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[00:30] Of the last generation, I think, not in the sense that they sold a lot, which they did, and not in the sense that they were critically acclaimed, which they were. It's more about the fact that those games, along with a handful of others at the time, were double A hits at a time when the double A scene was feeling increasingly
[00:44] imperiled, a feeling that's only intensified in the time since. Innocence felt so breakthrough in so many regards, from its play-stricken setting, to its stealth-combat gameplay, to its puzzles that were all about manipulating swarms of rats. Gross when you think about it, but incredibly fun to play, trust me.
[00:58] All of this was wrapped up in a package that looked a million bucks, even though you could tell that the budget for this game would have been vastly smaller than your traditional triple A title. To top it all off, it just so happened to be beautifully written and emotionally affecting in a way that few games are able to achieve.
[01:21] The second game, Requiem, had more budget, more scale, more ambition, and truthfully, I think a little was lost with all that more. Innocence felt so scrappy and intimate, benefiting from constraints in the way that all the best art does.
[01:34] In contrast, Requiem felt a little more flashy and slick as it was reaching for a wider audience, and it was still great don't get me wrong, but I think it was reaching for just a little too much. That story concluded with great finality, and the studio, Asobo, haven't been at all shy about sharing their reasons for not continuing that story,
[01:49] at least for the moment. In an interview with GamesRadar, the Asobo CEO, David Eddie, and said, We knew some of our fans were really eager to see the follow-up teased in Requiem, but the team spent over seven years with these characters, and to keep things fresh,
[02:01] to preserve that creative spark, we felt we needed to take a break, to clear our heads and reinvent ourselves and quote, and you know what, fair enough. And that brings us to resonance, a play tell legacy. A game set more than a decade before the events of the first game,
[02:13] starring a familiar albeit younger here face, Sophia, who innocence was a help to Amicia and Hugo in a crucial moment, but here she's her own woman, on the run from a thieving outfit that she left behind, and the Venetian army for some reasons that aren't entirely clear yet.
[02:26] This is probably a good time to clarify what the preview build I played involved. It was two chapters, the first set on a Greek island dotted with ancient mythical ruins, and the second being the underbelly of that island, where I was feeling my way through the darkness while pursued by something,
[02:40] something we'll talk about a bit later. So here's where the preview gets a little complicated, even though I played two chapters, I'm only allowed to show you footage from one of those chapters, the one set above ground. That's a crying shame, because I honestly didn't love that chapter for reasons I'll
[02:56] describe, but I really, really love the second chapter, the one that I'm not allowed to show you. I'm very confused why focus would want to hold this footage back, since I think it does a fantastic job of showing what's unique about this game, whereas the other chapter feels like I'm charded or tomb raider again.
[03:11] Perfectly fine if you're after another one of those, but I appreciate this series for its unique choices, and this chapter doesn't have a lot of those. And that's kind of the TLDR for this video to be honest, this is a very, very different package from the other two playtale games,
[03:24] and that's fine, especially given the team were clear that they wanted to stretch some other creative muscles. But I'm not yet bought into a number of those decisions, and I need to spend more time with them to see where they land. Other parts of the package, particularly that second chapter have immediately hooked me,
[03:39] but it's hard for me to convince you of that when I can't show it to you. For now, you just have to trust me when I say that there's more to this game that at first meets the eye, and ultimately I have a lot of faith in the talent of this team, because they haven't let us down yet, and I don't think they're about to start now.
[04:05] Let's fight off the media's bit first combat. Combat in the previous playtale games was never about full frontal assault since Amicia was a teenage girl, and she wouldn't fare well squaring off against armoured broods. Instead, combat was about using mega tools like a sling to distract or stun guards,
[04:20] while manipulating your environment to your advantage. A guard protected from the rats by torchlight instantly became rat food when you extinguished said torch, and so combat was actually more of a puzzle game than anything else.
[04:35] Here in resonance, combat is combat. Sophia is a trained brawler and has absolutely no trouble at a fight. In chapter 5, which is where my preview kicked off, Sophia already has a number of combat maneuvers, weapons, and equipable items that are disposal, and frankly, she's a bit of a powerhouse.
