Yesterday’s last appointment was with Hellraid, a self-described “first person co-op slasher”, which, y’know, is pretty obvious if you watched the trailer. I sat in a small theater room with five others, and it was your typical demo presentation; one person played, another narrated.
So, uh, hey. Before I get too far in I just gotta say I am SO EFFIN’ EXCITED for Hellraid. Dark medieval settings and tones are 100% my jam, and I love the first person view as it allows me to gaze upon ALL OF THE THINGS with detail and ummmffff immersion to the max. And it looked like there was a fair amount of detail thrown in — tables lining corridors were littered with goblets and other items you’d expect to see. Potions were found in bookcases, weapons were found in sarcophagi (God I love that word) which (YAY) means exploration is a must.
Maps will be littered with randomly generated items, weapons, armor, etc. But if looting isn’t your thing (FOR SHAME) you’ll find coins you can accrue to buy weapons and armor from the blacksmith. I assume the blacksmith will also repair your items, as I noticed a percentage damage counter underneath the sword during a quick menu tour. But anyway, upon approaching an item you’ll see its damage/armor, stats and its selling price pop up on-screen, so you won’t need to check your main menu for the deets. There also appears to be a convenient weapon/armor comparison system as well. (Which is a MUST for any game like this, so YAY!)
Combat is pretty straight forward, with two types of whackin’: light and heavy. If you’re a heavy hitter be prepared to wait anywhere from one to five seconds-ish for the necessary windups. And of course there’s shield bashing, blocking, parrying, dodging, etc.
Speaking of — during battle the character seamlessly switch between a sword and shield combo to an electric staff with the press of a button. That made me wonder about character classes, as a warrior typically can’t use magic, right? Techland later confirmed you won’t be able to decide or change your character class. My guess is that the “class” of our default character is a blank slate, and you’ll be able to customize him/her (?) as you see fit via the skill trees. Unfortunately they didn’t show us these. But you can change your clothes!
While the map we were shown (a dungeon) was gorgeous, I would have liked to have seen some some diversity, specifically a town area. (I mean, I assume towns are things that exists if there’s a story AND you can buy stuff, but he never mentioned them.) He did say, however, there were a variety of maps; outdoor areas, dungeons, castles, prisons, etc.
We also weren’t shown the crafting system or told much of anything about it, so I can’t really talk about it because I don’t know anything about it and this is just sentence filler so the page appears to be a bit more balanced ALRIGHT NEXT PARAGRAPH.
I definitely wish we were shown a bit more (different maps, the weapon crafting system, skill trees, etc.) I’m still SO very excited for Hellraid. In fact, it exceeded my expectations. I thought Hellraid was going to be a simple Hack ‘n Slash dungeon crawler — but it sounds like it has much more to offer. It’s also worth noting the game will release for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC. The trailer is not correct-o.
I DON’T WANNA WAIT UNTIL 2015. AJDKAFJDKFJADLFJAKL
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