking game. (In my opinion.) But now we have gameplay everything looks a lot more vast paced, a lot less intense and dramatic and the footage is accompanied by this completely out-of-pace rap track that just oozes this sense of "Kids like rap, right? Let's thrown in as much rap as we can!" Now don't get me wrong, I have no problem with rap or it's potential use in advertising; but I find that more often than not whenever rap finds itself in an advert for something  that product is entirely unrelated to the song in question. (With every other type of music, people expect some sort of connection.) It's a nitpick, to be sure, but it highlights the laziness which is going into the marketing of 'Godfall', and that doesn't exactly reflect well on the potential of the full game. What is this game supposed to be- dramatic or laid-back; a hair-raising cinematic event or a pick-up-and-play time sink? Pick a lane!

In terms of the actual gameplay itself it's here where I do actually have some positive things to say about Gearbox's new beau. Godfall looks to be fast paced and exciting in it's third person melee combat to the point where I see shades of the hack-and-slash genre in there, which is certainly a good example to follow. Strikes look swift, powerful and the actually illicit feedback from the enemy, which sounds like it should be a given but you'd be surprised the amount of games where NPCs shake off taking a warhammer to the face. (>cough< Skyrim >cough<) These are the sorts of core systems that games like this need to nail, especially if they have eyes on becoming a live service like 'Godfall' definitely does. As someone who was always a fan of this type of game (DMC fan since a young age) I do admit that I'll slightly swooned at the prospect of a quality hack-and-slash title with significant replay potential; but I fail to see the 'breakthrough personality' that games of this genre usually covet to it's audience. 'Devil May Cry' has it's versatile juggling system which allows for weapons and forms to change on a dime, 'Bayonetta' and 'God of War' have their trademark epic encounters and set pieces and 'Metal Gear Rising: Revengence' has it's vividly gory swordplay. What makes 'Godfall' unique amidst those titans? It's rap?

And have you noticed anything missing from this latest gameplay demo? A promise, made all the way back from that first trailer, that went unfulfilled throughout all of this footage? How about the mildly promising setpiece of a large swirling tower in the sky with a deadly Hydra atop it, what ever became of that? If anyone came away with any impression of what it was that 'Godfall' represented after that reveal trailer, it would have been of a co-op based slasher that revolved around 'Monster-hunter'-style showdowns against impressive huge beasts. Now would that be an assumption on the part of the viewer? Certainly. But assumptions don't spawn from nowhere as this was the expectation that original trailer established. Yet here we have some gameplay showing no co-op play, no boss encounters and practically no real 'blow my socks off' moments to talk about over the water cooler. Now I'm not really a fan of the term 'water cooler moments' but it's a real phenomenon that Gearbox haven't catered to in the slightest with this trailer and that is saddening.

Now as it happens 'Godfall' does have an official website, as every game does nowadays, however it merely redirects to the epic store page so we divert there for more in-depth details. Here we can read the Devs bragging about the diversity of their environments from "the above-ground reefs of the Water Realm to the subterranean crimson forests of the Earth Realm." (Feel like the world designer got a bit confused there.) It's here where I find one of my biggest issues with this game somewhat confirmed, this entire gameworld feels excessively flimsy and undercooked. What, we have elemental based realms? Warriors called 'Valorain Knights'? Valorplate armor? It's all surface-level drivel that lacks any real depth, and perhaps that was the intent on the world builder's side but personally, as someone who like to get lost in the immersion of the worlds they explore, this doesn't feel like it was constructed with heart and a vision. There's also some information about 'mastering weapon classes' which makes me think this game will have some 'Monster Hunter' DNA in it, a RPG system which is sure to be rudimentary and, as of so far, only one revealed endgame activity in 'The Tower of Trials'. Which are essentially just 'Strikes' from Destiny. (Does this game have an original bone in it's body?)

Of course, the question I must always ask in these trailer reveals remains the same; does this title deserve to be a Playstation 5 exclusive. And on that I'm strangely undecided. (Strange, as we've seen a decent amount of visuals and gameplay by now) Whilst there are certainly framerate limitations on current gen consoles that couldn't run the footage we're seeing; textures, resolution and pure technical capabilities still seem somewhat lackluster. I haven't seen any degree of the weather effects that last year's cinematic played up, nor the scale of battle, so I'm left wondering if this title has any right showcasing the capabilities of the next gen. But by that same merit I can't help but feel like this title is the victim of horrendously bad marketing, and that there's several sides to this game that we haven't seen yet. So I'm choosing to be agnostic on this particular topic for now. (We'll see if that lasts.)

In conclusion, 'Godfall' still has failed to impress me for many of the same reasons as last time and a few smattering of new ones. I think it may be time to come to the conclusion that this firmly isn't my kind of game and pass it off to you; does anything you've heard, seen or read on this game seem any bit interesting to you? Because where I'm sitting, all I can see is a game that looks cynical in almost every respect and find it hard to deduce if there was ever some soul or vision which spawned this project. Of course, this is all just my impression from the marketing and, as always, I hope I'm wrong and this game launches like a cannonball aimed at the stratosphere, but as of right now I'm getting serious 'Anthem'-vibes from everything 'Godfall' has shown, and it's starting to feel like Gearbox might have drifted too close to the sun. (Urg, that was a terrible reference. I hate myself for that.)