Hunted: The Demon’s Forge Previews

We’re going to charge into the 4th of July weekend with three more E3-based previews of inXile Entertainment’s Hunted: The Demon’s Forge.

MMORPG.com:

More and more fantasy games are getting away from the epic style story lines. With Dragon Age giving the character a more neutral role, Grey Wardens, we are seeing a strong trend towards darker fantasy settings. Still with a large amount of anime influence in games, there are plenty of bright and happy fantasy lands to run around in. Hunted sets the world in dark fantasy with a Robert E. Howard influence. Not only are the two main character mercenaries, they are also ruthless killers and wear the hero role very lightly. This type of fantasy especially in RPGs always gives the player more choices in terms of what a character would do. You are not forced to play the D&D paladin during every encounter.

The demo at E3 we saw had the pair fighting a group of skeletons in some old ruins. As mentioned the game combat moves fast and if you do not have another person to do the co-op play with, you can always run it single player and switch between the two characters depending on who you like to play more. The controls worked well and targeting was easy to get a handle on. FPS players will have no problems mastering the bow. Melee works well too and gives you some great combo moves to pull off when dropping opponents to the dust.

PALGN:

As such, most of the game seems to revolve around the two differing characters, their shapes and their abilities. Also, Hunted controls a lot like a third person shooter, rather than a traditional RPG, particularly with the use of cover and the bow. At one point of our demo, we came across a desolate courtyard. As we worked through it, we were set upon by a number of skeleton warriors. The developer who was demonstrating the game to us played as Caddoc, while we got to take E’lara. As Caddoc moved through the enemies in front of us, we took E’lara to cover to pick off enemies from a distance.

As we moved forward, another skeleton warrior popped out from the end and manned a cannon. Caddoc cast a protection spell on us, so that we could move into a covered vantage point that would allow us to snipe the cannon skeleton from behind. Caddoc would continue to keep enemies off us, and after the successful snipe, we went and manned the cannon ourselves. This was just one scenario that we got to see, so hopefully the rest of the game will follow in a similar manner and really force the players to work as a team.

And AggroGamer:

Players will take on the roles of two characters, E’lara the seductive Huntress, and Caddoc the smash and grab warrior. E’lara can also use swords and Caddoc has some ranged attacks, but not playing to the character’s strengths, will make short order of your dynamic duo. Co-op play is the name of this game, players will work together to solve puzzles, and destroy any enemy in their path. The heavy handed teamwork functionality makes this game fun and challenging, need to smash something to progress, leave it up to Caddoc, have to hit a switch from 100 yards away, E’Lara is your girl. Hunted can be played by one player, with an AI controlled partner, but this game is built around Co-op play.

Bethesda is really pushing the Co-Op at a distance feature, where players can perform co-op kill moves, special attacks, and from anywhere on the screen heal each other. If you get tired of playing E’lara and want to play Caddoc, there are nodes throughout the game that players can switch on the fly.