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E3 2015 Day 1 Recap – Crossout, King of Wushu, Master of Orion, and More!

E3 2015 Day 1 Recap - Crossout, King of Wushu, Master of Orion, and More! news header

Whalebox Studios

Goliath (Day 1 Indie Surprise!)
 

We went into E3 knowing very little about Goliath, but half our staff had a sinking suspicion that this game is going to bring big things in a small package. After a half hour gameplay demo that saw procedurally generated worlds so vast that even the developers got lost in their own practiced demo, we knew we had something special on our hands.
 

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Goliath follows in the recent trend of craft and survive top-down action games, and intends to push them into a masterful story driven level. We’re talking RPG progression, story impacting quests, faction rivalries, and jump-in jump-out co-op gameplay wrapped with some of the sweetest cartoon mech concepts we’ve ever covered. There’s just so much going on with this game, it’s hard to figure where to start. No actually it’s not. Let’s talk about mechs!
 

Mechs act as a sort of Pokemon system in Goliath, except instead of capturing them you have to do quests to unlock the blueprints, and then gather the parts to build them. Players are able to queue up to three of these bad boys at a time, choosing to jump inside them to unleash all kinds of hell, or play a cat and mouse game by playing in human form with your mech following close behind for the ol’ one two punch. On demo we witnessed a wooden mech, iron mech, and stone mech, each offering unique skills and more surprisingly, interactions with the environment.
 

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One of the coolest features making the procedurally generated world more than a pretty after-thought here is the environment heat system, and its impact on your golums, resulting in some rushed or methodical gameplay adjustments to compensate. If you find yourself hunting for a needle in a haystack in a frozen tundra zone, your mech will begin losing heat over time. This can result in slowing, joints freezing up, and other maladies that might impact your ability to fight effectively. However it can also be used to your advantage! A stone mech in the frozen wasteland will eventually grow icicles offering armor bonuses and lots of spiky points to make your foes think twice about approaching you.
 

The same goes for the hot desert zones, where the wooden mech will eventually go up in flames, hopefully not with you inside it! Since most long distance quests will involve you traveling across multiple locals, including plains, swamps, and other fun gameplay impacting biomes, you will have to build and bring a diverse array of mechs to accomplish your goals. This is especially true since you need to return to base to repair your mechs, meaning you face a war of attrition should you need to traverse a large distance to reach your goals.
 

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At this early build, another sweet feature was on display in the form of the enemy AI. Different creatures react differently to you depending on your mech type, or if you’re in your suit at all. For instance chickens will be friendly to you in human form, but will freak and go all Legend of Zelda on your ass if you show up stomping the ground as a giant stone golum! The angry bull on the other hand will generally ignore you, unless you happen to walk by as a tasty looking piece of tree bark for him to chew! Spiders on the other hand will hide in the shadows unless your fleshy self is present and tempting them with a snack! Also should you be lured by phat loot to take a faction quest that puts you at odds with other factions, you’d best watch your back the next time you swing by said faction’s townships for a chat.
 

Customization seems to be key here, and there’s even multiple playable characters that you’ll be able to deck out with different gadgets and gizmos to set yourself apart. So fear not, co-op gameplay will not feature two clones running around on screen, confusing the players into looking at the wrong place. Craftable weapons can be added onto each mech to unlock new abilities or bulk up your stats as well.
 

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Beyond customizing your characters looks, weapons, traps, mech suits, and mech weapons, you can also build and deck out your base of operations. This involves the typical set-ups like crafting and what not, but eventually you can invite friendly faction members to live there, or even raise pets! This is still a work in progress so we didn’t get a chance to see exactly how it all plays out, but just more features on the bonfire to look forward to when we get our hands on this game!

 
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