GreedFall Previews, Interview

During Focus Home Interactive’s recent “What’s Next” event, a number of media outlets got a chance to see a hands-off demo of Spiders’ upcoming colonial-era RPG GreedFall that should be launching later this year. As a result, we can now check out their impressions that all seem to paint a fairly positive picture.

WCCFTech:

Your personalisation will be both in character development as well as the story. On the character front, the options are said to be extensive. The skill tree was shown during the hands-off demo and it was wide and sprawling, to say the least, with you having the ability to go down whatever path you would like, be this weapon skill related, abilities like lockpicking or science, even improving on your dialogue options. The latter of these will look to particularly influence the development of your story.

Especially so as a result of what was explained will be on offer within the continent of Teer Frade. This is a continent that is seemingly designed to be more open than any other Spiders game so far. You won’t find that each and every area is now segmented from the others, but the game will be considerably more open. The new continent is split into three different regions – with dungeons and such as those. These regions feature a city each and multiple outposts. The control of these outposts will vary from faction to faction, depending on your actions and your interactions with these factions.

PlayStation LifeStyle:

Overall, GreedFall looks to be an ambitious title, with a mix of many mechanics we’ve seen in popular fantasy RPGs. While it doesn’t seem to be doing anything too innovative, a healthy blend of these mechanics could work very well depending on the level of polish. As it stands, it still needs a bit of work, as the animations are a tad stiff and the visuals aren’t up to par with modern RPGs we’ve seen. But seeing as how GreedFall is still in development, there is a lot of hope that this could be one of the great games of 2019 (assuming it launches this year). What’s there is a great foundation, so I’m hopeful that more time will help it reach its full potential.

VG247:

At the preview, we see our hero attempt to rescue his cousin and the Governor of Teer Fradee, Constantine D’Orsay, who is being held in a tower after becoming a bit drunk and disorderly.

There are several ways we can go about rescuing him. If you have enough charisma, you can try and beguile the guards into setting him free. You could sneak your way in by either using a lockpick or stealing the key from the guard. There’s also the option to simply blow a hole in the wall and get him out that way, or you could just pay the man and be done with it.

The day and night cycle can influence which of these options is likely to be the most successful and it’s important to remember that, depending on how you want to build your character, not all of these options will be available.

And on top of that, you may also be interested in WCCFTech’s interview with Jehanne Rousseau, Spiders’ CEO and the lead writer on GreedFall. An excerpt:

Chris: What comes to mind, especially when you say this is the largest, that your previous titles could be quite segmented as you move from one area to the next. From what I’ve been shown, this is a considerably more open world?

Jehanne: So it’s not a completely open world. So the first city, Sérène, is the city with the tutorial and when you leave at the end of the tutorial, you won’t be able to come back.

Chris: Ahh, I understand. And on the continent you go to?

Jehanne: The island is cut into different big levels. It’s not a completely open world like, for example, The Witcher 3. But, the areas are huge and you can decide any time to travel through the island to explore. You’re not limited. The only thing that can stop you is a level of the creatures you will meet, we didn’t want to have level scaling so you can face monsters, say “oh my god” and run back.

Chris: [laughs] Excellent, so you can essentially go up to it and perish! That or run away crying.

Jehanne: We want this universe to be based on exploration, so it’s important to allow the player to explore the island and try to visit everywhere. You will probably be stopped after a while by the creatures and why not?