GreedFall review – Xbox One

Today we bring you our GreedFall analysis on Xbox One. New RPG proposal from Focus Home Interactive, which this time comes developed by Spiders. GreedFall is, saving technical and budgetary distances, BioWare in its purest form. A complex RPG, full of possibilities, where our decisions mark the course of history and in which our partners have their own personality and character. Without more presentations, we let you enjoy our GreedFall analysis on Xbox One.

Spiders, Parisian talent

Spiders is the creative developer of GreedFall; a study that, with its independent games, has been demonstrating the great talent it possesses. Spiders’ adventures began when a group of industry veterans and newbies decided to join and create the Silverfall game. Since then, the study has pleasantly surprised us with all its proposals. Bound by Flame, The Technomancer and the Sherlock Holmes saga (Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper) are some of the projects found on his resume. They even collaborated in Gray Matter, a puzzle game that moved us to the University of Oxford and that saw the light exclusively on consoles for Xbox 360.

GreedFall is the last of its projects to date, but we are sure that they already have something new at hand. After all, a few months ago the French developer and distributor BigBen Interactive completed the purchase process for Spiders. This distributor has a profile very similar to Focus Home Interactive. Among his upcoming proposals we will find Werewolf: The Apocalypse and the role-playing video game based on the Vampire universe: The Masquerade, which will be developed by Big Bad Wolf (The Council). Nor is it the first purchase of studies of this profile made by BigBen Interactive, because a few months ago it was also done with Cyanide Studios (Call of Cthulhu).

GreedFall, pure essence Dragon Age

“The era of the Old World is coming to an end. The continent is polluted, overpopulated and devastated by a deadly and incurable pandemic. Its inhabitants succumb to despair.

But there is a faint ray of hope on the horizon: they have discovered an island, remote and hidden. Teer Fradee … A land safe from the plague of malichor, a refuge full of life and wild nature away from the hand of man. The island promises riches, but it also represents the only hope of mankind to find the cure for malichor. During your search for the cure, explore a new world in this hidden island that overflows magic with settlers, mercenaries and treasure hunters, ”we can read on the official website.

Welcome to the magical world of Teer Fradee.

GreedFall is a third-person RPG that takes us to a new, rich and magical world. The title presents a diplomat or diplomat, depending on the sex we have chosen, whose main mission will be to travel to the land of Teer Fradee to find the cure for the pandemic that is ravaging the world. But your mission will not be simple. To achieve this, our protagonist must complete all kinds of missions, act as a diplomat and mediate between the different factions faced. In addition to, sometimes, making difficult decisions that will impact history.

Spiders’ proposal immerses us in some mechanics that, to the fans of the genre, will remind the Dragon Age, although demonstrating at the same time that the game has its own essence. Our main objective in GreedFall will be to find the cure for malichor, the disease that is plaguing the world of Spiders. To do this, we will have to discover new places and complete the main and secondary missions that are being opened. Without delving too much into them, because it is much better that you discover it blindly, we will only say that Spiders has managed to create a very interesting world and missions that, far from looking heavy, we would like to complete.

These missions will be the most varied. We will have some side missions that will consist of finding characters, discovering crimes, acting as a smuggler and much more. Some will be really interesting, because they will not consist of simple landfill missions, but in deeper and more complex plots. It may happen that what begins with an apparent suicide becomes more complicated and we have to act as true detectives. Spiders has experience in considering detective patterns and has taken advantage, intelligently and pleasantly, to implement them in his new title.

In addition to the main missions, which will be more relevant in the face of history. In any case, we doubt that you will get bored and it is likely that you will enter into that completist spirit, so typical of role-playing games, of wanting to know everything, research everything and discover all the secrets hidden in GreedFall.

Although our character is diplomatic, not all missions will be solved with good words. And then we will have to enter into combat. Spiders has achieved a fairly fluid combat, in real time, in which we can use both white weapons and firearms. Our companions will be of great help, because it will be frequent for them to take care of different enemies while we take care of ours, cleaning the area. Depending on the class we have chosen (which we will talk about later), you will be more skilled in some weapons or others. The title offers varied enemies, which can be from human factions that cause us problems to original native monsters of Teer Fradee.

The combat is simple, but well executed and will not cause us great problems.

The combat will offer us the possibility to dodge or make a counterattack to the enemies. We will even have a special attack, Fury, which will be very useful for us in the moments of greatest tension. Also sometimes we can pause the fight and choose the movement that suits us. So we will have interesting possibilities to face our rivals, being able to combine to our liking the use of certain weapons, with traps and with movements that stun them. Despite this, you will see that the fighting is quite simple and does not offer more possibilities of action than these that we have mentioned.

