You wouldn’t think it to watch the trailer, but Keiji Inafune insists that Soul Sacrifice has strong autobiographical overtones. While the veteran developer readily admits that he’s never had to go quite so far as to stick his hand down his throat and pull his spinal column out through his mouth and brandish it as a sword, Inafune reveals that he struck upon the theme of sacrifice while reflecting on the career decisions that have brought him to his current role as an independent developer, after years of towing the company line at Capcom.
“I’ve always wanted to do a dark fantasy, but the concept of the sacrifice came up when I left my former job and looked back on my life and rethought the choices I’d made to get to that position,” explains Inafune. “I realised that I’d made sacrifices to get to that point and that made me think of the sacrifices that are necessary in life and the path that those sacrifices create.”
However, unlike Inafune, the decisions taken and sacrifices made by the player throughout this Vita-exclusive action-RPG will not lead to the founding of an independent video game company. Instead, they will influence how much power the customisable protagonist is able to wield and, ultimately, how noble or corrupt a sorcerer they will become.
The concept of the sacrifice came up when I left my former job and looked back on my life and rethought the choices I’d made.
The sacrifices are not just of a personal nature, though. While the wince-inducing sacrifice of a hand or eyeball will grant access to spells of varying destructive power, the most common choice to be made is with regard to the hostile denizens of Souls Sacrifice’s twisted worlds.
Once defeated, the broken creatures can either be offered in sacrifice, a process from which great power can be derived, or laid to rest, thus freeing their tortured souls. It’s a question that’s not unlike the harvest/rescue mechanic posed by Bioshock’s Little Sisters, but where those otherwise innocent infants were victims of Rapture’s peculiar ecosystem, the grotesque, once-human antagonists of Soul Sacrifice are creations of their own making, contorted by avaricious over-use of the same power afforded to the player.
Inafune hopes that the emotional kicker in this instance will come from the delivery method of the back story for each genus of creature. Instead of a static screen or entry in a bestiary that can be easily ignored, a tale of woe is spun via short sentences of text overlaid on the action as the player engages the beast in mortal combat. Subsequent encounters with bloated harpies or deformed minotaurs reveal more of the story of each and at the end of the fight the once aggressive assailant will become a pitiful shade of its former self and beg to be released from its torment. Whichever way the player leans in deciding the fallen creature’s fate will affect not only the power they can harness, but their path through the game, as different levels will open up depending on the choices made. The levels here are represented as chapters in a book that recounts the tales of former sorcerers, read and relived by the protagonist while their corporal body sits imprisoned in a cell.
It’s not as simple as making a choice one way and then making another choice the other way five times in a row
“It’s not as simple as making a choice one way and then making another choice the other way five times in a row; it’s not that mathematical,” explains Inafune. “Every time you’re given a different back story and so the more you find out about the monsters that you’re defeating, the more you might feel sorry for them.”
This constant requirement to re-examine your motivations extends to other players, too. Soul Sacrifice features ad hoc four-player co-op in which alliances with friends or strangers can be forged and broken as each player weighs-up the benefits of having other players fighting alongside them against the potential power to be harnessed by sacrificing them for their own ends, a process that the sacrificial victim has little say in – except perhaps to offer pleas to the other players over voice chat.
“There will be different rewards if you are sacrificed, but really what I want to illustrate is the emotional aspects of whether you are the one being sacrificed or are sacrificing another, such as feelings of guilt and different motivations that would lead you to do that,” highlights Inafune.
The headline gore and gristle of Soul Sacrifice might have already ensured it will be forever referred to as “that game where you pull your spine out through your mouth”, but its customisable protagonist, varied spell set and ample replay options suggest there’s more to its DNA that wanton, bloody violence; it appears that a tale of unlikely hope and irrepressible despair lurks beneath its adult-rated, mutilated facade.
Soul Sacrifice launches next spring exclusively for Vita, pricing details have not yet been revealed but in all likelihood it won’t cost an arm and a leg. Perhaps just an eye and a foot.
Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com
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