Dark Envoy Video Interview, Previews
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Dark Envoy, Event Horizon's upcoming non-linear tactical RPG, is likened by its developers to such series like Divinity, Dragon Age, and XCOM. And if you'd like to learn how it all comes together, you can now check out this Shacknews video interview with the studio's founder where he talks about the game's setting that combines magic with steampunk aesthetics, describes Dark Envoy's basic gameplay loop of real-time exploration and turn-based battles, mentions the class system, and more:
Then, you may also be interested in a couple of previews based on a build presented during this year's Gamescom trade fair. Let's start with RPG Watch:
Dark Envoy is an open world game, so you are in theory able to fly your ship directly to the end location, but you are not able to end the game that quickly, as you will need some items that you don't have yet and which you'll need to find.
I was told the game is also a full RPG, with a main story and side stories. It is non-linear and your choices matter. It wasn't shown in the demo, but I was given the example that you could play the game as a bad person and rob the merchants, but at some point they start to know you and you will no longer be able to rob them, but you can still kill the merchants, which will have effects as well. On the other side, if you are playing as a good person, the game will throw moral choices at you.
Based on the way the player goes through the game, there is a different ending. You could for example finish the game in a very bad way. Like you defeat the end boss, but you are leaving a ravaged land behind you.
Dialogs consist of a cut-scene which is then followed by dialog options that allows the player to select one of the options. The dialogs aren't text heavy, they are actually quite light in that area, which is intentional as they don't want the players to spent their time reading a lot of information.
And then check out what Critical Hit has to say:
Dark Envoy solves the problem of lack-lustre combat in most top-down fantasy games. Having your party’s rogue activate stealth, sneak all the way behind enemy lines (while your paladin taunts the damage from everyone one else) and eventually execute a swift backstab was never not satisfying. While the system itself may not be ground-breaking in its design it’s built very well and in a world were the turn-based strategy game is no-where near as prevalent as one would like Dark Envoy promises to fill a void that I think many fans of the genre have had in their hearts for a while. Perhaps my one big critique of the game would be that the UI can be especially fiddly, with a lot of very important information not displayed in the easiest to observe places. On more than one occasion I was confused as to why my mage couldn’t shoot a fireball only to realise I didn’t have the Action Points needed for it. The in-game combat UI is very in-depth, trying to communicate a lot of very important information to the player, yet often fails at doing that because I was never sure where the most relevant information was. It’s a case of streamlining the process to make combat flow far better because at present the combat is satisfying but needlessly drawn out due to a clunky user interface.