With all these elements, Spiders manages to create fluid confrontations, which will not cause us too many problems and in which we can exploit the different possibilities of facing enemies. But, yes, if we meet someone with the red skull symbol, it would be better if we run away, because that will mean that they have a fairly high level and that we will not be rivals for them.

GreedFall promotes exploration and invites us to explore all the nooks of the maps, looking for chests with objects, ammunition or clothing. In addition, if we snoop well, we can find paths that help us get from one point to another, without resorting to confrontations. For this we can also use stealth, which will also be useful for sneaking into Faction territories with which we don’t get along too well. But Spiders fails to implement it too well. It does not work as it should, unlike other titles of the distributor, such as A Plague Tale: Innocence, it does not work as it should and can give us problems. Fortunately we will not use it too many times.

Rich and varied RPG elements

As soon as we begin our adventure, we can choose the sex and design of our protagonist. And we will do it in a very original moment, everything must be said, because we will be in front of a painter who will be making our portrait. Portrait that will progress as we choose their physical characteristics. However, it must be said that the game does not offer too many possibilities in terms of customizing our character.

At this time we can also define their main classes and talents. GreedFall presents three classes to choose from: Warrior (oriented to close combat), Technique (oriented to control the battlefield) or Magic (to use distance spells). Each with its special characteristics and its recommended Talents and Attributes.

We will create our character in a very original scene: while an artist draws our portrait.

In GreedFall, as we complete missions and fight, we will get skill points, which we can invest in three fundamental elements. The first of these are the aforementioned Talents; Very interesting skills to move forward in the story. We will find the possibility of improving the Charism (which will be very useful for haggling merchants), forcing locks or handicrafts, ideal for making weapons and armor.

This will be quite interesting for the conversations, because certain skills will allow us to turn in our favor (such as Charisma itself). Or even in the missions; For example, examining a corpse will not be the same if we have decided to strengthen our Science or other abilities. Spiders raises a range of quite interesting options, which will invite us to want to unlock all we can and try them. The diversity of Talents will also enhance our desire to replay it, because we will often ask ourselves what would have happened if the points had been reversed in another or in what other way the mission could have been overcome.

The second is the Attributes, the physical characteristics of our character: precision of weapons, strength, constitution or Fury, the special attack. And finally, we can also reverse these points in the improvement of weapons or traps. As you can see, GreedFall offers us a very interesting range of options in which to invest our skill points. But you must be careful to ration them, because it will cost to get them.

One of the most interesting aspects that GreedFall has introduced at the playable level is the use of weapons. Because, in this case, being able to use better ones will not depend on our level, but on our investment in the attributes. The more attribute points we have, the better weapons we can access. We must also look at the weapons that our partners have equipped, because it will be our job to change them and provide them with better ones.

In regards to us, we can move forward and find better weapons or strengthen those we already have with the objects and elements that we find. In a very similar way to what we saw in Vampyr, along the map we will have scattered work tables, where we can improve our equipment. And not only weapons will be improvable, but also all our clothing. GreedFall presents very well that dynamic so typical of the role-playing games of wanting to continue moving forward to find new objects or weapons that are increasingly useful to us, without it being heavy to do so.

The missions will be very different according to our Attributes and Talents, inviting us to replayability.

Partners with their own will

One of the great successes of GreedFall is in the design of colleagues so varied and interesting that it brings us. In total, we can recruit up to five characters, each belonging to one of the factions of the game. Kurt, Vasco, Siora, Petrus and Aphra will give us different skills, which will be more or less useful depending on the situations.

For example, Kurt is our loyal squire and belongs to the Warrior class, so he is more focused on brute force and close combat. On the contrary, Siora will be more useful to us with her magician powers, while Aphra specializes in science and the use of explosives. Both we and our partners will have several statistics that will improve as we move forward: melee, defense, shooting and general statistics. So it will be very useful for us to compare them with each other, to see what each one can give us according to which situations and which one will suit us best.

The different characteristics of the partners will not only affect the fighting, but also the development of the plot. Each one will belong to a different faction and that, fortunately, will affect history, our decisions and actions. For example, if we want to visit the Governor of a faction that is confronted with some of our partners, it is unlikely that they will want to accompany us. Either because they are reluctant to meet that faction or because their presence may not have the effects we seek.

These characters will also propose secondary missions, which will allow us to get to know them and their respective factions a little better. And the fact of attending or neglecting these missions will influence the story, so we better take care of them, give them the necessary attention and rotate them to take them on the team.

