A short way into an extended hands-off presentation of Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, and my main thought was: this feels a lot like a mix between God of War and Souls games, at which point creative director Simon Dasan described it as… more or less exactly that. “A massive thing for us was to try and take that real Soulslike field of action, and then make it more accessible, kind of bring it all together to the masses,” he explained, to the sound of main character Nor slashing theatrically through an enemy grunt.
Flintlock, the next game from the New Zealand studio behind Ashen, is breezy and fluid, emphasising movement and offence where typical Souslikes might nudge you towards a more staid defensive dance. But the switch to proactivity is countered by the usual trappings of the genre: a semi-linear world, small numbers of enemies, and combat that, while flashier and faster, still seems to reward precision above all.
Arriving in a crumbling castle courtyard around a third of the way into the game, you find the area subjugated by a god. Battling through some initially typical Soulslike enemies – think zombified dudes in armour – Dasan and co demonstrated a few variations on how exactly that combat works.
About Author