[04:54] A subwoof said that they've taken inspiration from ghosts as such in this combat, and you can feel a bit of that here in the pacing and clashingness of combat is driven by three heat combos where Sophia explodes forth, but she can quickly be repelled by enemy steel.
[05:06] Similarly, enemies will circle and await their turn to strike, coloured flashes, denoting moves that should be parried or dodged. At a foundational level, it's very simple stuff.
[05:19] There's only one attack button and only one melee combo, though different animations will trigger when doing that. Crucially, holding down the attack button will unsheath a hit and dagger, and this is Sophia's quickest way of dispatching foes, with the tradeoff being that enemies can easily repel this attack if they aren't already staggered.
[05:34] There are also little flashes here and there, a grapple allows you to pull down pesky arches. There are also throwable weapons, plunging jump attacks, but there doesn't seem to be any stealth takedowns,
[05:46] or if there are, I wasn't able to trigger them when sneaking up behind guards. The positioning of enemies in each of the combat spaces makes pretty clear that this is not a game where stealth is the goal, so Sophia charges headlong into groups of foes who can see her coming
[05:58] from a mile away, so the contrast to the previous playtale games couldn't be any starker. Gotta say, though, all of this is perfectly fine, perfectly functional,
[06:12] but it really wasn't ringing my bell all that much. We've all played combat that is deeper than this, that feels better than this, that's more playful and expressive than this. I do get the sense that the combat sandbox will open up as the game progresses,
[06:24] but here in this moment it felt a little rote. That was a bit of a disappointment to be honest. I love how much the playtale games took an innovative approach to the question of combat, not shying away from it as much as looking to accomplish the same goal by different means.
[06:37] No game might ever play to ask me to turn swarms of rats against my foes. If resonance has similar innovations in its combat design, they certainly aren't here in this portion of the game.
[06:57] Just as the Sophia have changed up the core gameplay model, they've also adopted a very different approach to storytelling. This is a prequel set before the events of the first two playtale games, but it's its own self-contained story. You absolutely do not need to have played the previous games before playing this one,
[07:11] making it a very easy jumping-in point for anyone. Sophia is the star of the show here. She's a star contrast to Amicia, who was a scared, untrained teenager. Sophia, on the other hand, is a fearless and fearsome pirate. She ran with a gang for a while but made the decision to leave them,
[07:25] taking with her a precious artifact and a journal that led her to this mysterious island. It wasn't the only thing leading her here though, because Sophia is also having visions of the past. Visions that see her embody the mythical Greek hero Theesius,
[07:37] most famous for slaying the Minotaur, in these sections your transported back to the island as it once was, fighting in the packed arena for fame and glory.
[07:50] It seems like there's an A and B plot going on here in resonance. The A plot is about this mysterious place and Sophia's unique connection to it. Later, Sophia will have visions that see her meet dataless, and the labyrinth that haunts her dreams comes into view.
[08:02] We've seen these mythic retelling's countless times before, but a sober spin here seems genuinely interesting, given it's darker tone and mature themes. The B plot is the one about Sophia on the run from her old criminal gang, fighting alongside her trusted friend who came along for the ride.
[08:16] This one, I'm honestly not too sure about yet, the gang members that pursue her all cut an interesting figure, in that they have plenty of presence and personality, and they certainly don't look like they're messing around when they threaten Sophia or her friend Lenny. Truth is, honestly just haven't seen enough of this yet
[08:29] to really have a firm view on it, but storytelling was always a strength of this team, and I very much doubt they're going to drop the ball this time around. I'm a little less confident when it comes to the game's
[08:56] setting and puzzle design, or maybe it's better to say I'm a little more conflicted. Residence is set at least in this part of the game on a mythic version of Crete, and that looks just about exactly as you'd expect it to, white stone columns and mosaic trims.
