Hands-On: Folklore Impressions
Posted: July 16th, 2007, 7:01
Hands-On: Folklore Impressions
I've ruminated on it. Given it a couple of hours to sink in. I reserve the right to rescind my statement at any point between now and its American release. But I think Folklore might be the most beautiful game I've ever seen.
While many of you might disagree, it gets an automatic elevation in assessment by not being set in the future, nor a traditional high fantasy world. Instead each of its seven worlds—of which I saw two—are developer Game Republic's interpretation of Western fantasy ideas, with a pronounced lilt towards Celtic imagery, as filtered by English fairy tales. Like the elves with luminous skin and pink ears, haughty angular aliens, who live in each of the worlds and act as your guides. I would talk to each one in turn, even though I'd read their simple gameplay instructions already, just to see the camera zoom in on their models as they spoke.
Do you know how in older Japanese games it is common to have one really gorgeous character portrait that is referred to when someone is speaking, while the gameplay characters are usually smaller and less intricate? Imagine if someone made a game where every character model looked as good as one of those lovely manga watercolors. Because that's what Folklore looks like.
Part of what makes the art direction so sturdy are the two themes balanced against each other: stereotypical protagonists (one moody girl and a fey journalist) in a traditionally English fairy tale setting, with leering trolls and incongruously assembled mechanical hobgoblins clad in fluted metal armor and flying leather straps with clanking buckles. (The materials physics are top shelf.) And the thing that clutched at me, made me flush, was the male protagonist's default
gait: he sidles along with his hands in his duster pockets, barely concerned with the tromping circus of spiny enemies he'll soon be combating by evoking the captured spirits of other fairy tale creatures. It's a little bit steampunk and a little bit Alice in Wonderland, although I'm told it's set in the present day.
To capture those glowing spirits of the imps you dispatch (the better to wield their powers to your own end), you grasp them with a licorice rope of glowing energy, then whip back the Sixaxis controller, like some lasso-wielding Old West Ghostbuster. Once captured, you can map your new power to one of the four face buttons, expending mana to instantly summon the spirit. Some will attack, like the translucent giant who springs out of your back to lob an exploding mortar from his iron cannon, while others protect you in a sphere of energy. As far as I could tell, your only attacks come from captured spirits, but of course you start the game with at least one. (You'd be otherwise
offenseless.)
Folklore is the sort of action game that I rarely play.
(Although I am questioning if I should have spent more time with Devil May Cry, a previous Yoshiki Okamoto game.) But it is likely I will play it from start to finish when it arrives later this year, simply to see all of the art Game Republic has created, even if the gameplay itself is pedestrian.
Joel Johnson
Author: Brian Crecente
Category: e307 folklore Hands-On Impressions omg! Original PS3 Top
Publish Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 17:00:46 EDT
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Source: Kotaku
