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.
-Enric Alvarez
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.”
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
Discussion (10 replies)
Join Discussion →I play single player games FOR the story. The world matters to me in a good game. Sometimes the narrative is what makes the game for me. Then again I doubt I'm part of the demographic for 'blades of fire'.
I play for story as well but the narration must have a certain quality level both in its delivery and content. I get burned out quickly when each new character I meet immediately goes off about what their 3rd cousin's, twice removed, dog did to their niece's cat while visiting their grandson who ate a goldfish under a black moon and now craves green hay when the emperor of the third age declares a holiday celebrating the conquering of a neighboring land which had been haunted by hordes of ravenous hamsters who were betrayed a by long forgotten promise.
You see and I'd be watching for where hamsters, promises, and the neighboring land come into context in other parts of the story. I enjoy finding those links.
Like in the Elder Scrolls series there's always this small idyllic town with no connection or seemingly no connection to the larger plot occupied by cultists of some sort that ultimately want to consume your flesh. Always fun to see them in game.
I do not want a deep, fully fleshed out story line.
I want a thin vineer of just-good-enough plot to keep me moving forward. My drive is more driven by character advancement and gameplay unlock and good, tight execution of the gameplay.
I mean - how much story did Metroid or Super Mario or Doom have? A bit … but it wasn't what drove the game forward. The Zelda games are great examples - just enough plot, with mechanics and advancement driving me forward. A more modern example would be Horizon Zero Dawn.
A lot of Bioware and Bethesda titles (among others) are just loaded with so much plot bloat I just start skipping cutscenes to get through it and get back to the game.
I'll skip on the 2nd and 3rd playthrough unless I'm making different decisions intentionally.
I thought you were joking, but you're actually serious aren't you? I think never in my 25 years of visiting online discussion forums have I disagreed more with a statement.
Story is the only thing driving me to finish games, without it there is no gameplay tight enough or RPG system complex enough to make me want to spend 20-50 hours on a repetitive action game. Even sims and sports games are better with a career system.
Those are products of their time. When I played Doom I didn't know games could actually have a meaningful narrative. If Doom came out now I wouldn't be playing it. Just as I was unable to play Doom 2016 for more than a couple hours. The gameplay is tight, but completely meaningless to me without a fleshed out narrative.
Horizon Zero Dawn barely had enough story for me to finish it, and it was badly paced too. Lots of nothing interrupted by a few exposition dumps. Forbidden West didn't even make my cut, I played it once and never went back, the dialogue is so bad and the story so uninteresting.
I finished ME1 at least 10 times, and ME2 even more than that. I never skipped a single line of dialogue, ever. If I have to skip dialogue in a game, that doesn't mean there is too much of it, it means it is bad. And at that point I'd rather quit playing the game than miss the story. Case in point the aforementioned Horizon Forbidden West.
The story is the reason I'm playing games, the gameplay is just the means of advancing the story in action games. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy the gameplay, or it can't be good. The better the gameplay the more it elevates the overall experience, but no matter how well designed the gameplay if the story is shit, I quit.
To each their own.
You do you, reading every line of dialogue. I'll play my way.
Exactly the same with me. Gameplay is the main ingredient that makes a video game a video game. Story, music, all that other stuff is all well and good, but if the gameplay is not there, then I'm not there. The gameplay has to be good enough to carry the whole game alone. Video games are active entertainment, not passive. There are books and movies/shows I can read and watch if I just want to passively take things in. But when I am playing a video game, I want to PLAY the video game. There gameplay is the most important thing (and along with that, the controls).
D4mn straight.
I'm with @Brian_B on this one. Story is a lesser, secondary concern. The gameplay is absolutely the top priority, and if the gameplay is not there, then none of the other elements are good enough for me to stick around. I don't see the point of playing a video game if the gameplay itself is not enough to hold me.
I still play it a lot, and I'm glad there is still new official content for it. Like SIGIL 1 and 2, and most recently Legacy of Rust. Just more truly excellent Doom action.
Wow, quite shocking to hear. I lost track of how many times I've been through the game, and especially how many times I've played my favorite individual levels over and over again. I've got over 274 hours put into the game, and I've never even once touched the multiplayer (don't even remember that it exists).
True, I agree with that.
I'm the opposite. The gameplay is by far the main reason I am playing the game. But if all the other stuff is good too, then great! For me, if the gameplay is solid, then the music and story and other elements are what can elevate the game to an even greater experience. But they are not what I depend on for the main part of the experience.
Also it really depends on what type of game it is. Like if I am playing a RPG then I expect it to be heavy on story and dialogue and whatnot. If it's the kind of game where story should be front-and-center, or at least up there in priority, then yeah I would be upset if it was lacking. But for something like Doom 2016 I was very pleased with how little story there was. Wish they had stuck to that before they went off the rails with Doom Eternal (though that was not that game's biggest problem...).
Same.
It is about 1% of games I played where the gameplay was so good that it would stand on its own. But it is hard to even contemplate this for me as without the story I'd never have tried them.
I think the past should be left in the past, I don't like nostalgia bait games
The only games that I don't play for the story are strategy and sim/driving games, but even in those a story helps greatly to immerse myself and gives me a reason to play.