There’s something very fundamental about the fantasy trope of a boy and his pet baby dragon. Elta: Defy All Gods makes that more fearsome than ever, though, as the boy is an already accomplished warrior, and the dragon a diminutive god that’s just rediscovering its true powers.
The game’s opening starts with disaster. Rival gods and factions battle in the Empyreal War, with you stepping into the boots of Ashar to fight back valiantly against a giant Medusa-like sea god. It doesn’t go well, but centuries later, it’s Ashar’s ancestor Victus who proves himself worthy to be the exiled Edinnite race’s champion and fight to restore them. But first he’ll need a god.
Crashing down to the frozen, glacial world of Lerna, it immediately becomes clear which genres Elta: Defy All Gods has taken inspiration from. It blends together expressive 3D brawling platforming through a Metroidvania style world, and there’s a clear sci-fi feel to the run-down, lived in and abandoned industrial complex you explore here.
One interesting tweak here, though, is that you are given a choice of how you want to play the game, choosing between Metroidvania and Adventure game styles – something you’re free to switch between as you play. Afterburner game director and CEO Ian Cofino explained to us what the distinction is:
“We built it from the ground up as a Metroidvania. So I think that’s important, because it’s hard to go the other way around, right? You have to think about the whole structure of the game, the pacing, the levels, the abilities, so all of it was built as a Metroidvania. But what is easier to put a layer on top was the Adventure mode, which is really just more way pointing, more guidance, because players who are not as interested in that and want less guidance are still going to use the story, the map, and environmental cues to try to figure out where to go.
“We were really inspired by Metroid Prime and classic Castlevania games, things like that, and we wanted to see if we could in infuse that into a 3D world, which I think doesn’t get done a lot because of how challenging it is. The scope of the world has to be large. Level guidance is also harder because now you have this new axis. It’s quite challenging. For instance, players don’t often look up. So there’s lots of problems that we’ve been trying to solve, but we think it makes for a really interesting mix of things.”
The art style also immediately stands out, with a scruffy painterly style applied to the underlying 3D character models and environments, and our hero having exaggerated muscular proportions right out of a superhero comic. That’s before you slap plates of armour on him, as well. It’s a little reminiscent to me of Darksiders and the work of Joe Madureira, though approaching it from a different direction.
Ian said, “We’re actually procedurally scattering brush strokes in the environment. So each mesh is made with a pass around it of planes where they have brush strokes on it. I don’t think I’ve seen that application [in games before], usually it’s like a texture or a filter on it, and that gives it, I think, more depth to the strokes and helps enhance the art style.
“One of the key inspirations was John Harris. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with him. He’s a sci-fi painter. So he does book covers and posters and all these different things, but his style is much more warm, soft, pastel, painterly. Whereas oftentimes with sci-fi science fiction, you get cold, clinical, a little bit more sterile. And I think for us, we wanted to lean more into that the pastel muted colour world that invited a bit more warmth than a traditional sci-fi.”
There’s a comic book flair to the combat as well, punches landing with an almighty thwack, a light trail following Victus’ fists, and a halt for emphasis within the animation. It’s chunk and satisfying at its core, but there’s a lot more nuance to come. Once Victus finds the machinery to scavenge, he can engage a Kinetic Drive, building up energy through active combat, which can then be spent of unleashing powerful Lost Art abilities.
It’s a great way of keeping you on the front foot in a fight, even when facing off against more powerful enemies. Yes, there is a dodge and counterattack, which is vital for avoiding damage and breaking through an enemy’s defences, but really you’re looking to string together the simple melee chain until you have enough energy in the Kinetic Drive and can call forth flaming tornadoes, lightning strikes and more.
Ian told us, “Towards the end of the game, when you’ve repaired more of the drive and you’ve gotten more magic upgrades, then you’re doing really crazy things in large fights where you’re just throwing out magic attack after magic attack because you start getting that flywheel going. So it has a nice creeping power fantasy.
“One of the things that I wanted to stray away from was that, in a lot of these types of games, you do cooldown based things. And what ends up happening is you go into a fight and you immediately use all your cooldowns and it totally changes the dynamic of the fight. I really wanted it to be more like you go in and you start to build a rhythm in the combat until you get to this point where you can unleash everything.”
Elta in this early stage at least is much more about growing your traversal abilities. Having rescued the little god, you come face-to-face with the champion of a rival god, who summons their deity to cause the ruins to tremble and start to collapse. Thankfully, Elta grants you a grapple hook ability to latch and drag yourself to floating green orbs. Later, after chowing down on a dead bird, Elta grows and evolves Pokémon style, figuring out how to let you glide for a few moments while he furiously flaps on your back.
Green Spyro, as I teasingly called him when speaking to Ian, is pretty cute. “I’ll take it!” he replied. “We’ve definitely got comparisons of the Xbox 360 era action games. And we’re totally fine with that. There’s a lot of retro influence like Banjo-Kazooie, even though tonally very different. We’re looking at that type of buddy mechanic and growing together and progression and stuff like that.”
Eventually, after getting in your way and trying to impede you several times, you have to fight The Chosen – Herald of the Deep in a furious boss fight. This is the first time I really feel the game pushing me to fight in a particular way, acting as a bit of a skill check for knowing how to time dodged attacks. As The Chosen leaps up out of the water surrounding the platform, their charging attack is clearly signposted, allowing you to dodge and counter to break through their guard meter and then unleash a flurry of blows. I soon got into the flow of kicking them out of the arena, waiting for them to strike and then chipping away at their health.
“There are two main methods of combat,” Ian said, “which is you have your big group dynamics and you have the kind of individual more one-on-one fights, which are with bosses and mini bosses. And then later in the game, enemies that are just naturally stronger. Something within the difficulty modes is that the guard meter changes. So I saw you were crushing it – you were going through pretty easily, dodging, countering – but at the harder difficulties, you have to do that multiple times to break an enemy’s guard. So I think that helps with some of the balancing there.”
Having kicked the “chosen” one’s butt, he goes crying to mummy, summoning the towering sea god to make for a real cliffhanger ending to the demo.
There’s some real promise to Elta: Defy All Gods. Having gone into playing it having not yet seen the announcement trailer, the following hour of action steadily grew on me. The art style initially felt messy until I could appreciate the intention behind it, the combat initially straightforward until I had the Kinetic Drive and a few abilities to propel me forward, and the traversal spread its wings once I found Elta. It’s certainly one for metroidvania fans to keep an eye on, amidst the genre’s resurgence.
Or, if you don’t want to wait, this opening hour to the game will be available to play as a demo from tomorrow, 1st October, across PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
