![]() ![]() To the story-seeking types, these fights are great not just for the mechanics of them, but for the fact that these characters have well-established roles in this world, roles which are referenced long before and long after their fights. Some of the best bosses in Dark Souls are ones which have a definite, grounded place in the world of Lordran. Dark Souls rewards its narrative-focused players by tapping into this sense of world. That sense that everything your finding and doing has a connection to the history of this world. With few characters, little direct storytelling, and merely the faintest glimmer of what most people would call a “quest”, you need something to anchor yourself to the world, and so that anchor is your sense of place. “And then Spooky Skeleton Man dooted across the land, and all was good”ĭark Souls spends its precious opening moments on a cutscene because, to that game, having a sense of place is important. Dark Souls is a game that uses sparingly few cutscenes, yet it begins the game with one of the game’s longest ones to set up the setting. In that game, you’re very obviously dropped into a location with a lot of history, one where characters rose and fell and did great deeds. That’s sort of vague, so let me try to explain using this game’s obvious inspiration: Dark Souls. That problem which I think the game has is a lack of place. It’s not enough to ruin the game, not even close, but I think it’s worth talking about, especially since it ties into my last post. It was only until I took that long break that I was able to properly see it: this creeping, looming feeling that’s in the back of my head whenever I think about or play this game. The problem, though, is that I have a nagging feeling with this game, one that’s ruined every draft of this post I’ve written thusfar. A Dark Souls homage through and through, I picked up Salt and Sanctuary as a way to bide my time until Dark Souls 3 launched, and, now that Dark Souls 3 is out, I’m honestly debating pushing it back just a little bit more so that I can finish Salt and Sanctuary. So, I’ve been neck-deep in finals for a bit, but on a positive note, that’s given me a bit of time to think about the most recent game I sank a lot of time into, and that’s Ska Studios’s Salt and Sanctuary. ![]() I do not.This game has far more salt involved than just the stuff dropped by dead enemies. He has a really strong background in network programming. ![]() “I’ll do it,” he joked (or so I thought). “You should add online multiplayer,” he said. I had been sending screenshots of a new game I had started in 2019 to my friend Shane Lynch, a fellow coder who’d played unwitting victim in a number of my D&D campaigns through the years. It’s a chaotic dance of blades and bolts, swords and spells.Īnd while questions of which systems and themes will and won’t make the cut remain, one thing is certain: Salt and Sacrifice will absolutely have online multiplayer. Hunting a Mage is a multistage pursuit in which your quarry is just as likely to clash with rival Mages as it is with you.įor those of you who have played Salt and Sanctuary, imagine pursuing The Queen of Smiles through the village: she summons two rotten crossbowmen, retreats, stumbles right into The Sodden Knight, scraps it out with him for a bit, retreats again, summons a bronze knight and launches a salvo of swords at you before retreating to her lair, where - cornered, desperate, fierce - she awaits you, for a final battle from which there is no escape. ![]() Mages roam the world, summoning minions and wreaking havoc. A Marked Inquisitor is a criminal condemned, yet spared the hand of justice in exchange for a lifetime of service in the unending war against Mages: twisted, irredeemable creatures of elemental malice. Salt and Sacrifice expands on the world of Salt and Sanctuary by exploring a new era and region, as well as a new role: a Marked Inquisitor. But to so very many people, the lack of online co-op was the most egregious omission, which brings me to Salt and Sacrifice. The fighter DNA resonated with some people. For others, it was the elaborate skill tree. In hindsight, I’m certainly a little in the dark about what worked best for Salt and Sanctuary, not that there is a single right answer. From there, it was a lot of world pieces, monsters, weapons, and more: all hand-drawn, hand-animated, scripted, and placed a gradual journey to see if the bones of 2D brawling could animate the flesh of this dark fantasy RPG. I’d built some pretty competent combat systems in The Dishwasher series (which is now unbelievably two console generations old), so the idea of using that as a foundation for exploring an indie soulslike made sense. ![]()
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