Hunted: The Demon's Forge Previews

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Written by BuckGB on March 15th, 2010

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Hunted: The Demon's Forge is the new game from inXile, the studio Fargo founded with other refugees from Interplay's sinking ship, in part to revisit its glory days - its first project was to remake his classic role-playing game, The Bard's Tale. Hunted is being published by current Fallout stewards Bethesda Softworks and is, in Fargo's words, "bringing the classic dungeon crawl back".

This genre, Fargo tells us, has its roots in Dungeons & Dragons and the earliest days of computer programming. He namechecks Lord British (doesn't even think to call him Richard Garriott), Wizadry (which he personally became addicted to in the early eighties), Bard's Tale, Ultima, Might & Magic and Dungeon Master. He sprints into the nineties and notes a trend towards action in Ultima Underworld, the first Elder Scrolls game, Hexen and Heretic.

Another nice touch is the fact that any experience earned in a co-op venture will be duplicated and given to both participants. If Pythagoras hosts a game and invites his chum Archimedes, both players will be allowed to fully customise and upgrade their character for the duration of the session. Then, when Archimedes logs off to watch Come Dine With Me, Pythagoras will be able to re-tweak the character his friend used; Maybe Archimedes spent a load of upgrade points on Caddoc's melee moves, but Pythagoras would rather invest in magical attacks. In short, co-op work will help you to progress through the campaign, but it won't result in someone else messing up your skill trees. Oh, and when Archimedes logs into their own game, any XP they earned in the joint session will be carried over to their account.

In battle, Caddoc's shields degrade and can be broken, so he has to keep collecting new ones on his travels, although there are plenty dropped by the savage orc-like Wargar creatures the duo face in the demo. E'lara meanwhile, needs to keep a supply of arrows, which she can pull from the punctured flesh of a fallen enemy and light in any nearby fire source or imbue with magic to create frost arrows for instance. Regardless of which character you play as however, the combat is always suitably brutal and bloody with your character being caked in a layer of gore as they cleave their way through the monstrous hordes, performing violent finishing moves while receiving wounds that can result in permanent battle scars.

Despite the loose RPG trappings, weapons will accrue in the vein of a more traditional shooter rather than taking the Borderlands route of haemorrhaging loot piles. New death tools for each character will appear every couple of hours in order to make them feel significant, and presumably to compliment the game's progressive set-pieces.

Delineating the standard RPG class structure of making the magic characters weaker at hand-to-hand combat, with the same being true the other way around, Elara and Craddoc are proficient in both disciplines. Basic spellcasting (such as fireballs) forms a staple of their otherworldy arsenal, but our heroes can also combine their weapons and magic for the best of all possible worlds; for example, firing ice arrows to freeze enemies at afar before smashing them to pieces with a sword. The system works nicely with the heavy emphasis on the co-operative element of the game spellcasting isn't just something that gets down to your enemies, as players can use magic on their partner to increase the potential damage potential of their weapons. There are also defensive measures that can be taken one partner can levitate oncoming enemies for the other to rack up some easy kills.

Spells consist of the general fire and ice affair, but you can also evolve and cast these spells on your partner resulting in a Battle Charge. This means your normal attacks can be enhanced with elements resulting in more damage on the enemy.

Traditional dungeon crawlers of old place a heavy emphasis on looting and customisation, something that we didn't particularly see much of with Hunted. inXile did note that there was some weapon customisation, but that was mostly with Caddoc's melee weapons, which doesn't bode well for that aspect of the title. That aside though, the environments at this early stage were grand, varied and hugely detailed, as were the enemies, and the ability to switch back and forth between characters at certain nodes is an interesting and noteworthy addition. The whole co-op at a distance mantra was something that we're surprised hasn't been tried before and if tied in with some hardcore looting, it may be just what the doctor ordered. Our initial impressions were more than positive on the whole and the short 30 minute presentation left us hankering for more. There's a hell of a lot of time to go between now and release, but if inXile can expand the whole customisation and looting aspect, we may have a dungeon crawler worth getting our knees dirty for.

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