From the surprising number of indie titles showcased at E3, Slocap’s Absolver is one that I would be hard pressed to forget. On the surface, Absolver is an open world action game, but one that is more akin to the interconnected regions of Dark Souls rather than Skyrim’s massive sandbox. Within these open settings, players will fight against or alongside player controlled combatants, learning new techniques and styles that you can then add to your own repertoire of fighting knowledge.
While meeting other players within the world will be exciting, there can be deadly consequences if you’re not careful. Because of the anonymous nature of the game, there is no option for voice chat unless you form an in-game party. This means that when you meet another player, there is no surefire way to know whether they’ll shake your hand or stab you in the back. There are gestures that the player can use to signal peace or hostility, but such signs should be taken with a grain of salt should the newcomer on your screen prove to be fickle in nature.
So if you’re not playing with friends, you best put up your dukes when approaching a new player – just in case. But don’t worry, you won’t be ill equipped. Absolver features some of the most in depth hand-to-hand combat I have ever seen in a game. There are a total of four four stances to choose from, all of which have their own unique techniques that you can then mix and match together however you wish. As you progress throughout the game, you will build your combat deck by fighting opponents and learning the moves that they use against you. If a specific punch is repeatedly thrown in your direction, eventually you’ll be able to use it in your own attack scheme.
Sound complicated? It’s really not. Rather than memorizing mind bending button combinations like in Mortal Kombat games, attacking in Absolver mainly consists of using two or three buttons and then pairing that with feints, parries, and dodge rolls. The ability to have an extraordinary amount of depth when it comes to combat without sacrificing accessibility can be extremely difficult to pull off, but it seems that the team behind Absolver has handled the matter with grace.
Though naturally there is a narrative that drives the game along, Absolver is about the story that players tell themselves and that others witness through the visual and stylistic customization options that they adopt. There is an imaginative quality to the game that I think represents real world encounters, where we try to figure out someone’s story based upon how they look and act. In a game with less depth this kind of emergent narrative could seem like a cheesy tagline, but with the amount of options to create a truly unique character that will continue to grow over time, Absolver somehow turns this into an exciting concept..
Absolver will see a release sometime in 2017, so we are bound to see more content over the coming months. Hopefully we get a glimpse into how big the world is? I think it’s likely, since it seems the gaming community is so concerned with map size nowadays (Skyrim this is your fault). Either way, I’m excited. Hi-Yah!
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