With the Gods or Without Them: Rise of the Argonauts Preview
Jason is super-pissed. Know why? You can probably sympathize for the guy. He just had his wife assassinated. How does he respond? By doing everything and anything to get the golden fleece that will bring her back, including cutting some fools heads off and leveraging favors with the Gods.
Whenever Jason has a a choice to make he will earn favor with a God, depending on the attitude of his response. Earn favor with a patron God and you’ll be given benefits to one of four weapon types. Act and respond aggressively and you’ll earn favor with the aggressive God of war, Ares, and gain the ability to wield Jason’s mace more effectively. Respond compassionately and you’ll earn favor with the shield bearing Apollo. Respond cunningly and you’re in with Hermes, who’ll teach you how to be quick with the sword. All about Justice? The spear wielding Athena is your gal pal.
Ares prefers you to say, “why don’t I slap that sad look off your face, cry baby.”
One of the choices you’ll be faced with is whether or not to kill Medusa, who actually reminds me of more nightmarish version of giant Ursula from the Little Mermaid, big wobbly belly and all. Do you kill Medusa for causing most of the people on her island to die, or do you try to reform her by destroying the statue of herself that she holds in her hands, the symbol of her vanity? Choose wisely, because that choice and many others have a large impact on the direction of the game.
Achilles, deciding if he should go barefoot or wear heavily armored boots.
The team at Liquid Entertainment strongly emphasized that every weapon should and will be unique, all possessing benefits that you will be able to see in on-screen combat. That means no hidden benefits, such as spears that give you +2 to your attack, but rather a spear that will shatter an enemy’s shield.
Live hit detection means enemies can hurt their friends when trying to hurt you.
ROA’s combat system is very robust for an RPG. All hit detection is live, which means when that minotaur swings his over-sized ax in a large arc he will hit the skeletons that are around him. And the block mechanic doesn’t have an orb of invincibility effect. When blocking, Jason raises his shield and blocks the nearest threat, and even if he’s swinging his sword and an enemy hits his shield it will block the attack, making the shield bearing side of his body consistently more protected.
As you traverse the land in your travels, looking for your wife’s salvation, you’ll gather followers, some who will fight with you, such as the famous Hercules, a young Achilles and Pan, and some that will lend skills in other ways, such as the inventor, Daedalus.
The mighty Hercules, or as the Greeks called him, Heracles.
Your ship will begin to feel more populated as each Argonaut takes up residence in a cabin on the Argo. Other rooms on the Argo will be devoted to a weapons inventory room worthy of an episode of Pimp My Ancient War Vessel, with your spear heads, maces and swords arranged and displayed prominently.
There’s also a room that’s dedicated to Jason’s 4 patron gods, in which you can dedicate feats to each, such as aggressively slaying 10 of a creature for Ares. Jason’s quarters features a statue of his wife, which he bows and commits himself to before landing on an island as the game’s way of keeping the player focused on the ultimate goal.
Argonauts looks like it comes to win and judging by the features that I listed and the passion of the team at Liquid entertainment that demoed it for me, this is one that you should definitely keep on your radar.
