BattleCry Preview

The free to play market is generally met with an uneasy feeling of distrust, or a dismissive roll of the eyes, in many corners of the gaming community. Yet, for all of the negative stories that we see, there are also some standout moments; League of Legends and Defence of The Ancients 2 are giants in the eSports realm, Team Fortress 2 has an everlasting popularity and many people have good things to say about Warframe, especially since its appearance on the PS4.

It’s no surprise that other developers and publishers want in on the action, with varying successes and failures so far. Bethesda’s first foray comes courtesy of Battlecry Studios and their eponymous first game, BattleCry.

http://youtu.be/3A6R6IWPTeo

Though a free to play game, there’s a concerted effort to create something which has a lot of quality and polish to it. It starts with the game’s concept and backstory, which places BattleCry within a curious alternate history where World War One came to pass much earlier than it did in the real world.

As a consequence of the bloodshed, the global powers came together to try and ensure nothing like this could happen again. The use of gunpowder in warfare was banned as part of the treaties but further to this, to stop wars spreading and ravaging countries, dedicated warzones were set up as places for countries to go and settle their disputes once diplomacy failed.

What this means for the game is that 32 players are dropped into an arena of battle and have to duke it out with melee weapons and crossbows. The conflicts occur between three world factions, with the Royal Marines and the Cossacks the two to have been revealed so far, with victories and losses adding up to a global War Effort map that sees territory changing hands back and forth.

On the ground though, the game is fast paced and quite easy to pick up and play with a fairly close third person camera. Each side features five classes, the Enforcer, Gadgeteer, Archer, Brawler and Duelist, with abilities which fit into some fairly traditional archetypes. The Duelist, for example, is focussed on stealth, while the Gadgeteer and Archer are all about ranged combat and the Enforcer and Brawler love to get up close and personal.

Across the board, the alternate history has pushed the character designs and abilities into the realms of Steampunk, with the Royal Marines’ Brawler featuring a big mechanical arm and his fellow Archer using a bizarre multi-stringed longbow. Quite wonderfully, the Enforcer’s sword is able to double up as a shield, spreading open to provide cover from incoming fire. However, it was the Duelist’s rapid attacks and ability to cloak for a short period of time that stole my heart.

At this stage, the game is still rather early in development, with an open beta not planned until 2015. With the E3 build, the game featured just these two factions and only the Enforcer, Duelist and Archer classes on each side, and with player counts well below the planned 32-player maximum. As such, it was difficult to get a real feel for the way that character classes would work together as a team, and it quickly turned into more of a free for all, as people tried out the classes’ various special attacks and worked up to earning their character’s ultimate.

While it’s difficult to get a true feel for the combat, then, everything else was in place to demonstrate the fluid nature of the game. Getting around the levels was nice and speedy, with the ability to grapple to certain points on the map and quickly get to a higher vantage point, or cross a gap, a simple and effective pleasure.

Additionally, there are some nice touches to try and foster a sense of community and a fairness to the points awarded to you during play. Kills, for example, are currently awarded to the person that deals the most damage, rather than the person that lands the final blow, while there is a period of time after each match in which hostilities have ended, the victory has been decided and you can go and salute the players on both teams who excelled. Thankfully, they’ll be avoiding the conundrum of balancing paid upgrades by keeping Gold for customisation options only and using the Iron that you earn in game for upgrades and so on.

However, what I feel really ties this all together is the wonderful art direction that goes hand in hand with the Spaghetti Western style music. Victor Antonov, who was previously the Visual Design Director on Dishonored, has lent a similar feeling to BattleCry. It feels like a blend of that aesthetic and the graphics from Team Fortress 2, with the map on show a dusty industrial ruin, the better for the ribbon-like arcs of blood to spring from.

It’s still very early days for BattleCry at this time and there’s plenty yet to be revealed, but I found myself quite enjoying my brief look at the game. There’s certainly plenty to prove in terms of the combat itself, but with a rather unique backstory and a quite delightful art style behind it, I’m curious to see how this one turns out.