Third person hack and slash titles are a genre that would appear to be hiding in the shadows as of late, not that they
have really made an effort to work their way into the limelight. We've had Berserker on the Dreamcast, Rune on the PC, and with a good amount of
rationalization, combined with a liberal dose of alcohol, you may
even be able to convince yourself that the Zelda series is nothing more than a hack and slash romp, but by and large we just haven't really seen a whole lot of games
in this genre that have warranted our attention. Now it would seem that Conspiracy Games and developer Starbreeze Studios are
working on making an entry into the realm of third person sword slashing
that may catch our eyes on the XBox with Enclave.
The back story to Enclave revolves around there having been a war faught
on a grand scale in the distant past, but an extremely powerful wizard walks onto the scene and
casts a spell that creates a huge rift separating the forces of good and evil who were waging war beneath him. This rift remains in existence for a good, long time but
as time passes the rift begins to weakens and both sides know it. Now the dark, evil side whose lands were ravaged after the rift was formed are itching for a little bit of
misplaced aggression and are chomping at the bit to go crack some skulls of those on the side of good who managed to create a
Utopist society for themselves. With the rift almost gone both sides see the writing on the wall, and know that war is
inevitable and are now preparing for it.
Players can choose which side they wish to fight for and doing so will effect the
outcome of the game. It would appear that plot will be playing a strong role in
Enclave, as there are expected to be a good number of cutscenes and scripted events strewn about the different levels to keep the narrative flowing. All along the way players will have plenty of choices in what they want to do, much of which will effect how the story unfolds.
When setting out to go to war players will have a few character classes to choose from on both the good and evil side of the coin. The forces of good have knights,
archers, wizards, druids, engineers, and boar riders among their ranks, while the dark side has ogres, assassins, sorceresses,
liches, bombardiers, and wolf riders to choose from. While a number of these classes fighting for good or evil may appear to virtually be mirror images of one another, the developers promise that the
classes on both sides of the ethical line will have their own idiosyncrasies so to avoid this and allow them to stand out more.
Regardless of what character class you choose there will be a sizeable arsenal of weapons to suit up with in the game. There will be a mix of melee and ranged
weapons to choose from with the expected assortment of axes, swords, crossbows, and large, heavy blunt objects, not to mention a
range of armor and shields. Besides these there are also a variety of exceptionally large siege weapons for breaking down walls with, such as catapults (here's to hoping for the trebuchet). This
can be used to open holes in the enemy's defense, opening new avenues for assaults.
The game will include both a single player and multiplayer mode, however the single player version is actually not quite all that single player, as it can be played in a
co-op mode as well when going through the game's 20 or so levels. Enclave really looks to be encouraging
the multiplayer aspects though as it
accommodates up to four players simultaneously. As for the game going online, who knows? It looks like the sort of game that has a lot of potential in that arena, but even if the game doesn't get
online play in an official capacity maybe we'll be graced with an unofficial online plan in the spirit of the recent online modification that has been done for Halo on the
XBox.
Of course one of the other expected highpoints of Enclave is the game's visuals (graphics are one of the key selling points of the XBox after all). Even from
screenshots shown early in the game's development the visuals were looking quite remarkable, detailed characters, large, spacious environments, and oh-so-pretty
lighting effects have given many all the more reason to look forward to the title. About the only major change the game has seen in terms of presentation since its
inception comes in terms to the perspective the game is played in. Originally Enclave was to be a first person title. Perhaps some of the development team saw the
horror that was Maken X, a first person hack and slash title on the Dreamcast, and decided to rethink how the action would be displayed in Enclave.
Right now the XBox version of the game is slated for release in the first quarter of
2002. Hopefully the finished product will provide an entertaining hack and slash
romp, something which we just don't see enough of these days.
Enclave
is also headed to the PC, but no release date has been set for this
version of the game.