Spiders manages to do a very good job with the features and design of our companions. The team achieves that we want to be interested in them and know them more, because both their design and characters as the metaverse of the game are attractive to the player. Thanks to the missions and conversations we have with these characters, we will know their ideas regarding conflicts, their pregame history and the problems that will occur during the game. What will help in the face of immersion and soak up more of history.

Spiders recreates the political and religious reality for his game.

Those who are regulars of Focus Home Interactive games will notice that “European touch” in history; one that is characterized by presenting us with raw, mature and realistic moments, faithful to the moment they want to represent. Maturity that we will see in key moments, such as executions, confrontations with characters or even in our personal or loving relationships with them. Without going into details, we will say that Spiders offers quite interesting possibilities of romance that, without reaching what BioWare supposed, are curious enough to want to be intimate with them.

A visual design that surrounds us

As a good Focus Home Interactive game, GreedFall offers a very good visual design. The world designed by Spiders is vast, full of possibilities, based on a very clear and marked 17th century. The study already commented that he wanted to take advantage of this era because he was not too exploited in video games and the truth is that he gets a brutal recreation. As a good game of the distributor in question, GreedFall sweats art and we will see it in the pictures of the houses, the design of buildings, the ideas of the factions and in the costumes of the characters. The design is likely to remind you, sometimes, of Assassin’s Creed or even Hellblade.

The big cities will be full of characters that we can talk to. And, although most answer us with the typical predetermined phrases, they will give the title a lot of life. In addition, in GreedFall every character and enemy has a story. And it is very well posed so that we, as explorers that we will be, are eager to know more about that New World.

Lighting plays a very important role in GreedFall. Baroque painting, dominant in the seventeenth century, is very present in the tones of the game. We will find long planes, full of depth and a very important use of light. The color palette is not saturated and plays a lot with the chiaroscuros. The works of the Baroque, like the design of GreedFall, seeks to convey life and very dynamic images.

The world of GreedFall is semi-open; It will offer us different areas and ample freedom in each of them. Despite this, the different areas we will visit will be quite large and will be very well designed visually. Spiders wants us to know the time in its fullness and offers us very different areas from each other. We will have from ports, to wooded areas. Native, sparsely populated areas and large developing cities. Luckily we will have fast travel points between them.

Baroque techniques, including chiaroscuro, have marked the spectacular visual design.

But what is most striking is that clearly Spiders has been inspired by real cultures for his project. For example, the area that belongs to the Bridge Alliance is clearly inspired by Muslim culture, while Thélème has Christian roots and the Teer Fradee Insulars remind us of native tribes. Spiders has managed, quite intelligently, to move real political and religious conflicts into a fictional world, giving the game an adult touch that we’ve been missing for some time. In Greedfall we will understand that we cannot save them all, that mediating between such entrenched conflicts is not easy.

The other side of the coin is in its technical section, which is also typical of Focus Home Interactive. It is true that it does not present serious defects and that the loading times are much shorter than in other titles of the house, such as those of Vampyr or Call of Cthulhu. But it is also that the game is not as polished as it should, especially in terms of its animations. In addition the houses are practically identical to each other, both in design and in shape, except for the color of the walls.

Of course, the music is spectacular. And perhaps the fans of Focus Home Interactive are familiar, because behind the soundtrack is Olivier Deriviere, composer of many other games in the house, such as Vampyr, The Council, The Technomancer or more recently A Plague Tale: Innocence. If you are not regulars of the company, it may also sound like you, because Deriviere also took care of the soundtracks of Remember Me, Get Even and Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. Luckily we will know about him shortly, because he will also bring us the music of Dying Light 2.

As Spiders confirmed, there are several finals available and the duration ranges between 30 and 45 hours. Naturally, this depends entirely on you, on how complete you are and on the time it takes you to do according to what missions. But, in any case, you have game for a while. The title comes with voices in English and subtitles in Spanish. In addition, each character will have different accents, depending on the area they come from.

The visual design of Focus Home Interactive is still present in GreedFall.

Conclusion: Greedfall fills the void left by Bioware

To finish our GreedFall analysis on Xbox One, we will say that the game is everything that lovers of this type of role seek. The game presents us with a good playability, many options in terms of character creation, a rich world full of possibilities and very interesting companions. It is true that it has the great failure of all Focus Home Interactive games: a technical section that does not reach what many expect. But that this does not throw you back, because it is a very good game. Ideal to fill the void that has left the purest BioWare.

The game represents the quality of those medium-term games, current AA, so full of talent and that we have missed. So do not hesitate and enter the mysterious lands of Teer Fradee, because they will surely conquer you.