Lies of P: Looking as good as ever

 So how is Monstro going to translate into this world? It's going to be horrifying. Isn't it?

I don't even know why I call this a 'gaming blog', it should just be a 'souls-like' blog for the amount of times I find ways to wind out paragraphs about various entropic, depressing worldscapes littered with former men now turned beasts. I'm going to actually have to get around to finishing Lords of the Fallen in order to talk about that next. (Dear god, don't make me. I couldn't stand going across the same area for the third time in a row.) Everytime I think "It's high time you put down that genre for a little bit and move onto literally anything else", whoops, a new trailer for that one game I really liked the look of flies out of nowhere. So here we are again, with actual gameplay this time for Lies of P. Which, just for the sake of those who might have been absent for the reveal, refers to the story of Pinocchio. Yes, I'm intrigued too. I wonder what grows longer in this adaptation? (Probably nothing, the nose thing was a short bit of the source material that Disney stretched into the entire moral of the movie.) 

We all know the bare basic ingredients that smash together in order to make our most favourite Soulslikes; a typically weighty approach to combat, unforgiving bosses, a tendency towards Dark Fantasy worlds because that sort of setting slides neatly up alongside this sort of challenge. What what is it about the Lies of P that sets it apart from a lot of the other games that have caught the Soulslike bug? Well, apart from the fact it's set to star a dark fantasy version of freakin' Pinocchio, the game proposes a clockwork word for players whereupon enemies seem to be almost all jerky-movement, wind-up powered, Victorian-era, mechanisms that bring to mind fond memories of game worlds like Bioshock Infinite and that stock of creativity. It's a small change to the artistic approach, but it does open up a whole new world of possibility with enemy and boss designs, and perhaps even some creative boss mechanics involving messing with clockwork mechanisms. I'm speculating a little but all of this makes for fertile ground, and that inspires me.

Lies of P takes us to the fictional city of Krat and places us, as the boy wonder himself, on the path to find our 'father' Geppetto who has called out to us and whom I suspect to be either the final boss or at least the prelude to some version of the Blue fairy as the final boss. (Yes, former safe mother figure twisted into vile, destructive caricature; I can't imagine a Souls-like not shooting for that) What follows seems to be a journey across an industrial era cityscape wherein the organic citizens have been exorcized from the populace and all that's left seem to be these, perhaps former service robots, gone brutally rogue. (At least, I think the human's are gone, judging from the one man we see hung from his feet and disembowelled from the trailer) The jittery, jerky movements of these creatures remind me a little bit of the animatronics from later Five nights at Freddy's games, and it makes me wonder if the developers are going to take advantage of that and have some light horror elements based around their animacy. Perhaps a show room floor full of seemingly inactive robots that displace themselves when the player isn't looking, get creative with it.

Our Napoleonic Pinocchio differs from your typical soulslike protagonist and not just because of their fancy dress sense. They have a clearly defined place in this world and a relationship to it's people, there doesn't yet appear to be this leaning into his diminutive place within the ecosystem of Krat, and most importantly of all, from everything we've see it would appear that our character only seems to dabble with finesse-based weaponry. Now this could be a misnomer and the full game has it's far share of clunky heavy weapons too, (There was one huge sawblade weapon which could swing either way) but right now I've noticed there's a lot of rapiers, scimitars, and other tools that aid a faster, lighter combat then one would typically expect in this genre, and that pans out against the gameplay that we see in this early peek.

Our action portions here have a speed and swing to them that almost looks akin to a pared back hack'n'slash game at times, even going so far as to give our character a full parry move that seems to be activated by triggering a guard at the right time, rather than by purposely leaving oneself open with a stupid slapping motion. (Always thought Dark Souls' version of 'parrying' was conceptually bizarre) Another example of this fast-action comes from a little clip where we see P running around rooftops across from a gun wielder, only to shoot some sort of hook out and drag that enemy across a roof towards them, sort of like Nero's devil bringer from DMC 5. Although, to be fair, that also has similarities to Sekrio, as does the parrying system and the lighter feel in general, which leads me to believe that particular Souls game would have been a stronger inspiration than the others here. (Although the visual style is obviously Bloodborne-esque)

What we've had a lack of so-far of these trailers, and given their importance to this style of game it really does stand out, is bosses. So far we've only seen one for certain in this trailer and perhaps a quick glance at another. (Although that animatronic Bobby police-man could easily have been just another really big enemy) I hope there's effort being put into their designs beyond just making them a bigger damage dealer with more health, because I really do think some ingenuity could slip in and make this one of the most creative boss-wielding Soulslikes with the right care. That which we have seen however, which doesn't include any boss combat whatsoever, does have a visual motif to it that a wild thought of mine immediately compared to Nier Automata, from the scavenged, mismatched but graceful look to him. Should this boss match any of the grandeur of Simone, I would be simply ecstatic. 

Of course I do have my concerns going forward, which is natural when we're talking about a genre that I am this deeply engrained with. And, rather bizarrely considering everything I have praised so far, it comes from the actual enemy design. (I know; I'm a man at war with himself.) They look good, great even, but they just don't scream 'Souls' to me just yet. And yes, that could easily come from the fact that we haven't had a clockwork themed iteration of this genre just yet, granted, but I think there's this lack of utter surreal which most every souls covets. From every descriptor I just provided, you could ignore all screenshots, not watch the footage, and still have a decent idea of what this game looks like and the beings that inhabit the world. That's not because of some stellar descriptive skills on my end, but simply because this game looks exactly as the premise implies it would look, which isn't to say that it isn't creative, but just that we haven't seen any artistic risks as of yet, which is a hallmark of the best this genre has to offer that makes me feel somewhat empty without. (Heck, that one boss from the Elden Ring footage was a freak with-like, several dozen limbs and appendages; you can make things that weird looking easily with a modular clockwork aesthetic, we just haven't had that demonstrated yet.)

At the end of the day I can't ride anything I've seen too hard, though. As I said, I'm just really into these sorts of games so I tend to nitpick and deep dive, but outside of pulling hairs I have to say that this trailer looked truly fantastic. As good as a game like this could feasibly look, in movement, presentation and overall style. So I am very much pleased with what I'm seeing and can feel myself approaching that all-consuming thirst to dive into everything this game has to offer. But I'm staying reserved for the thing to be made at the very least, because I see the inkling of something very special and that should not, can not, and will not be rushed. And with all those talks about a subtle morality system and the possibility of multiple endings; well I'm just a kid in a candy store right now and I'm in incredibly dangerous territory to getting a cavity.