Sword Hero Alpha: Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] What's going on everybody, Mortem here, this time bringing you a look at Sword Hero via its closed alpha that has been available to the people who backed it on Kickstarter for a while, which is then, of course, how I have access to it.

[00:19] But relatively recently, I put out a video talking about some upcoming games I was particularly excited for in the realm of CRPGs, and Sword Hero was one of those. And while I don't love the name of it, I do, in fact, really enjoy basically everything else it has going on,

[00:35] because it is an ambitious title that is taking a lot of cues from games like the Gothic series, while also layering new and interesting systems on top of those, that is already really coming together in its closed alpha,

[00:48] but makes me particularly excited to see the thing in full. However, this is not the first time I've ever spoken about this game. I did take a look at it, and it sort of entered my radar via a very combat-oriented demo that they had put out in anticipation of the game's Kickstarter campaign.

[01:06] Obviously, I kept following it afterwards, and in the beginning of this year, right around January, February, they had that Kickstarter, which was successful. I backed it because I thought it was really cool. And they've already put in a ton of work expanding from that simple combat demo into this closed alpha state where we have access to the first sort of city area as well as the surrounding environment in order for you to test things out.

[01:30] However, I wanted to leave with that because I want to talk a little bit about what is and is not here at the moment. So right now, this game is working on building the last of its major systems. It is most of the way through that.

[01:43] There's still a handful of things that have yet to be built and added to the game, like the addiction system, cooking, crafting, a few other interactable things, your quest journal, which isn't really in there at the moment. But once those systems are done, the developers plan to move on to then filling the game with actual content, before moving fully on to the beta stage, which will be all about bug testing and everything.

[02:06] So they are moving at a pretty decent clip here, but they've still got a little ways to go, certainly. However, what is already available is really compelling stuff, which is why I wanted to eventually get around to making this video towards the end of this first phase, if you will,

[02:21] to try to explain to people why I enjoy what this game is trying to do so much. Now, as I already mentioned, this game is definitely heavily inspired by things like Gothic. You can see that in pretty much everything it does When you level up you gain learning points You take those to a trainer to get your skills and everything Increase your base stats which then increase the associated combat style

[02:42] Instead of meat bugs, we have meal bugs, etc. But what's really compelling here is that while the base is very gothic inspired, they've also included and have plans for some systems that are incredibly

[02:55] interesting to me, such as the tragedy routine. So to give a little sneak peek here towards the either part of the video. One of my favorite things this game is going to be doing is giving the open world sandbox NPCs that will have their own schedules and everything, occasionally tragedy

[03:12] routines. These are basically where you have successfully ruined this person's life to a degree that their normal schedule just doesn't cut it anymore, and they adopt a new, let's say upsetting routine that is tailored to whatever tragedy has befallen them. Now when they were initially

[03:28] talking about this system. I know they had plans for, like, when you start a new game, some NPCs that weren't, like, super important to the main story or whatever could randomly be selected to just have the tragedy routine on from the start. I don't know if they're still planning to do that,

[03:43] but this is, at a baseline, a really interesting system to me, because imagine you take somebody like Naveen from Skyrim, and if you successfully ruin his life enough, you get to watch that play out in real time as opposed to just killing the guy for being annoying. But let's back up a little

[03:59] bit and talk about what this game is actually meant to be about outside of those systems. So you will be able to create your character which is a basic bit of cosmetic character creation at the moment and then eventually there will be a fully fledged perk system. Right now you can just

[04:14] take all of the perks because they give you access to a lot of basic features that need to be tested in the alpha but presumably in the actual full game there will be a point system here where you You have to spend points on available perks at the beginning of character creation and then learn the rest of them later.

[04:29] In any event, this character is going to be known more generally as the Delver. The Delver will be sent to an island known as West. They describe this as you being thrown onto the island and basically just trying to survive,

[04:45] ultimately aligning yourself with factions and the like in order to see what is going on here on a deeper level. That's about as much as we know for the story at the moment, as unsurprisingly, it's not in the output currently.

