[News] The Last Oricru Hands-on Preview – A Gothic Soulslike

[SaLaH.]

A little over one year ago, we saw the announcement of The Last Oricru alongside Koch Media's (now Plaion) new label, Prime Matter. Developed by Czech-based developer GoldKnights, we also found out at the beginning of Gamescom that Plaion and GoldKnights will release the game on the 13th of October. My interest was piqued back then, being a fan of traditional "eurojank" games. Once allowed to get hands-on at Gamescom, I jumped at the chance, and here are my impressions.

Plaion and GoldKnights set up my time with The Last Oricru to highlight one of the few features you haven't often seen recently: co-op. Not online co-op, though that is an option; it's couch co-op in this case. My time with the game had me playing alongside one of the developers on a couch. However, I was quick to ask - and be reassured - that this would also be perfectly fine to play single-player - a good answer for somebody that doesn't like to associate with human beings. One nice little feature is that the co-op is hop-in and drop-out, not requiring long loading or separate modes.

One of the core elements of the game is a branching narrative, where your actions will have some consequences. The part I can talk about is where you'll be in the middle of an attack on a city. What side you're on will depend on the actions and choices you've made in the past. Are you on the side of the rat-people, attacking the city, or the strange elven-alien-human things defending? If the latter, when you beat the lead rat in combat, will you choose to spare its life or not? The developer told me the consequences of this latter decision and how it will impact the game later, but I won't spoil it here.

What you need to know is that it does. I'm not going to say that it has a branching narrative in the same sense as a Dark Pictures game. It doesn't. The Last Oricru is longer, predicted to be between 15 to 20 hours for a playthrough, and the dev told me that to get the three core stories, you could do three playthroughs. There are ways to move between them throughout the game, but if you think of them as three separate ones, it's easier. One important thing to note is that your co-op partner does not get to make decisions on your behalf, so you needn't worry about that.

Expect The Last Oricru to be a relatively narrative-heavy title. The developer told me that over 180,000 words make up the dialogue, with inspiration taken from titles like The Witcher, games developed by Spiders, and more. Though, granted, there is a more comical and less oppressive tone taken with some of the dialogue I've seen. It sat well enough with me, too many games are dour lately, and it didn't seem to go too far.
For more;https://wccftech.com/the-last-oricru-preview-gothic-soulslike/