The upcoming action-RPG features shades of Ghostrunner, with its faster-pace and first-person perspective.
One of the stars of Gamescom this year was One More Level's Valor Mortis. The developer, best known for making the Ghostrunner series, is trading the cyberpunk aesthetic for the Napoleonic era, and moving away from pure action madness to instead explore the realm of the Soulslike.
Anyone who has followed the video game sector in recent memory will be all too familiar with the massive amount of new Soulslike projects, games that all share similar design philosophies and structures. With Valor Mortis looking to join this collection, we asked lead level designer Damian Wójcik why the studio wanted to move away from what fans know it best for to instead try its hand in this saturated domain.
Wójcik explained: "Yeah, it came from the point that we all love Soulslikes and we actually wanted to push the idea of the action games a little bit more. We wanted to find a new direction, something different from the Ghostrunner and the cyberpunkish style. So yeah, we decided to give it a shot, to actually use our knowledge of Ghostrunner, of the first-person perspective and try to create a Soulslike, something new and fresh for people, because we've heard a lot that there is a lot of Soulslike games right now and we just want to show them something different."
But just because Valor Mortis is a Soulslike game doesn't mean that it doesn't have a few tricks up its sleeve. In fact, the Ghostrunner heritage rings throughout, allowing Valor Mortis to stand out by having a first-person perspective and a faster-paced and more fluid combat style. We asked Wójcik about maintaining a few Ghostrunner creative choices in Valor Mortis, to which he told us:
"We don't want to leave the Ghostrunner identity behind, so we wanted to implement a little bit of it here and there. Obviously you will be able to see more in the entire game. But yeah, there are some parts of Ghostrunner that we actually added here, but obviously the tempo is a bit slower. But yeah, it can be quick. If you master the game, it still can be quick, right?"
You can see the full interview below to also learn about why One More Level chose the Napoleonic era setting, and also some of the other creative choices that the studio has offered in order to see the game stand out from other Soulslikes. Also, don't miss our recent preview based on our time with the title at Gamescom.