Eternal Strands is a game that says yes more than it says no

A curse befalls all games that try to answer the question, “What if players can do anything they want?” This massive overreach inevitably allows players to do very little of anything at all. Fortunately, Yellow Brick Games took a far more refined approach to their forthcoming third-person RPG, Eternal Strands: “What if players can do anything they want, within these limits?”

Oh, and what if they’re doing it in a mysteriously abandoned, colorful, and fully climbable world stalked by titanic enemies?

When I first tried to play Eternal Strands’ demo, I approached it like a standard third-person action game. My character had ranged spells and a melee attack, and there were enemies in front of me, so I just hit them. And it worked fine—but it didn’t work well, because it turns out Eternal Strands requires you to reach deeper into your imagination if you want to really succeed. You’ve got an array of tools at your disposal, and Eternal Strands expects you to see what they’re capable of.

“It’s a game that encourages exploration of its systems,” says Chief Creative Officer of Yellow Brick Games Mike Laidlaw, best known for being Lead Writer on the epic BioWare RPG, Dragon Age: Origins. “[We want] people poking around in its corners, asking ‘Could I do this? Would it work?’”

Laidlaw, who is first to give credit to the wider teams around him, co-established the 50-person developer Yellow Brick Games in 2021 alongside fellow industry vets Thomas Giroux (Creative Director on The Crew), Jeff Skalski (Producer of Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate), and Frédéric St-Laurent B (Lead Designer on Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate). The team now includes former developers from Ubisoft, Gearbox, and a range of other studios, all hired on the basis that they were interested in making this specific game.

What specific game? “I missed that kind of game where you could clamber up the side of an ogre, or a cyclops, and jam a dagger in its face,” says Laidlaw. “As violent and probably sociopathic as that sounds, I think there’s a joy to living out that fantasy. A little bit ‘superhero’ in a way, but in our case we took a tack I would call more ‘high adventure,’ in the Indiana Jones or The Mummy sense. I was really keen to work on something that wasn’t—and god love them, I worked on them for 20 years—dragons and grimdark, but that sense of derring-do. Maybe the Willow style of fantasy.”

Drawing obvious inspiration from 2005’s PS2 hit Shadow of the Colossus, Eternal Strands combines the more traditional enemy-filled lands of a third-person action game with an enormous, climbable foe that stalks the area, Team Ico-style. That said, Eternal Strands' bright and cheerful color palette sets it apart.

It’s in battling one of these building-high enemies that Laidlaw expands on the player’s freedom. “[Say] it has big, heavy armor—you can fire at the latch points and cause the armor to fall off. You can freeze the armor, and it will change color and become way more brittle so you can shatter it. You can ignore it entirely. If you’ve a strong enough Weaver’s Grasp [spell], you can just rip it off entirely. You can fling things at it. You can try to burn it… It’s like, ‘How do you wanna fight it?’"

Taking these different approaches also creates different results. If you freeze an enemy’s armor and shatter it, rather than break it apart at the joins and have it fall off, the nature of the dropped loot will change too.

"No game is ever going to be a perfect you-can-do-anything-you-want simulator, but Eternal Strands says ‘Yes’ more than it says ‘No,'” says Laidlaw. "Try it, go for it, see what it can do."

That really seems to be the central ethos of Eternal Strands’ development, to say yes more than say no. "If I explode a telekinetic arrow, it leaves a bubble that will launch me, and I can use that to jump super-high," Laidlaw continues. "I can combine my powers—like, there’s one that creates this channel of kinetic force, and another that creates a kind of eruption of fire from [the spot where you aim it]. If you use those together, the fireballs come out, they get caught in that kinetic tunnel, and suddenly you’re firing a cannon!”

Every spell and ability in Eternal Strands works according to physical laws, and they interact with each other accordingly. Yellow Brick hopes this will lead to people experimenting and creating solutions they’d never thought of, much as was seen after the release of Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

But doesn’t Laidlaw worry that this could lead to people figuring out shortcuts, ways to cheese the game? “Enjoy! Have fun!” he responds. “I love the idea that there’s going to be people going, ‘Here’s a ridiculous way to kill this enemy!'”

Sure, but what about post-release when people find exploits the team weren’t expecting—won’t it be devastating to inevitably have to step in and nerf some of those discoveries? “No,” says Laidlaw emphatically, “Eternal Strands isn't competitive. It’s a game that has a story and then it ends. It’s cool! Go ahead! Someone might say, ‘I’ve found a way to kill this thing in one hit!’ Good for you! I hope you have fun! You’re very clever, I’m proud of you.”

There’s part of me hearing this that refuses to believe it. Games have to impose restrictions, don’t they? You need to be funneled correctly! But Laidlaw is determined that Eternal Strands won’t, even citing another example, that players have the ability to climb everything. And it’s true—from the level I’ve played there wasn’t a single thing I couldn’t climb, not a single artificial structure or wall surface to hold me back. You have a stamina bar, which in theory stops you from climbing after a certain point, but even here Laidlaw has a solution. “If you get tired, build an ice wall, climb on it, and rest.”

The only restriction is the actual outer edge of the levels, which the game narratively justifies on the basis that you’re scrying—being sort-of astrally projected from your base—and there’s only a certain range this magical technology can operate within. Beyond that, it seems like the team's hoping you’ll use your freedom to find tricks and cheats.

Eternal Strands isn’t an open world, but rather a collection of large, open levels. Laidlaw is a traditionalist in some sense, at least, wanting to create a game that has a sense of progression, of completing an area and opening up the next, designing the game such that later areas are only reached when you have the tools to enjoy them. “That way there’s something new. There’s a new visual style to see,” says Laidlaw,

With this focus on what Laidlaw calls “open zones” rather than an open world, it seems designed to encourage more experimentation, especially as you’ll choose from your pool of spell types before scrying in. If you find that a combination doesn’t work for you, you can return home, and try again with a different selection. As with everything else, it all seems to be focused on this desire to say “Yes” instead of “No.”

Of course, this is all the ideal version of events, pre-release positivity, albeit rather boldly borne out in the preview level. What remains to be seen is whether this promised freedom is fully realized in the final release of Eternal Strands—and more importantly, whether so much possibility results in a rewarding experience. Games that promise too much often crash the hardest when exposed to reality.

But on the basis of what I’ve played, and the pedigree of the team making it, there’s far more reason to have faith that, on this occasion, the curse can be broken.

Wishlist Eternal Strands on the Epic Games Store today!