Century: Age of Ashes

 Squeezing outside of my comfort zone

This isn't the first time when writing this blog that I've been reminded of the PS3's Lair and what that became, but that's because I often find myself looking to the past and game releases I remember for some small divination into the future. Because when you shove a game about flying dragons in my face, to such a degree that you even built a competitive multiplayer framework around it, then of course I'm going to think back to that one 'system seller' PS3 title that was going to blow away the industry all the way back in 2007. But wait, wasn't 'Lair' Factor 5's last project before they were shut down? Hmm, that certainly doesn't paint a bright future for these dragon-combat games. And honestly, that whole story might have something to do with my innate disdain towards these sorts of games, although I suspect that a big part of it is deeper-seated, and I'll get to that at the end.

To be fair, Lair was pretty ill-fated from the get-go. It was a game that relied solely on it's graphical fidelity to get people through the door, as the raw gameplay was this experiment with over-reliance on the new Six-axis technology, leading to a game that just wasn't all that fun to control. Then, when the negative reviews started mounting, Sony (the publisher) issued out 'reviewer guides' (which is par for the course, they just sent them late) only these specifically instructed reviewers to read several pages of control guides and begged them to be 'open minded'. ("It's not us, it's you!") So in all fairness, a lot of Lair's faults were of it's own construction, and just because this new game might share a similar premise, it so far shares none of those issues. But then, that's not the only omen for stories that focus primarily around a 'dragon rider' and 'dragon riding'.

Yes. I've seen 'Eragon'. I was actually right in the middle of the target audience when it first came out, and good lord do I wish I wasn't because that was a trainwreck. And of course, that's a film adapted poorly from a novel series and this is a game, but what I'm trying to lay out for you is the stigma which I have going into looking at this game, so you'll know if I'm sounding overly critical not to take it heart. The there's the Eragon game, which is about as good as the movie, Panzer Dragoon which some people like and I am not one of them, and the Rail-shooter Crimson Dragon. I hated Crimson Dragon. I didn't even like how a Divinity 2 forced you to transform into a clunky dragon for some battle segments, seemingly completely oblivious to the fact that it felt awful to play and lacked a lot of the RPG mechanics and flair which made the base game appealing. It felt more like and action adventure add-on to a strictly RPG game. (Something which they fixed for Dragon Commander, thankfully.) So I'm in an uphill battle against myself to win around and trust 'Century: Age of Ashes', but I'll try to give my fairest of shakes regardless.

Okay, so this Century: I-really-don't-need-a-subtitle-but-for-some-reason-I-have-one is a multiplayer competitive title which essentially seeks to create a dog fighting experience where the 'air vehicles' are giant winged lizards. This means it's a title built on gamemodes, classes and balancing, already leaning in a somewhat ambitious direction for the developer Playwing LTD who, as far as can tell, have never worked on a big polished title like this before. (And that's after taking a quick glance of their extended catalogue under their last studio name) That's another point towards my 'suspicion' angle, unfortunately, because I also have an issue with primarily multiplayer games. It's always hard to know exactly how much of a player base something needs to sustain itself, but it's undeniable that whatever that threshold, maintaining interest is key and that's a struggle in a market full with competition. Even the 'dogfighting' genre has at least one high quality competitor right now with last year's 'Star Wars: Squadrons'. (Although that game does lean more towards the 'simulator' demographic whilst this seems somewhat closer to casual at a glance) I suppose it's a gamble, like all creative ventures are, but it's one that puts even me on edge as the consumer, for whatever that's worth.

What makes this one particularly curious, however, is that it's due to drop in April and is apparently going to launch as a free-to-play game; immediately opening itself up to as many people as possible. Of course, this promises a deluge of microtransaction content, but I don't think any studio in this day and age would be dense enough to make a pay-to-win platform, so maybe this 'Age of ashes' has a solid shot of things. Of course, that would rely as much on the gameplay as the sales model, and on that note I have to admit that there are some pretty creative classes being shown off already. The trailer for the beta has presented particular classes that can go invisible, track enemies and even place traps in the environment to really dominate the playspace. In concept alone this is a particularly high-level way of creating your multiplayer game as is places value in map knowledge layout and creating chokepoints, almost in the vein of what you see in those highly competitive tactical shooters like Counter Strike or Valorant. It actually bodes well.

As too, do the visuals, which I don't hate as much as I thought I would. I mean the dragons, sure they look awful. They lack the size, grace and nobility of traditional fantastical dragons and look overly streamlined to resemble more what one would call a Drake. (Perhaps that's an intentional design decision to differentiate from true dragons that are coming down the line; the trailer did seem to indicate that these classes were just the beginning.) However, the actual raw graphical prowess, alongside the flamboyant fictionalised-crusader aesthetic which accompanies this game is actually rather delightful. Not wholly unique, perhaps, but still appealing to look at. It's impressive, because the team would have been fully justified in ignoring all design outside of the focal dragons, but they obviously wanted to stamp some polish and design intent everywhere. And I can appreciate that.

The beta which is doing the rounds already comes with 3 gamemodes, I'm unclear whether this is the breadth of the game or just a chunk of it (I suspect, however, that even if it is only a chunk than it's the most prominent chunk) but what's on offer is interesting, regardless. There's a traditional deathmatch which has a bounty-hunter twist to it, wherein the more you kill the more valuable you become to get killed, nothing too out of the box but it does positively support the fast paced and aggressive dogfight gameplay. Then there's a last-one-standing mode, which creates a teambased one-life mode which I think will best suit this game and has the most solid chance of being a standout mode. (especially with the added feature of being able to revive fallen teammates by taking them back to base) And finally a relay dragon race wherein you have to fly a flag through hoops, presumably whilst others attempt to shoot you down and run their own loop race. I understand the idea behind that one, but CTF is notoriously hard to reiterate upon and at face value this iteration doesn't sound really all that fun. (But I'll still give it a shot when the game comes out.)

Keeping as open of a mind as possible, I do actually see some potential here, even if I don't understand why these sorts of games are popular. I've never understood the appeal of games in which you become your vehicle outside of the simulator games which dedicate everything to making that experience feel real. Century sort of embodies the wrong side of that argument for me, and though that alone would usually be enough to put me off, I must admit that the game doesn't look terrible from some of the gameplay and early impressions out there. And hey, if it's free then what is there to lose apart from spare time? And that stuff was spare anyway. I may be low-key placing the entire general failure of the dragon-rider subgenre on the back of this 'Century', but some fantasy-loving child within me won't let me use that as an excuse to leave this game alone. So a month from now I'll give it that shot, see if the product meets the promise.