It’s not that I dislike Soulslikes. It’s that they dislike me. More specifically, they don’t appreciate my complete lack of skill when it comes to unforgiving combat. My timing is awful. I can’t dodge, I can’t parry, and I can’t aim well, either. To sum up, I’m terrible at them. If there was ever a Soulslike I wish I could master, it would be 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Lies of P.
Recently, at Gamescom, I got to check out Lies of P, and it was immediately evident that the world created within the game is one of its most appealing features. Based on the fable of Pinocchio, players take on the rol♓e of Gepetto’s puppet and brave the city of Krat, which has fallen victim to madness.
As I ran through the dirty streets littered with flyers and abandoned items, getting jumped by various annoying animatronic pupp๊ets, the environment felt incredibly detailed. I couldn’t help but admire the setting with its ornate decor and striking designs. I liked that you could dig around and find bits of lore from collectables, and more than once, I stopped to study something more carefully just to appreciate it a little more. The game draws you in.
“We got a lot of feedback that our game reminds [players] of the Victorian era,” director Choi Ji-Won tells me🅘 about the elegant setting I found so interesting. “We actually based it on the Belle Époque-era in France and many other European countries. This is a time and era that is not easilyౠ found in other games.”
With so many Soulslikes following in the wake of the success of Demon’s Souls, it’s difficult not to draw comparisons bet꧙ween them. Lies of P feels less punishing than other games in the genre, but that hasn’t stopped fans from drawing comparisons to Bloodborne, especially because of the gothic setting and similar mechanic♈s.
“We feel very honoured to be 🐟compared to Bloodborne, which is a great game,” Ji-Won says. “We differentiate ourselves from other Soulslike games with our diverse combat system, and we aim to make it friendlier and easier. We basically made the game so that at the beginning, it would be a little bit easier, friendlier, and more inviting. Then it slowly builds up and gets more complicated.”
It sounds like a Soulslike with training wheels. Things start relatively easy, then as you progress and the wheels come off, the real challenge comes in. This approach could make it an ideal option for newcomers toꦛ the genre, myself included. I won’t take my failed attempt at the demo as a sign I will be bad at it, as I was thrown into the thick of it in Chapter Three rather than start at the beginning with all the handholding. I’m going to chalk my many deaths up to that. It’s totally not my inadequate skill at fault here.
There was too much to grasp in the short time I played, and I was overwhelmed by the different attacks and the sheer number of options inꦍ the menus to fiddle with things. I’m sure others will be absolutely delighted with the weapon assembly system. Given that I was already out of my depth I was struggling to understand it all fully, but I can see that it’s going to be something players adore. The players that can aim, evade, and actually kill bosses, of course.
An🥀other way in which Lies of P aims to stand out from the crowd of Soulslikes is with its exciting take on the tale of Pinocchio, “That’s one of the reasons we wanted to bring in this phenomenal story of Pinocchio, to attract more people with a story that is well-known and familiar to everybody.” The team wanted to draw on the much darker original fable, and they liked the idea of using lying as an element within the game while realising that the adventure of Pinocchio becoming hu🀅man fitted well with what they wanted to do.
These stories are often retold over and over, and they tend to change with each retelling. That’s why Pinocchio's original, more sinister tale has become increasingly lighthearted in recent years, though it’s still creepy at its core, even when you think about the tamer versions.
“To take this familiar story for many people and to reapproach it and add a layer on top of it, we’re actually happy that we made that choice.🍒 I think it works pretty well,” Ji-Won says, expressing how mu🔯ch the team has enjoyed fans asking about the story, before hinting at an interesting ending, hopefully something that throws back to the original story. “We encourage our players to really consider what choice they’re going to make and to play the game through to the very, very end.”
You can’t think of Pinocchio without acknowledging how his nose grows when he lies. For Lies of P, the loading screen bar is replaced with Pinocchio’s nose, which grows as it loads, alongside the words ‘Now Lying’. Ji-Won teased that there are other elements of Pinocchio's growing nose when he lies in the main game, but he wouldn’t reveal what they were before launch.
Soulslike games don’t usually make the narrative easily accessible, instead leaving players to piece together threads of lore and story from different interactable items and NPC conversations with visual storytelling in specific scenarios. However, Lies of P offers a clear storyline throughout. Ji-Won tells me that balancing traditional storytelling with the Soulslike genre was not a challenge for the team, a𝓀s being such huge fans of the genre gave them a good understanding of how best to make thi🎃s work.
Lies of P was praised for how well the demo ran on Steam Deck, and Ji-Won tells me that ensuri😼ng the game ran well was important for the team, “Not only for Steam Deck but tech in general. It was really important for us that the game plays well on every platforꦦm we’re offering.”
Fan feedback after the demo helped improve the game, as one aspect that was heavily criticised previously was the dodging mechanic. This led to the team altering the time and d♎istance to fix it, making it feel far more fluid. Another aspect the team worked hard on was the balance between audio and visual cues to try and make the game more accessible for players. “One thing that we tried to make sure we did was to have a balance between audio and visual elements. If you’re someone [for whom the] audio part is difficult, then you will have enough visual elements, and the other way around,” Ji-Won says.
Lies of P offers up an exciting, intriguing world that takes a beloved children’s fairytale back to its grim roots to weave a surprising new narrative. With the focus on making the game easier at the start, this could be the perfect introduction to the Soulslike genrﷺe for many novices, so now I’ll have to see if I can survive long enough to see if his nose grows.
🌠Lies of P is launching on September 19 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
