Ahead of its reveal, we had the chance to get an early look at The God Slayer, a new single player RPG from the team behind the “My Time At” series, and it’s looking rather good so far.
Zifei Wu, Creative Director and Founder of Pathea Games was keen to stress via his words and presentation that this “Asian Steampunk open world RPG” is “not a Soulslike”, and is coming to Xbox Series of consoles, PC, PS5, and potentially future consoles as well. Development started around three years ago, with the team wanting to make something bigger than the My Time At series, saying that it wanted to do something that “pushed the boundaries for our studio”.
And indeed, The God Slayer certainly looks like it’ll be doing that. Here the team at Pathea is taking a leaf out of the God of War book, with large scale boss fights being a key pillar. The studio says it wants these boss battles to be memorable, which ties into the story and lore of what’s happened.
The “celestials” (or Gods to you and I) created the human world, and made it so that people cultivate “Qi” during their lifetimes. When they pass away, this Qi is transferred over to the Celestial world, giving these Gods eternal life and great power. However, some humans worked out how to use it for themselves, manifesting into elemental powers (fire, water, earth, metal, wood). These people are called Elemancers.
This all angered the Celestials, so they attacked the strongest kingdom (Zhou Kingdom), whereby the King and Elemancers were hunted down, and this day became known as the “God Fall”. This God Fall is when the protagonist of The God Slayer lost his family, and thus the quest to save and avenge his people begins.
The team says the setting is fictional and based on Chinese culture. Aesthetics of the Ming Dynasty are present, with the question asked: what would happen if Steam tech was invented and humans could use Qi to control elements.
Ultimately this presents itself in gameplay as a malleable experience. The team compared the elemental combat as being similar to The Last Airbender, explaining that different elements interact with one another. If you use ice followed by fire, it’ll melt. Pathea refers to this as “DIY Gameplay”, and wants players to work out how to take advantage of it.
While there’s a long way to go (I was told the team is actively making the seven chapters now, but that if things go well, we should know a release date or window some time next year), the combat already looks interesting. It’s a pretty game and it’s full of contextual elements in the open world.
For example, during a rooftop chase you can rip up parts of the roof tiles and use them defensively and offensively. There might be objects you can use mid-chase, though these contextual elements are “designed”, in that not everything is usable. Your usage of these environmental ideas will go towards the nearest enemy, and there are much bigger options available such as pulling water towers down to create a river-like flow, which you can of course then freeze with your powers.
The face buttons are how you’ll use these elements, though the wood element is a passive power (which will get you stat upgrades). Trigger buttons are planned to change between the elements, and it sounds as though they’ll have their own unique skill trees as you progress. Pathea was keen to stress that you won’t be punished for button mashing, and even if you decide for some reason to use water abilities against a water-boss, you can come out victorious, but it’ll of course be harder. Water is, by the way, more for “control”, while Earth is a slower power, more aimed at defending (a barrier/shield for example), and you’ll start with fire, which also doubles as a movement ability.
Enemies have powers too, and you will gradually seemingly have to combine powers cleverly, and perhaps intuitively to win out. We got to see a water attack that created a whirlwind, dragging a host of enemies together. The person playing then froze them in place, and followed up with a massive rock attack. It looks cool in motion, and if controlling it feels good, this could well be a winner for Pathea.
It’s all running on Unreal 5, and the studio says that at the moment the map is 5km by 5km, though it’s not making an empty world here. The developer wants things to happen when moving from point to point, and therefore will “optimise the map for story”. On that note, the story and world allows you to make boss battles easier if you spend time on it. An example shown was that you can create a fire that will draw enemies away from a boss arena, making it easier to tackle the main bad-guy, and you can even poison the boss ahead of your meeting, giving them a smaller health pool to draw from. You will decide the fate of characters, and people will die through choices and actions, too.
The God Slayer is already showing promise, and despite being quite a way off, it’s firmly on my radar. I adore a deep RPG and when married with exciting combat, it’s even better. Fingers crossed Pathea is onto something here, because what I’ve seen so far, looks very interesting indeed.
The God Slayer is coming to PC, Xbox, and PlayStation.
