The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
It doesn't take all that much to win over my interest with a new game announcement, I'm a simple creature who likes shiny things afterall and new games tend to be pretty darn shiny. You could literally throw a splash screen at me and I'd at least ooh and ahh for a few seconds before clicking off and never thinking about it again for as long as I live. The trick, as is the case with anyone, comes in keeping my attention when the wind changes and not melting into the deluge of other games out being flung out there every single day. Sell yourself a little bit, let me see that ever-important USP. Well, for 'Lies of P' getting me through the door was as simple as having a title card written with such overly extravagant calligraphic zeal that I literally couldn't read it. (What is that: "Pies of 6"?) And once the hook was in and line pulled taut, the sinker was when I robbed myself the satisfaction of trying to figure out what this was about (I wouldn't have figured it out anyway, the trailer was vague) and read down in the description. Now I have to find out what becomes of this game. But I'm jumping a bit ahead with the narrative.
So you've got yourself a Dark Souls trailer set in a steampunkian Londonium-esque town that almost resembles Dunwall from a certain couple of angles. Fair enough, so far so Bloodbourne, honestly if you told me this was some sort of late-life expansion coming towards that classic I'd believe you with everything that I'm seeing. Whilst perhaps not coming across as the most stylistically unique prospect that the world has ever seen, the archetype the team chose from their imaginarium conceptual-space is already distinct enough to secure a certain type of audience for theme alone. It's all tophats, clockwork machines and corpses full of rats. (Actually this might just be London present day with that description) Oh, and there's some old looking man dragging a briefcase through the city like one of the Pilgrims of Londor from Dark Souls. See, this game is practically stealing iconic imagery so far, there's no way it couldn't get my attention someway. And the trailer ends on a dapper looking gentlemen with a robotic hand right out of Sekiro, if anyone was playing Souls bingo they'd be winning the jackpot right about now. But I'm still not sure what's particularly unique about anything I've seen here. Let me look in the description. 'Souls Like game', duh, ''PS5, Series X, PC", at least it's headed for everybody, "Inspired by the classic story of Pinocchio". Huh.
I didn't have to look far into reactions before I saw excited comparisons to another game which I suppose was inevitable. "Isn't this just like American Mcgee's Alice?" (Still waiting on that third entry that you're never gonna make, guys. I need to know if Alice ever puts herself back together again, give me that closure!) Right away I have to put my foot down and insist that despite the surface level interpretation of 'two games based on fairy tails with a dark turn to them' that's not exactly the most perfect comparison. American Mcgee's Alice springboards off a unique and bizarre world, leaning on it's mysterious intangibility and extrapolating that into a sinister blossom of corruption, madness and total instability. This game is taking a pretty straightforward tale, with some wierdness perhaps but overall relatively sensible, and trying to make that the battleground for an action adventure Bloodborne clone. I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm just saying that it's a different kettle of fish to Alice.
But sure, I'll bite; what exactly have you done to Pinocchio to make him fit inside a Bloodbourne shaped box? Well according to the Steam page you are thrown into the City of Krat; a place "Overwhelmed by madness and bloodlust", with naught but a single note: "Bearer of the curse... Seek larger Souls- Seek the king- lest this land swallow you whole, as it has so many others." Oh wait, wrong game. It actually just says "Find Mr. Geppetto. He's here in the city." So if that's not confirmation that Geppetto is assuming the role of Gwyn lord of Cinder for this game I don't know what is. ('Plin plong plin' incoming) You are tasked with being a puppet mechanoid slicing his way through this fallen city all for the hopes of becoming Human, an ultimately fruitlessly gilded cage of-a-goal considering how depressed most of humanity is. Wait a second- I just realised that's the exact same goal of The Bearer of the Curse from Dark Souls II. Pinocchio better be careful he doesn't slip up and accidentally end up becoming a time-travelling warrior-king with a half-dragon handmaiden. (Wow, Dark Souls II's weirdness hits me anew every damn day)
As much as I mock, however, I will admit that some of the Steam bullet points do sound intriguing. One such being these 'lying quests' that are somehow both procedurally generated and react to how you 'lie', whatever that combination of buzz-concepts means in action. But more importantly these quests will have a knock on effect on the ending of the game, which is a switch up from more traditional Souls-likes that usually just spring an ending choice on you two seconds before the credits. (Yes, Dark Souls 3's took considerably more effort. I'm well aware of that) I do think it odd, however, that this game appears to be championing lying when the traditional Pinocchio tale did seem to lean in the exact opposite direction- but this is 'inspired by', isn't it? Let them deviate, who cares... There's also a limb swap-out system which could prove for some ultimately transformative player builds depending on how the team realise it, and a weapon-making system which could be the absolute worst if it becomes a resource grind like 90% of all gaming weapon-making systems are. (They always sound so cool and then proceed to let me down.)
I'm not going to continue obfuscating facts here... Lies of P sort of already has me just the tiniest bit hyped out the gate. Of course, we haven't seen any gameplay as this was just a barebones reveal, but Souls-likes are my weakspot; I always end up salivating after them. I've pointed out all the similarities this concept shares with it's contemporaries, but to be honest I love all those games anyway so sharing their visage isn't really a negative for me at the end of the day. I even kind of like the idea of twisting a children's fairytale on it's head, it appeals to my predilection towards the corrupt perfectly. My only real reservation would be that the Korean studio behind this, Round8, have only really been known for retooling a failed MMO called Bless; a retooling that's still yet to come out and so could very well still be trash. They haven't exactly proven themselves, but they haven't necessarily had an opportunity to and that proving could very well start today. So well done, Round8, you've got me invested to at least check you out for gameplay in a year or two's time, here's hoping you don't end up pulling a CDPR, eh.
No comments:
Post a Comment