Gods Will Fall Preview: A Randomized Trip To Kill The Gods
Next month gamers will be able to hop into the world of Gods Will Fall, a dungeon crawling hack-and-slash game that tasks its players with overthrowing the gods. It was announced last month that Gods Will Fall would be coming to consoles and PC on January 29 of 2021, but little else was revealed at that time. Screen Rant was recently given the opportunity to sit in on a preview with Gods Will Fall Lead Developer Mark Wherrett, who was able to show off some of the ins and outs of the game.
Gods Will Fall has its players take control of eight Celtic warriors who were once part of a much larger army attempting to bring the gods down. Sadly, on their journey to the gods' island the Celtic fleet is destroyed, which leaves only these eight soldiers alive. Players will need to choose wisely from their team of warriors and decide which one is the best to enter a god's domain and defeat the deity's minions before killing the god itself in one-on-one combat.
It seems that Gods Will Fall is able to fit inside several different video game genres, but one of the most prevalent is the roguelike genre. If the player gets all of their warriors killed at any point in the game they will be forced to restart from the beginning. Where things get interesting is that every time a new game is started there is a certain level of randomness applied. Every run the eight warriors will have new looks, names, weapons, as well as unique skills. The world itself changes with each run too, as the domains of each boss will shift and be altered to stop the player from growing complacent or learning how to cheese a particular setup.
Once a new run has been started for Gods Will Fall, warriors will be assigned to the player and they are then able to begin their quest. From the game's overworld they can explore until they locate the entrance to a god's domain, where they must select only one warrior to enter that domain to attempt to kill that god. Succeeding will allow them to move on to the next god's domain, but failing will cause that warrior to become captured or killed.
From the inside of a domain in Gods Will Fall things look like a pretty standard hack-and-slash game. The player must fight their way through hordes of different enemies by attacking them with their weapons while dodging out of the way of incoming attacks. Enemies range from smaller grunts that can be brought down in just a few blows to much larger foes that sport higher health and more damaging attacks. Combat seems to reminiscent of the brutally difficult Soulslike games, but from a top-down perspective. Wherrett said that Dark Souls and Bloodborne were heavy influences on Gods Will Fall, and it certainly showed during the preview session.
One of the more fascinating things that was shown off during the Gods Will Fall preview is that while inside of a domain, its respective god's health bar is always at the top of the screen, despite the fact that the deity themselves doesn't appear until the end of each level. This is because as players defeat enemies inside the domain the god's health will begin to drop. The more enemies defeated, the less trouble players will have when fighting against the god - but this can lead to problems as the player will have to risk taking damage from minions before facing off against the god at the end of the domain.
Another interesting aspect of Gods Will Fall is that if the player fails during their attempt on a god's life they don't necessarily lose immediately. Instead the warrior that failed will be captured by the enemy, and the player will have to send one of their other warriors in to save them. By making it all the way through and defeating the god, players are able to recollect their captured warriors and move on to the next domain. If all eight warriors are defeated in a domain it's game over, however, so the stakes are still high, even if there are generally a few more opportunities available after a failed run.
The fights with the gods were also a pretty central focus of the Gods Will Fall preview, and they look like a lot of fun. Each of the gods has their own special weapons and abilities, and it seems like different strategies will need to be employed to bring them down. For example, the God of War, Morrigan, is a massive crow with deadly sharp feathers. Throughout their fight, Morrigan was shown quickly swiping her feathers at the player or dashing from one side of the arena to the other. This forced the player to quickly dodge Morrigan's attacks and only fight back when their was an opening - standard fare perhaps for difficult games, but something that suggests Gods Will Fall will challenge players with smart design and unique bosses.
During the preview a total of three boss fights were shown off, but there are several more gods that players will need to bring down to finish Gods Will Fall. From what's been shown so far, Gods Will Fall is shaping up to be an intriguing and brutal roguelike RPG that should give fans of the genre many reasons to celebrate early next year.
Gods Will Fall will release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC on January 29, 2021.