It’s maybe quite fitting that a stealth game flies a little bit under peoples’ radar, but maybe Styx: Master of Shadows deserves to be thrown into view. It’s not part of a big gaming franchise and it doesn’t have one of the big three publishers pushing it, but it does a lot right in an as yet underserved genre on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Set many years before Of Orcs and Men, it sees one of that game’s main protagonists, the goblin Styx, trying to break into the fortress of the combined forces of elves and man. His goal is to reach and steal the Heart of the Tree at the core of the Tower of Akenash, the source of the magical Amber that would give Styx a lot of wealth and power, as well as possibly revealing his origins.
It’s a setting that will inevitably lead to some fairly typical looking fantasy locales, with this grand castle defined by stone walls, wrought iron grates, wooden scaffolding, flaming torches on walls and so on. The same could be said of the elvish and human inhabitants, going about their daily routines in plate armour and with fairly traditional visual stylings. What’s more unique is in setting the humans and elves as the antagonists in this story, and maybe even the bad guys of this universe.
Regardless, they thoroughly outnumber the rather diminutive Styx, and so it’s by far best to make use of his form and natural abilities as a stealthy assassin to get by. Sticking to the shadows and tucking into the nooks and crannies of the world, there’s a fairly minimal HUD, with Styx’s concealment idiosyncratically indicated by the glow of Amber running through the veins of his right shoulder.
With naked flaming torches on many of the walls to provide illumination, you’ll want to smother them either up with Styx himself or throw sand from afar. While guards are going to be pretty attentive to torches going out, and look to investigate, it’s also quite easy to use this as a distraction technique to draw them away from somewhere so you can either get by or sneak up behind them, whereupon you can choose to kill them either quickly and noisily, or hold down the button for a more muted kill.
Of course, there are other options open to you, from aerial takedowns to throwing knives, but you’ll need to be careful because even while crouched, moving too quickly will make noise and potentially alert them to your presence. Direct face to face combat sees a fairly straightforward block and parry system, and for lesser opponents can be over rather quickly, but you’ll need to break through multiple times to defeat a more heavily armed opponent.
One of my favourite methods for avoiding such a situation during my fairly brief hands on time was to use Styx’s ability to create a clone of himself and control it from a safe hiding place – and make sure you are hidden, because I was once discovered while controlling my clone. They’re an easy and disposable method of scouting out an area ahead of you, but can so very easily be turned towards creating a distraction or doing things like exploding in a cloud of smoke to cover your progress.
Creating a clone is just one of Styx’s many Amber powered tricks, which range from your fairly basic augmented Amber Vision to highlight interactive objects like handholds or grates that you can sneak through, all the way to turning Styx completely invisible. You’ll gain experience and upgrade your abilities as you go, but you’ll also have to use them wisely so that you don’t run through your limited supplies of Amber.
What I particularly enjoyed, though, was the way that levels felt almost like grand sandboxes for you to play in. The Tower of Akenash feels huge and the design often had multiple options for me to explore in order to get to where I needed to go. Though I only had a fairly brief hands on session, from what I’ve seen before both first hand and in a lengthy gameplay trailer, I know that there’s an impressive sprawl to the locations, often letting you climb high above the ground and taking one of several routes.
I did feel that in some places the production values and polish could have been higher, so, for example, the voice acting during a scene in which Styx’s progress was assisted by an ally of sorts opening a hatch for him felt rather cheesy and laboured. Having said that, we’ve all seen AAA titles commit worse sins and feature shoddy voice work of their own, and it’s good to see that he’s not completely alone in his mission.
Styx is certainly shaping up to be a very accomplished stealth game with quite a few interesting twists to call its own, but I was quite surprised to hear that set to be a digital only release when it arrives for PC, PS4 and Xbox One later this year. Thankfully, with that in mind, Focus know the importance of getting the pricing right and if they do so, this could quite easily find itself in a lot of stealth fans’ download queues.
bunimomike
This sounds genuinely interesting, fella. I have to admit, I knew it by name and nothing else… until now. :-)
Stefan L
I’m literally 100% sure that you read my previous preview and asked about the camera perspective. I’m so absolutely certain because I tried to make sure there was enough new stuff and difference between that preview and this one.
You forgetful old git. ;)
bunimomike
If you wrote better articles, I might remember them!*
*bashes forgetful brain some more*
ron_mcphatty
Ah, a case of jaimais vu, which I learnt all about today!
ron_mcphatty
Hadn’t noticed this before but it sounds excellent! I do like a bit of stealth, hopefully Styx has a well put together story to go with the appealing gameplay, if it does I’ll be sold.