[09:08] The previous playtale games were set in medieval France during the plague, a location and time period not often experienced. Ancient Greece is perhaps the most rendered video game setting ever, and so it certainly doesn't leave as much of an impression as plague,
[09:20] written France. It's defense though, it is a very pretty looking game, and much like Requiem, you could tell that the team had some budget to work with here to make all of this look really great. Honestly though, the stuff you see in here isn't anywhere near as impressive as the stuff you're seeing underground.
[09:32] Again, that's the stuff I can't show you. There you'll see the underbelly of this world. It's darker, more starkly lit, more megalomaniacal in its scale. It's unique in a way that this stuff up top just isn't. I also think that from a gameplay perspective,
[09:44] the stuff I was playing through above ground wasn't doing a lot for me. This is very, very uncharted, very tomb raider. It's tilting mirrors to light up targets, it's jumping over pillars in very specific orders, lest you trigger the spike trap.
[09:57] It's turning slow moving cogs and cranks this way in that to open new platforming pathways, etc. And hey, absolutely nothing wrong with this stuff. It's timeless. They're playing the classics here, and none of it is any worse than you've experienced in other games.
[10:09] But it's also no better. And again, I found myself reflecting on how much more interesting the stealth and puzzle sandbox of the previous games were. But the game really does flip a switch when I enter the underground. Separated from my friend who I was fighting alongside,
[10:21] I now need to make my ways with this underground ruin while something hunts me. It's something that's only hinted at in the game's trailer. And again, I can't show it to you here, but it's an organic monster of sorts, one that clings to the walls and kind of grows out of them.
[10:34] It can't see you, but Sophia would attract and leave behind these blue particles on the ground whenever she'd walk or run, and the monster would track you by sensing and inhaling these particles. It couldn't enter any lit areas however,
[10:47] and Sophia wouldn't leave behind any blue particles when she was crashed or hidden. So imagine this incredibly tense 30 minute long sequence where I spent all this time sprinting towards the next light source with this thing nipping at my heels, and at other times I was carefully and quietly stilting between cover points
[11:01] while this monster loomed just a few feet away. Set in this darker, more striking setting, this section was absolutely the highlight of my time with the game. And ultimately, it's what got me over the line since I didn't love that first chapter, and I wasn't feeling very born-in on many of the decisions that Osobo had made.
[11:16] But this chapter's setting, storytelling, and gameplay felt pitch perfect. Each of those elements was totally different from the previous playtale games, but they had the same spirit, a resting environments, mature storytelling,
[11:28] as well as unique, tense, stealth-based gameplay. So a bit of a mixed preview, you might be wondering, how do I feel coming out of all this? Well, I'll tell you, I was going to play this game no matter what,
[11:42] because I have a lot of faith in this studio. What this team did with Innocence and Requiem was fantastic, and I was day one with them for their next project no matter what, and that certainly hasn't changed from this preview. What I will say is that it's too early to judge residents based solely on these two chapters.
[11:56] I do need to spend more time with its story to actually immerse myself in it, I need to get to know these characters better, I need to see how the combat and stealth sandbox opens up over time. There are just too many variables right now for me to call it one way or the other.
[12:08] But at a high level, there's no part of this package that I'd call bad. It's not that I dislike things, it's more that some parts of it just didn't excite me as much as others. The combat and that first setting didn't grab me, but the creature chase and that underground sequence absolutely did.
[12:21] Overall, it is what I said a moment ago, I'm carried by my belief in this team and my genuine interest in their spin-on things. If I was a betting man, I'd bet that in the end this turns out to be a great game, even if some parts of it are less unique or interesting than what Innocence and
[12:34] Requiem was serving up. Resonance is out pretty soon actually, it's targeting an August 28th release, and it will be day one on Game Pass, making it very easy to check out if you're interested. Before that though, I will be doing a full review, so do look forward to that and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss it.
[12:47] If you've got any questions, do leave them down in the comment section below and I'll get to them in that final review. That's pretty much it, thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time, bye-bye. Accessing the internet is getting harder and harder every day, as governments and corporations continue to enact things like age verification,
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