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You place a steel bar, white hot in places, on your anvil.
You decide exactly where on the hunk of molten metal you want to hit.
You angle your hammer in the precise direction to manipulate the steel.
Finally, you strike.
You reheat the steel.
The metal shifts, changes.
You find the perfect angle.
Blacksmithing in video games is, more often than not, a matter of pressing A near the anvil.
Most of the time you dont even watch a cutscene, you simply craft an iron dagger or 50.
Sufficiently leveled up, you then move to the enchantment table and go again.
Blades of Firechanges this.
Its the first game Ive played to take a blacksmithing-first approach to gameplay.
Even Fables rhythmic smithing cant hold an anvil to it.
That guided us through the whole process.
Forging follows a bar system.
A simple broadsword may require you to balance the bars all to a similar level; a straight line.
Something more complicated, like a flamberge, could be a complex waveform.
Every strike of the hammer moves the bars.
The area you strike will be flattened, and the metal pushed to the sides.
If you angle the hammer to push left, the metal will be pushed in that direction.
If you adjust the strength of your blow, youll push less metal.
And, of course, the colder the metal gets, the more difficult it is to manipulate.
We took it almost as a challenge for ourselves, Alvarez explains.
Are we capable of building something like this?
“That intimate relationship between you and your weapons was a very interesting concept.”
Aside from the mechanics, Alvarez and his team wanted to nail thefeelof forging.
We wanted something that allows you to feel the sweat of the forge, he says.
But here, the degradation is as deep as the forging.
This isnt some Breath of the Wild-esque system where your sword just shatters into pieces.
Every blow will cause your weapon to do a little less damage.
If youre stabbing, the point will degrade.
If youre slashing, the sides will degrade.
Theres a point (pun very much intended) to the individual aspects of each weapon, too.
Enemies will be weak to certain weapons, or even just specific attacks from certain weapons.
Thus, the combat controls need to be a bit different to most games.
X swings an uppercut, damaging your opponent from below.
Square swings from your left, into their right-hand side.
Triangle is a blow from above.
Circle, you guessed it, attacks their left-hand side.
This complex iteration of physics-based Soulslike combat was the only option, according to Alvarez.
A big red outline tells you to switch weapons.
Amber probably means your weapon is degrading.
Green is for go.
You know, like traffic lights.
But its not distracting.
“It’s like a mechanical watch.
All the elements of Blades of Fire complement one another.
The systems are clever, each one encouraging you to engage with the next.
Thats a technical way of describing an incredibly engaging gameplay loop that always leaves you wanting more.
Your prized halberd breaks in the middle of a fight with a poisonous treeman?
Find an alternative route of attack, or head back to the forge and loop back and try.
You keep losing to a regenerating troll?
The exploration is brilliant, with myriad shortcuts through even the smallest towns.
We’re long time fans of Frank Franzetta and movies like Excalibur from John Boorman, Alvarez says.
All this fantasy excites us.
you’re free to’t imagine how satisfactory it is to tackle this long, complex development.
During most of the development you don’t see it, you don’t feel it.
It’s like a mechanical watch.
And the world is brilliant too.
Aside from the gripping monsters, the NPCs you meet are exceptional.
Dark, funny, well-designed, they have it all in perfectly-forged spades.
Protagonist Aran is the only let down from the first three hours.
