Gord

If you go to the woods today, you'd better have gone in disguise!

Have you ever wondered what happens to those who up and leave storied studios like CDPR behind? I often do, even more so since the news dropped of the Witcher 3's game director leaving just the other day. I mean, where exactly do you go from there? It's got to be quite the CV bolster, having a Witcher Game or a GTA or a Fallout under your belt. You'd have to imagine that's the sort of the threshold where people come and seek you out for a position. (Imagine an employment world working like that! >laughing whilst crying on the inside<) But at that point the entire world must be one's oyster, the right mindset could use that as a springboard to go just about anywhere, start anything, and fallback on that legacy to legitimise it. Point in case, how about this new game 'Gord' that's floating around with the eye-brow raising tag "by Ex CDPR developers".

But what is it about the actual game itself that earns the attention it receives? Well, that's the fact that Gord is a medieval town builder/tactical game set in an amalgamation world between Dark Fantasy and, of course, Slavic Folklore. (There's the Witcher influence!) I don't know exactly what it is about town builder and city builder games that wins such a large audience, myself included, but I think it comes from this sense of playing god in the lives of mere mortals. Taking control of just about everything and seeing what you can do even when the forces of the world try to stop you. Personally I remember first feeling that allure when I came across From Dust, a game in which you literally take on the role of some elemental aspect-god worshipped by tribes as you attempt to solve their problems by manipulating the very elements as a floating ball of divine displacement. Town builders in particular scale down that omnipotencey into assuming a more mundane role, like the unchallenged town alderman or something, but for some genres and game modes, the more struggles and hurdles you have to endure to get what you want, the more exciting, interesting and ultimately rewarding the final product will be.

So what exactly does a Dark Fantasy town building game look like? Well for this Studio, dubbed Covenant.Dev, it basically looks identical to what The Witcher was going for. It's a European medieval world, complete with all the mud, grime and poverty that the Dark Ages are characterised by, beset with horrific, and often disgusting, monsters that look like they belong to some sort of hellish fantasy world just to make their lives all that worse. The result is this world where ordinary farmers and cattlehands get devoured by giant spiders and mutant tree monster things; all because there's no dashing paladins with gleaming silver armour and a party of funny diverse murderhobos to save the world. What makes things even more dire, is this world doesn't even have one cat-eyed silver-maned Geralt to slay the beasties, folk are just left to be the harvest for endless monstrous demons. What a genuinely horrific existence where it's actually confusing to understand how humanity is still a player in this world space. It's basically a world where humans aren't the top of the foodchain, but still sort of act like they are, which you thought would have led to the extinction of the entire race by now. (Kind of like Attack of Titan's Worldbuiling, there's a glimmer of 'something logically doesn't add up here')

Gord, however, won't be cursing us by trying to slap players into the role of sheep farmers who get their cattle nicked by goat demons every Wednesday. No, instead we assume the role of The Tribe of the Dawn as they embark on some sort of journey/suicide venture into the forbidden lands. A premise which implies, at least, that these folk know what they're doing and won't be entirely helpless when the multiheaded basilisk chicken comes to stomp on their houses. (Just mostly helpless.) You'll be attempting to erect a sustainable (to a certain degree, I suspect) and faithful society in hostile lands ruled by the unnatural, hostile enemy tribes and just general magical F***-you energies. (I believe in the gaming world we refer to such energies as; RNGesus)

An aspect that I like about what's being promised here is the level of attachment people will be able to get with their villagers, which is already going to be inevitable in a town building sim as small scale as this one. Often in games like these, such as Tropico or Sim City, you're dealing with huge populations to the point where individuals are either not considered or are reduced down to a few random selected points on a spreadsheet that doesn't actually translate to anything in the real game. When dealing with smaller scales like this game does, however, there comes the opportunity to really get to know each and every person you're dealing with and come to like or detest them. (Similar to the dynamic in RimWorld) Additionally, in a world that I assume to be as cutthroat as possible, the potential to lose these dwellers will likely weigh heavily on the mind; creating that X-Com paranoia which ya'll should know I crave by this point.

One way in which Gord will apparently feed off this concept (aside from with stats related to town building exercises, I assume) is with AI generated side quests that will send folk off into the wilderness to complete tasks, banish monsters and generally work towards keeping the town going. According to the steam page this will shape their 'personalities', which might be as shallow as affecting the outcome of certain events (do they kill the spider or become it's chewtoy?) or could be as involved as effecting their daily routines in and out of the town, I'll be curious to see and find out which. In a similar vein, and very much fitting for this world they've crafted, the game also apparently touts a 'burden' and 'sanity' system which will serve as a the incentive to keep the city running sensibly I assume, but has the potential to also be a source of some great RP breakdown moments. I'd love to see somesort of sceanrio where someone loses their sanity and attacks other villagers, spreading false panic of some foreign agent inside the community and kicking off a whole chain of fires for the player to smother out. All of that is just me extrapolating, but it bears food for thought.

Finally, and in adhering to another staple of this genre, Gord will offer different scenarios for the player to choose through that will feed into the replayability loop of the game, and from the look of the description it seems like these will both be premade scenarios and player built ones. Where things get interesting to me, however, is when the option is raised to decide one's primary object; which indicates that there'll be several large goals to work towards in this game. Now of course that could be anything, from achieving a certain level of daily consistent faith to beating a certain questline, but I'd like to believe there could be some custom storylines built to banish some curse from the woods, or recover some lost and trapped soul from the dark. Yet even if things don't go that deep, you'll still be able to tailor an experience to be as entertaining or frustrating as you wish, and for someone as garbage at strategy games as I am that is a lifesaver. (Also, I like the idea of being able to choose the playable environment. Make one a snow map and I'm sold. Love me a snow map.)

Regardless of sharing a phonetic name with indisputably the most boring fruit, Gord promises a surprisingly meaty and dark twist on the town building genre of games that I didn't realise I needed in my life. I always love the thrill of overcoming a wall of 'insurmountable odds' and sticking your pig farmers in hellish landscape of inescapable death is certainly pretty darn insurmountable at first glance. Though things are somewhat rough currently at reveal, I simply adore the aesthetically grim and muted choices of the game that reinforces the concept and the fact that we've actually got 3d models and animations for a town builder such as this when I'd imagine most developers with a similar idea would be forced to settle for 2d images; I guess that just goes to show the skill-gate of talented ex-CDPR developers. I wonder if now we'll see more cool smaller projects trickle out of the wound Cyberpunk gouged from that studio? (If so, then it's not all a loss, eh?)