As the self-appointed Fox Mulder of games about kicking goblins down flights of stairs, I want to believe that fantasy hack ‘n’ slash Alkahest can revive the underappreciated swashbuckling brilliance of Dark Messiah: Might and Magic. The game debuted last year with a flashy announcement trailer that really sold me on the concept.
But as reported by Andy last year, the trailer also attracted scepticism because it used a mixture of in-game assets and prerendered animations, with the developer acknowledging that “some of the camera angles and animations have been crafted specifically for the trailer, for the sake of spectacle”.
As Andy mentioned at the time, game trailers that are either wholly or partly pre-rendered are commonplace, especially in the early stages of a game’s marketing. But developer Push On has since released a new teaser trailer that purportedly shows the game in action. Unfortunately, it looks very similar to the announcement trailer, which is causing another round of players to dismiss it as “a cinematic disguised as gameplay”.
The trailer, which is only a shade over forty seconds long, shows the player rushing toward a fortified structure partially built into a cliff-face, before hiding behind a shield that gets pierced by arrows. Sliding to close the last few yards, the player is launched into the air by a large crate landing on a cart he’s standing on. Then, in midair, the player grabs a flying barrel and throws it into an enemy, before engaging in some slick sword-fighting with a couple of goblins.
It’s a flashy trailer, with virtually seamless combat animations and character transitions. But it’s that seamlessness which has triggered the debate in the trailer’s comments on YouTube. “I hope people can recognize that this wasn’t ‘gameplay’. It’s in-engine, and what was done might be what you can do in game, but this was preprogrammed. No one ‘did’ this with a controller. Still looks cool though,” writes user TheTippsAttack.
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However, adarwinterdror7245 disagrees, saying “the animations here look like gameplay animations with small slips and cuts typical when transitioning from one animation to the other”.
Having now watched the trailer far too many times, I’m inclined to agree with adar. While the trailer is close to the quality of the original, with the midair barrel catch in particular making me question whether the animations were pre-rendered, the actual combat looks real-time to me. It isn’t easy to tell, because there are a lot of canned animations within the system, like the blade-lock between the player and the goblin. But the way the player slices at the goblin before sticking it with his sword, the movements between enemies, and the multiple kicks to the body he perform all seem like they’re happening dynamically.
Putting aside these arguments, the abilities depicted in the trailer are hugely exciting. Your character appears to have an unseen archer sidekick who can be signalled to pepper enemies with arrows, which is a great way to dynamically create a sense of coordinated action. I’m also a big fan of the way your shield splinters and deforms under fire. I hope the kick has a touch more oomph in the final version though. I want to send those gobbos flying.
In any case, I don’t think this is a The Day Before situation, where all these flashy trailers are a front for a much lower-quality game. On top of my sense that the trailer is indeed gameplay, Alkahest has a publisher now—HypeTrain Digital—whose other signed games include Voidtrain, Breathedge, and the upcoming Pathologic 3.
Alongside the combat, Alkahest’s Steam page says it will feature an alchemy system, letting you craft magical potions and other concoctions. I hope one of these is a slippery ice throwable, as making orcs slide off cliffs was my second favourite thing to do in Dark Messiah after booting them into walls of spikes. There’s no release date for Alkahest yet, but frankly, I’m happy for Push On to take as long as it needs to make this the spiritual successor Dark Messiah deserves.
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