Gadgetory

hey everyone i'm steve from gamers nexus dotnet we're here at GDC 2016 this is our final coverage of the show and we're joined by torn banner talking about Mirage before getting to this content all of the coverage is brought to you by raw Furies a goner platformer game which you can see on the screen now so Steve you worked on way back on age of chivalry right and then chivalry medieval warfare what's who who can give me a top level of Mirage here well chivalry was basically medieval combat it was about sword fighting right and Mirage is kind of a spiritual successor to chivalry in a certain sense where it still has that sword fighting at its core but on top of that we've added in magic combat we've really integrated those systems together so that it actually hopefully feels like a sword fight from 20 feet away and what I mean by that is that you can block every projectile every every action and it's all reactable gameplay that still feels like you're dueling people very cool and Alex what's the thing that you most look forward to telling people about with mirage what sort of the thing i think you think gets people hooked immediately i think it really all comes down to the combat and the mechanic we built into it that you know players of sugary will really be reminded of is know that the strength of the melee combat and just how focus is on having control just like in sugary over your weapon but now we're adding that into magic casting so you know you can you can block any magic attack from afar and you can also read combat scenarios in the same way that you could and our last game but it becomes that much more crucial when these magic you know massive magical spells are coming across the screen blowing people's bodies in the smithereens becomes so exciting and so much of a bra you know almost emotional experience to play the game right and so that's actually something I want to talk about on the design side when we were talking pre interview here it sounds there's a real commitment to psychology with game design so talking about this idea of telegraphing attacks what what does Telegraph in an attack mean well what it means is a bit it means making the gameplay reactable which means that we want to promote counter play so that I have to pay very close attention to what you're doing what we're really talking about is making it about human beings fighting it's missing magic to do that but we still want it to feel like a very personal martial arts inspired kind of calm one of the things we like to say is we're almost kind of taking some of the fighting game mechanics and bringing that into an FPS multiplayer experience and the mechanics here so for mirage there are how many abilities and and how do we use them in the game so yeah there's a there's six different character classes that you play as in the game and each class is really built according to a different play style and each character class has got three different slots that they can fit a variety of different spells into so ranging from defensive spells to evasive spell just spells that will literally tear your body in half there's no does a variety of different ways to play with magic in the game and it's magic also that has a real force to it which is something we're really trying in mirage is Magic that doesn't feel like fairy dust you know this is going to this is like throwing a brick at someone's face when you kill them and it's going to really feel so satisfying when you get into a really skill-based duel with someone and you finish that duel by rag dolling them across the screen and just seeing that at work it's really satisfying and one of the cool things we saw on that front was in the demo you had a guy doing sort of a death from above attack on a group of three clustered players and it looked like there was sort of a physics interaction there what could you describe everyone what was going on what was the setup sure yeah well one of the things that makes players feel powerful in the game is that they're actually able to combo their abilities together so what we saw in that instance was someone leap into the air slammed down and when he did that slam it hits with so much force that it actually pulls those people nearby in close to him and then he immediately followed it up with a whirlwind attack that allows him to attack all around and basically just devastate three people all at once which is what competitive multiplayer gaming is about absolutely that was the next point so competitive multiplayer gaming is we were talking about how it's all about this idea of one understanding why you die if you do die because that's why would you agree is one of the most frustrating parts absolutely so how do you deal with that well I think generally that you know dying is usually the worst moment in competitive gaming because it's losing right and we do some things to try and take away this thing of that one of the things is is we give moments of anticipation where basically you see someone up above you and they're about to slam down and you you recognize that you view your action so far can't you kind of screwed up and you have to kind of accept your fate at that point because you're about to be blasted into smithereens and so we found that people on top of the violence of it which gas adds in some humor so basically people have something to laugh at even when they die it's also a game where you know this is a beautiful serene and at first calm looking world where you're looking at these beautiful desert sands and these polished palaces of marble now all of a sudden everything is going to be covered in blood and guts and it's sort of an art style that we've been able to build using Unreal Engine 4 which you know as a small team we're like 23 guys and we're able to make a big you know a game that feels big yeah Unreal Engine 4 definitely a major enabler in creating triple-a looking titles so wrapping up here with housekeeping stuff what's the is there a target tentative release date price anything like that right now yeah we've got so basically first of all the game is a more traditional style it's thirty dollars and you're done that's that's the way it works and we just announced a week or two ago but we're on a very condensed schedule so the game is going to launch later this year there's a beta in the summer and then if you're at PAX East we're going to be there playing the game with people hands-on for the first time so there's a lot going on for us yeah it's going to be really exciting year ahead of us can't wait for pax east can't wait for beta in the summer as well for all our fans to get a hint their hands on it and just see what they can destroy in this world absolutely so we will be at PAX East and will definitely continue coverage at that point if you're interested in learning more about Mirage hit links in the description below or we've got full article coverage and thank you for watching we'll see you all next time