[04:57] But once you've actually started up the game and get ready to go, you can pretty much immediately jump in and start messing around, because just like the Final Relief version they have no plans of doing anything like level scaling or adjusting content to your character in any way with the idea being that the world is what it is and you are going to be able to use your skills to get to the bottom of particularly deadly places

[05:22] which is going to be important when you find yourself exploring ruins, fighting off these weird little goblin-looking guys, or getting up to things that are much worse. But in this closed alpha, the big emphasis is on all of the systems that are present and need to be tested.

[05:37] So let's talk about a few of those systems that I find particularly interesting, starting with a little bit of the dynamic side of things. So I already mentioned that NPCs will have routines, it'll be much more of a sandbox situation, but there are other things, like their crime system is already implemented, there will eventually be dynamic weather, day-night cycles.

[05:57] NPCs will already loot you if they try to kill you, sort of gothic style as you would expect. But also, what I thought was really interesting is that NPCs will react to corpses. There is a decomposition timer, if you will, on the corpses themselves.

[06:11] But if you go around killing a bunch of people, or if they find themselves on the wrong end of an unlucky monster attack, the other NPCs around them will actually gather up their bodies of enemies you kill near them, or actual NPCs,

[06:24] PCs and take them to like a sort of pile for them to decompose. But even that touches on a slight bit of another system, which is that you can pick up and carry most things, like pick them up, throw them, which is also somewhat related to the crime system. It seems that abuse of a corpse is

[06:40] also not something the game wants you to be doing, or at least is frowned upon in general society, let's say. Unless if you are trying to like physically pick up the corpse of a townsperson

[06:52] that has died, they will actually treat that as a crime. In fighting off a whole bunch of different enemies, it is likely you are going to be taking some damage along the way, which is where the body part system comes in. In addition to your baseline health, your limbs can also take damage. It is

[07:07] possible for these limbs to be destroyed, effectively leaving you with like one leg or one arm, that kind of thing, and you can have them replaced with prosthetics of varying levels of quality, with the basic ones being a bit worse, but with the really advanced ones potentially

[07:21] being even better than a baseline limb, coming with their own things like armor and health and extra abilities that can aid you in combat even. Not currently in the alpha, but they do also have plans for a housing system.

[07:34] This is going to allow you to basically do what Fable does, which is you purchase businesses and houses and then rent them out. They've also mentioned wanting to give your character the ability to climb up particularly large enemies and you might be happy to know then that they do have a plan for some let say character morphing we also seen in things like Fable like for instance as you increase your character strength you should actually

[07:57] see that happening on your model as well. And you'll also, of course, be able to see things like prosthetics that get added to you, etc. And so at the end of your journey, your actual character should reflect the steps you have taken along said journey. But even that is really just

[08:13] the tip of the iceberg because we've also got things like a planned stealth system your typical melee ranged magic approaches to combat but even the magic is a little unique with you being able to get things like tattoos etc to lean into that some of that magic already in the closed alpha has

[08:30] let's say less than obvious effects like for instance there's a lock picking system but the magic will actually let you just destroy the locks on doors and open them up that way There are transformation spells, the way Gothic has them, where you can then, like, turn into, like, say, like a little bug and crawl under a gate.

[08:47] And so because of that, you have multiple solutions to an individual problem. And while I'm curious to know if I'll wind up adjusting this a bit, currently the physics are very funny. Like, if you send somebody flying or you go flying, it goes way beyond what would probably actually happen.

[09:03] And beyond those systems, there are, of course, things like factions. You'll be able to join mysteries to solve, things to figure out, of course. But more than anything, I think when you start putting all of this together,

[09:15] especially how it relates to the game's ultimate combat system, where it just winds up feeling incredibly dynamic, and already playing it just in this early alpha test, it is an incredibly promising title.

[09:27] I am genuinely very excited for this. I'm having a blast with it just now. and it seems to be on track and moving at a good pace, and I will definitely, of course, keep people updated as this game continues to move through its development into its final release,

[09:43] but when that final release comes, you can definitely expect a review, because I already love what's here, and I wanted to, of course, share that with you all. So, hopefully you enjoyed this video. I'd love to know what you think about this one down in the comment section below, but, you

[09:55] know, do keep in mind it's an alpha. It's very early, though that does naturally mean to like, comment, subscribe, all that YouTube jazz, but regardless of any of that, truly, just thank you so much for watching. I really do appreciate it. May you wander in wisdom, and have an amazing day.

[10:29] you