Dust Origins – Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] What's going on everybody, Mortem here, this time bringing you the initial details around Dust Origins,

[00:13] which has started off on a very odd note following its announcement at Gamescom roughly a week or so ago. But honestly, we've got a lot to talk about here, so I'm going to go ahead and just dive right into it. Dust Origins is a top-down, you know, sort of isometric shooter that is very similar to another game called The Ascent.

[00:32] This game is not a sequel or related to that in any way, but it is being made by Airship Syndicate, who has made a few games I've reviewed previously, like Ruin King or Wayfinder. And so when it was announced, given that, you know, who was making it and everything, I was very interested.

[00:47] And when they announced it, they also announced a Kickstarter alongside of it. But right away, that was a little bit strange, because if you actually went to the Kickstarter and read it, they essentially said that they had the money to fund the game, and they were doing the Kickstarter to hopefully do a few extra things.

[01:03] But the problem, I think, with this Kickstarter right away is that they were very vague about what those extra things were. They implied that it would be used for things like localization or adding extra features, but then kind of neglected to specify those.

[01:16] And so I'm not really surprised that the reception to this Kickstarter was a bit lukewarm. And given that, they got a lot of interest in the game and a lot of wish lists from it. Shortly after the Kickstarter started, about three days in fact, it was promptly canceled.

[01:33] According to their post over there, they basically said that they got a bunch of wish lists for the game and the game is still funded. But the Kickstarter clearly wasn't getting the attention they were hoping for. and so they just went ahead and canceled it outright,

[01:46] which I suppose is probably for the best, because again, as I mentioned, it seemed very unclear what the actual purpose of it was. Now, I'll be blunt, I think that is press that Airship Syndicate doesn't need, given everything that happened with Wayfinders,

[01:59] and to give the extremely short version they were developing a live service game their publisher for that game canceled it and so they had to pick up the remaining pieces and they turned it into a third action

[02:11] ARPG sort of thing. But obviously, the people who had signed up for the MMO of that thing were very understandably upset about all of that. Kind of a mess, and that was just a couple years ago. That was back in like 2024. So some rough goings on, I suppose. But let's talk more about

[02:27] the actual game at this point. So as I mentioned, according to Airship Syndicate themselves, Dust Origins is fully funded. The game should be coming out no matter what, and they'll be focusing on the actual development instead of this Kickstarter now, which will hopefully

[02:42] go smoother, I guess. But in addition to the game's theme page, the PR company working for them did send me over the press release for it, so I have some details from that specifically as well. So, let's talk in detail. So, Dust Origin

[02:56] is set on a prison colony of sorts. So, you are going to wake up from cryo-sleep on a place called Limbo 6. This is a space prison

[03:08] that is, like, actively falling apart as you play the game. Things are collapsing, systems are failing, and if you don't escape, everyone here is probably going to die. This is meant to lead into their big narrative for the game,

[03:21] where there will be multiple endings and choices that can be made because, again, according to the press release here, you'll be able to kill anybody at all or save pretty much anyone, and there will be a bunch of variations to the story and endings based upon that alone.

[03:36] However, everyone living might be a little more challenging than you would think because other survivors or other prisoners on here are going to be up and about, also trying to escape, and may well be very hostile to you,

[03:50] and in some cases you may be able to help them and do side quests, etc., but everyone's angling to live, basically. So, if that wasn't enough for you, Limbo 6 was apparently also a bioengineering site

[04:02] that was actively testing alien subjects here that have of course escaped containment and you have to send off them as well Now where it gets a little more interesting is that every time you finish the game that is to say actually reach an ending you know the epilogue or whatever

[04:20] or, according to them, there will be paths to the game that they call dead ends, and I'm not sure if these are just, like, bad ending situations where you die and they don't want to call it that or what, but the idea is no matter how you reach an ending of some sort,

[04:33] you will unlock items to then carry over into your next playthrough via New Game Plus, which is apparently also going to introduce added difficulties. And so while the term roguelike is probably not super accurate,

[04:47] that kind of thing seems to be the gist of it. Now, this next thing I want to mention, I did want to preface a little bit by saying that I think there might be some disparity between some of the images they're showing of combat

[04:59] and some of the stated goals here. So one of the things they mention about this title is how they want it to have like an element of scarcity to it, where you need to do things like scavenge for ammo and make sure you can actually fight everything you're going to be coming up against.

[05:13] And then the actual gameplay snippets they've shown off of what they have done so far just kind of show you unloading on enemies constantly. so I guess we'll see if the game releases how it actually pans out, but they do seem to want that sort of mini-survival-esque gameplay loop in there,

[05:30] which will likely be mostly felt during the beginning of the game, where they've already stated that you are going to have limited options and need to scavenge for any gear at all you can find, before eventually making it into the late game,

[05:42] where you can properly create loadouts of, like, weapons, armor, mods, etc. But if that wasn't enough for you, some of the gameplay snippets they've shown off has actually seen you driving a vehicle around a more open air area,

[05:56] which is interesting to me, given that they describe this more as a space prison colony that was falling apart. I got the impression that that was going to be like a space station, but at the very least, there seems to be some sort of large outdoor area there.

[06:08] But starting to put all of that together and talk about this one, I would say Dust Origins has me intrigued I say that The whole situation is just odd so far But ultimately with the canceled Kickstarter it not like they asking anybody for money

[06:23] according to them the game is fully funded, and so it should just actually release. Though I will also at the same time say that I would sincerely hope this game just releases into a full 1.0 situation.

[06:37] This is the type of game that if it hits early access, I would think you would want to be very wary of that, and obviously if it does even that, I will buy it and take a look at it to inform people. But my gut reaction to something like this, even thinking about early access,

[06:52] would be caution at the very least. But looking a little beyond that, provided everything goes well and we see this game release, I will be, of course, reviewing it. But I am interested in it. Games that are seemingly very similar in gameplay, like The Ascent,

[07:06] had a lot of really fun stuff going on. I think if they can bring some gameplay like that, refine it a little bit, give people a fun experience, I don't see any reason this wouldn't do well outside of any, let's say, continued oddities happening between now and if this game actually releases.

[07:22] But all told, again, just a lot of strange stuff going on with this one. I will continue to keep an eye on it. No word on, like, an official release window yet. As I mentioned, they finished Wayfinders in 2024, and I would assume they've been working on this since,

[07:37] which means it may well be another year or two before we see anything substantial from this one, but I just wanted to talk about it because of the very odd situation surrounding it. But as for right now, that's pretty much everything to say until we have more information.

[07:49] So that is where I will wrap up the video. Certainly hope you enjoyed it. If you did, by all means, like, comment, subscribe, or get YouTube jazzed. But regardless of any of that, truly, just thank you so much for watching. I really do appreciate it.

[08:01] May you wander in wisdom, and have an amazing day. .