We're starting to expect more and more combat/adventure games to be set in a wide open world for us to explore these days. We've been spoiled by the genre. So when we're looking down a more linear path, developers need to give us a reason to venture off the beat track. For Spiders with Greedfall, that incentive is magical animals.
Set across the 17th century, Greedfall takes its cues from music and Flemish-style paintings according to Marie-Cecile Jacq - with whom our own TJ Denzer managed to interview during E3 earlier this month.With a mysterious illness becoming a death sentence across the land, the main factions of the world begin to converge on the one island free of the disease.
A whole new island to explore? That's likely what most would expect - a perfect excuse for an open-world environment. Not so. Not for Spiders, anyway. Though the world of Greenfall may not wide-open enough to have you roaming for days on end while the story carries on without you, you're not trapped in some form of linearity, either.
During the interview, TJ quizzed the developers about how we can explore this new world. The answer? Magic animals, essentially. "You’ll come across various occurrences, such as magic animals that are far apart from the normal animals on the island and it will lead into a quest to explore new places and solve puzzles to figure out where that magic animal came from."
Set to launch sometime next year, Greenfall sees you act as the prince (or princess) of the Merchant nation.You have a number of roles throughout this whole ordeal, butt as a tactical-RPG, there's every reason you'll be out there hunting game from time to time. So if you see a magicked version of your pray nearby, it seems you'll likely want to run on after it.
