News
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers asks players to master the art of distance
B
Brian Crecente
It’s at a stage when players are still learning their attack moves and striving to turn the awkward, clunky button-presses of recently taught mechanics into a rhythm of captivating gameplay.
If you’re lucky, or maybe not so lucky, you can guide your character into a dreamlike encounter that starts with you easily dispatching two clueless thugs and ends with a cutscene introduction of a frightening boss and—most likely—a poorly timed strike or dodge that ends your life.
Then you have to start over at a nearby shrine, never to see the boss again (or at least not in the first hour of the game).
The encounter feels like a warning: This is what you’re getting yourself into. This is what you can expect once we stop teaching you and let you take your first wobbly steps into the true heart of the game.
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is being developed by Leenzee Games, a Chengdu, China-based studio founded in 2016. The studio’s aim is to create games that showcase Eastern history and culture, an approach that is clearly evident in Fallen Feathers.
The game takes place in the kingdom of Shu during the late Ming Dynasty, overlaying a strange supernatural disease onto the meticulously recreated backdrop. Players take on the role of the pirate warrior Wuchang, who has lost her memory and become afflicted with the “feathering” disease.
The disease is a mutation that spreads quickly, slowly transforming those who catch it into “grotesque and corrupted creatures” that lose their sense of self and eventually go insane.
In action, this means that the more the player dies, the more the affliction spreads and Wuchang’s encroaching madness grows. Eventually, her death leads to her inner demon spawning where she fell, forcing players to duel the entity when they return to that spot.
That’s just one of the many systems built into the game, adding a level of complexity that’s worth taking the time to master. For instance, the game also features a fairly deep build system that includes bonus-delivering armor sets, pendants, weapons, and weapon enhancements. The armaments themselves drastically change the way Wuchang fights and how you can approach a boss or group of enemies.
Fallen Feathers' combat is intriguing in itself. Instead of relying on the typical block-and-attack routine found in most action-adventure RPGs, the game places much more emphasis on proper distancing. In any form of martial art, judging the distance an enemy can strike from and from which you can attack yourself is typically key to success.
The same is true in Fallen Feathers; misjudge the attack distance of the weapon you’re currently wielding and you’ll fall short, leaving yourself open to a counter. If you go too close, you'll crowd the enemy, making it nearly impossible to deliver a second strike.
Distancing is so important in the game that perfect dodges award players with an offensive bonus. The game also has very few blocks, each of them tied to a specific weapon.
Instead, players need to master the back-and-forth, the circling of combat. You'll need to judge distance, jump away at the last second to avoid quick attacks, and know when to leap in to strike an enemy down.
Wuchang can also make quick use of two weapons during combat, quickly switching between them with a button press, or delivering a powerful draw attack in the right circumstances. While combat is a major part of the game, there’s also quite a bit of exploration, storytelling, and even some light puzzle-solving.
You get a taste of all of that in the first hour or so of the game, which is what players had a chance to check out during the week’s demo. While the game initially can feel overwhelming, by the end of the hour, I felt as if I had started to master the basics of the two-weapon combat and its focus on keeping the proper distance.
Fallen Feathers feels like it will be a punishing though rewarding experience dressed up in an intriguing story steeped in Chinese history and mythology and delivered across a stunning backdrop of lush forests, forgotten temples, and other real-world locations.
You can pre-order Wuchang: Fallen Feathers now on Epic Games Store.