Greedfall (2019) (PC) (Spiders)
0I have a soft spot for the inexplicably named French developer Spiders. It's a comparatively small company with big ambitions, and since releasing the endearingly amateurish Mars: War Logs in 2013 the studio has been persistently iterating on its budget-level take on that particular modern party-based, story-centric RPG formula most commonly associated with genre giant Bioware.
After the fantasy-themed Bound By Flame and Wars Logs sequel The Technomancer comes Greedfall, yet another significant step forward for Spiders in terms of technology as well as gameplay mechanics. Greedfall's environments are by far the most expansive and open-ended the studio has produced thus far, and there's a lushness and stylistic identity to the pseudo-17th century setting which make the game stand out among its more graphically advanced competitors on the market.
Once a regrettably dull tutorial area has been taken care, the game opens up considerably by whisking the character away to strange new continent filled with monsters, native tribes and (inevitably) evil Western invaders with a penchant for religious fanaticism. The strong emphasis on exploration of unknown lands has thematic overlaps with games like Risen 2 and Ys VIII, but the thorny subject matter of colonialism is much more front and center in Greedfall (befitting a game with pretentions to emulate serious story-heavy AAA RPGs).
The combat will feel instantly familiar to anyone who has played a Spiders game before, and while the mechanics are never as interesting as, say, the original Dragon Age there's nonetheless a rhythmic finesse and satisfactory weight to the hacking and slashing which separate this game from the simpler action RPGs out there.
Unremarkable writing and dodgy voice acting have been constants throughout the Spiders ludography so far - a rather glaring issue for a studio trying to emulate Bioware - and Greedfall is sadly no exception. That being said, the massive improvements in world design are almost enough to make up for the game's obvious budgetary constraints (as well as any nuance lost in translation), and I'm definitely interested in gathering my party and venturing forth into this undiscovered country.