Blades of Fire Is a Narrative-Driven Action Adventure That Lets Players Choose How Much Dialogue an NPC Shares in Conversations

Blades of Fire is an upcoming game that allows players to seek out the story instead of it being force-fed with every encounter. Blades of Fire is being developed by MercurySteam (Metroid Dread, Spacelords) and published by 505 Games (Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Ghostrunner 1 & 2, Death Stranding) for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S with a soundtrack composed by awarding-winning Óscar Araujo (Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 1 & 2, Neon Flesh, The Girl from Mars). While the game will feature many mechanics familiar to seasoned RPG players such as the ability to craft weapons, gather resources which affect a weapon’s charastics, along with character skill progression, the developers have focused on its story and characters to provide a narative-driven experience where the players can choose how in-dept conversations with NPC’s get.

Description (per official game site):

“Introducing Blades of Fire, an all-new action adventure that takes you across a beautiful world full of uncertainty and challenge. You take on the role of Aran de Lira, firstborn of the King’s Ward. The newly crowned Queen Nerea has cast a powerful spell that turns steel into stone and only her arms of abominations wield the divine metal against which other blades shatter…”

MercurySteam co-founder and game director Enric Alvarez explained covered multiple topics in an interview with GameReactor spanning from gameplay mechanics, but also how the developer purposely focused on story and characters. Of course, hack-n-slash can be enough for some games but a deeper lever of immersion can only occur if a game has a good story and characters, “It might not look like, because of the freedom the game gives you, but it’s a strongly narrative-driven game, and characters are the most important thing.” said Alvarez.

“We don’t have, say, a big narrator going, this is what this is, this is what that is.”

-Enric Alvarez

Enric adds that when a player engages in conversation with an NPC, they will have the option of choosing the extent of dialogue the NPC shares. Essentially, there will be two layers of conversation available with one being more basic where the NPC shares basic info regarding their current mission and not much else. The second layer will feature a more detailed dialogue, but players will have the choice to interrupt the NPC to focus on more specific topics.

“In this game, most of the story doesn’t come for you.
You have to go for it.
You have to actively pursue wanting to know more.
And you’ll find quite crazy characters in this game.”

-Enric Alvarez

Blades of Fire will launch on May 22 via Xbox and PlayStation storefronts but will, at first, be an Epic Games Store exclusive for PC at $59.99 (currently 10% off for $53.99).

Specifications:

• Minimum Specifications:
  • OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 10
  • PROCESSOR: Intel Core i7-11700KF or AMD Ryzen 5800X
  • MEMORY: 16GB RAM
  • GRAPHICS: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070, 8GB or AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT, 6GB
  • DETAILS: High 1080p FSR Performance @ 60 FPS
• Recommended Specifications:
  • OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 10
  • PROCESSOR: Intel Core i7-11700KF or AMD Ryzen 5800X
  • MEMORY: 16GB RAM
  • GRAPHICS: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, 11GB or AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT, 12GB
  • DETAILS: High 1440p FSR Balanced @ 60 FPS
• Recommended 4K Specifications:
  • OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 10
  • PROCESSOR: Intel Core i7-11700KF or AMD Ryzen 5800X
  • MEMORY: 16GB RAM
  • GRAPHICS: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER, 12GB or AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, 16GB
  • DETAILS: High 2160p FSR Balanced @ 60 FPS
• Ultra Specifications:
  • OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 10
  • PROCESSOR: Intel Core i7-13600K or AMD Ryzen 7600X
  • MEMORY: 16GB RAM
  • GRAPHICS: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080, 16GB or AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, 24GB
  • DETAILS: Ultra 2160p FSR Quality @ 60 FPS

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