Hellraid Moved to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, New Trailer

Developer Techland has announced that their first-person fantasy hack’n’slash Hellraid has been moved to the latest version of their engine, and to the latest consoles released, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, while Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 development has been abandoned. That said, nothing has changed for PC players, as the game would have been published on PC before and will still be published on PC now. In addition to the engine change, it looks like Techland is planning to take advantage of Steam’s Early Access program, with a first release planned for this Fall. But first, here’s the new trailer:

Then the press release:

Hellraid Goes Next-Gen with Techland’s Chrome Engine 6 and Tons of New Gameplay Features

Techland officially announces that its upcoming dark fantasy game will run on a new engine, while the game itself went through an overhaul and is now heading to next-gen consoles alongside the PC release, with Steam Early Access planned for autumn.

Since its reveal last year, Hellraid has expanded and evolved thanks to the developers’ experience and players’ feedback. While the game will remain faithful to its first-person co-op slasher gameplay, Techland has decided to implement new features and technology, and is now ready to announce them and show it all off in a brand new trailer.

Hellraid will offer three different game modes. In the Story Mode, players will explore the world and try to repel forces of Hell. The highly-replayable Mission Mode will put more focus on arcade-style fun of climbing up leaderboards, creating the longest combos and beating high scores, while the completely new Arena Mode will offer survival gameplay with waves of deadly demonic hordes to fend off. All these modes will be available in both single-player and 2-4 players co-op.

Players will be able to create and customize their characters with armor, clothes, and accessories such as amulets. Thanks to a new class-free skill tree, they will develop a demon slayer perfectly suited to their play style by combining various active and passive abilities divided into intertwined paths of combat, magic and agility.

Techland has also improved the game’s combat system, which now features one- and two-handed melee weapons, shields, magic staves and ranged weapons. With diverse fighting styles, counter-attacks, parrying and dashing abilities, the melee combat in Hellraid becomes even more complex and immersive. Additionally, magic will offer a wide and diverse selection of offensive, defensive and healing spells.

The combat experience is furthermore enhanced by weapon crafting, interactive environments, destructible objects and environmental traps, as well as challenging and adaptive enemy AI. The game is currently undergoing a transition to the Chrome Engine 6, the latest version of Techland’s proprietary technology, which is also used by the next-gen zombie survival horror, Dying Light. Thanks to this technology, Hellraid will benefit from a new physics-based lighting system, more detailed locations and character models, complex animations, advanced particle effects, and state-of-the-art AI systems.

With new gameplay features and technology, Hellraid moves from past-gen consoles to the next generation with the announcement of PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions coming in 2015. Hellraid will also receive a Steam Early Access release in autumn 2014, which will be regularly updated based on players’ feedback until the final version is launched.

For more information visit hellraid.com and like the game at facebook.com/hellraidgame. e.

In case you want even more info, there’s also an interview over at VG247. Here’s a snippet:

(Basically, we’ve built a new melee and magic combat system from scratch, and it’s really changed how the game is played and what experience you get,) Kruczkiewicz explains. (Shifting from four character classes to one universal class that has access to all previously class-specific skills was also a major decision.

(We believe it’s a good one too, because players will be free to adapt the character to the play-style of their preference. A lot of people playtesting Hellraid weren’t satisfied that they couldn’t combine, for example, the Barbarian’s battle strength and two-handed axes with the Mage’s resistance and powerful spells or the Rogue’s agility and crossbows. Well, now they can combine them however they like.)

It might not sound like the biggest of changes on paper, but given that Hellraid is a first-person dungeon explorer with an emphasis on combat, the way your hero acts in battle is incredibly important. You’re going to be facing a wide range of demonic creatures and mystical rogues within the dank bowels of each dungeon, so you need to have a class load-out tailored to meet all challenges.

Inspired by Dead Island’s vast weapon-crafting options, Hellraid also features an enhancement system that sees players imbuing their weapon with a variety of items and scrolls found in the game. Tantalisingly, Kruczkiewicz adds, (It’s a system similar to Dead Island to a certain degree, but more complex and varied.)