‘Skyforge’: Hands-on from E3

Skyforge City

This is the new real-time combat MMO from Russian developers The Allods Team, responsible for a popular Russian MMORPG called Allods Online — Allods is part of the Mail.ru Group, whose subsidiary, My.com, will be publishing the game. The well-known Obsidian Entertainment (Fallout: New Vegas, Neverwinter Nights 2, Knights of the Old Republic II) is also working closely with the Allods Team on the project. Obsidian will be primarily responsible for localization, with a bit of content development, and what sounds like a sort of consultancy role.

The biggest thing Skyforge has going for it is its unique class system, allowing you to switch classes at any time depending on the needs of your party. The team decided to avoid the traditional levels-and-classes schema in favor of something more flexible. They want to avoid a problematic and un-fun system that forces you to slog through the same content over and over because you want to try a different class than the one you originally chose. Eric DeMilt, Development Director of Culturalization for Skyforge at Obsidian, put it this way, “In most MMO’s, you make a critical choice when you have the least knowledge.” There will still be class-specific advancement, but more on that later.

Skyforge Temple

Skyforge places you in the role of an immortal, vying to become a god. In the game universe, the greatest of the gods on your planet has gone missing, causing a power struggle between the lesser gods as they vie for the vacant position. As you rise through the ranks from immortal to champion to god, you will fend off the armies of invading gods from other planets, and fight to gain power and faith from mortals. The worship or adoration of the mortals will be called “Greatness,” and will be some kind of character resource, but there are no real details on that mechanic yet.

It’s a game with an interesting blend of sci-fi and fantasy, featuring both advanced weaponry and swords, both space ships and mythology-inspired monsters. There’s definitely a fantasy-tech aesthetic similar to recent Final Fantasy titles. The environment we fought through was pretty, though a little drab and generic. But there’s plenty of media showcasing very beautiful environments, and very cool looking beasties, so it may have just been a poor choice of quest for such early demo exposure.

Skyforge Fantasy City

The goal is to ship 10 playable character classes with the final game. During E3, there were about five to choose from, including gunslingers, sword-wielding bruisers, and casters of various types. The combat played out very much like a console beat-em-up in the one mission we got our hands on. There were only two of us for the demo, so it’s hard to say how readable the combat may become with a large group, because your special attacks are very flashy, throwing lots of particle effects around — especially the Cryomancer, whose specialty is crowd control and freezing enemies solid. When your special gauge fills up, you have access to an extra-flashy finishing move.

Skyforge Enemy

The “Ascension Atlus” is your character advancement system. It is very reminiscent of Final Fantasy X‘s Sphere Grid in many ways. As mentioned previously, unlike most games, you are not perma-locked into your class, but there are class-specific advancement sections on the Ascension Atlus. So you are entirely able to create a single-class character if you so desire. There are also general advancement sections, which give you the option to boost your core stats instead of, say, learning a new skill for Cryomancer.

All Skyforge players will be together on a single server, so you won’t need to worry about getting on the same one as your buddy if you pick up the game. It will feature your MMORPG staples: solo or group PvE, with PvP as well. There is no stated release date or window yet.

Oh and don’t forget (this one’s for you, Lucas): When someone asks you if you’re a god…