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by Erik Brudvig
September 8, 2006 - The good folks from 10Tacle Studios came by our office today to give us a look at how Elveon is shaping up. It's still a ways off from its release in the latter half of 2007 for Xbox 360 and PC, but we were able to get our hands on a playable demo to give the combat a spin and get some questions answered.



Although Elveon has a look that comes off as similar to Oblivion in the movies, the actual game plays much differently. The action takes place in the third person and is centered on deliberate combat. We say deliberate because button mashing won't get you anywhere. Controlled, precise actions will win the battles against your foes. To engage somebody in a fight, you begin by locking on to them. From there, you'll be in a battle stance and will stay facing them as you trade blows. Different moves and combos are conducted through a grouping of directional motions and button presses. Blocking must be done at the right moment to successfully deflect oncoming attacks. If you try to just power your way through a battle, you'll wind up dying quickly.

All of the attack actions were motion captured using real weapons and it shows in the way spears are swung. They look like they actually have a weight to them. The weapons will also interact realistically with the environment. Blades will glance off of walls and other obstacles directly and it really looks like they're colliding into something instead of bouncing off in the general vicinity of where it should hit. This makes spear combat in small hallways difficult, forcing you to equip the proper weapons for each situation.


Combat is the name of the game, so you'll have to pick what you focus on wisely. There are four classes of weapons; daggers, spears, swords, and bows. At set points during the game, you'll have to choose which weapon you'd like to improve your skills in. Experience points won't come into play here so there won't be any need to go kill every last villain to build up your character. Your character's stats and appearance (think Fable here) will change depending upon which style of combat you prefer to become an expert in.

In terms of the story, Elveon takes place during the time period thousands of years ago when Elves ruled. Instead of Elves being a dying race as humans rise as is the case in Tolkien's world, Elveon will tell you of the time when four different elvish races were all vying for control. In the game, the story will be told through in-game cinematics. These story sequences won't be completely non-interactive. As backstories are being told, you'll actually take the role of one of the characters and play through the tale. It will be important to pay attention during these fables, too. If you see a sword placed in a little nook at the end of the flashback, you might want to go check that area out to find if it is still there.

Nothing is set in stone yet, but there may be some differences between the Xbox 360 and PC versions when they hit retail. After looking at some sales data, the developers are toying with the idea of including more RPG elements in the PC version and keeping the 360 build as a more streamlined action title. There are also plans to make full use of the Xbox Live Marketplace so that gamers can easily download new places and equipment to further customize their characters. Downloading extra armor and weapons might be more important than you first think. That's because both the PC and 360 versions will have an online tournament mode where players can take their character from the game online to fight others one-on-one.


Even if the PC build ends up having extra RPG elements, both versions will still be largely the same. The aim for the main story length, which can be followed from one step to the next linearly, is 18 hours. If you take the time to do each side quest, the experience should last about 25 hours. If the game takes off, there are plans to expand the Elveon world. One example that was mentioned was a multiplayer add-on allowing for much bigger battles than simple versus combat.

Elveon is running on the Unreal 3 engine and is no slouch, though we were promised the appearance of the game would improve. Currently the game is running on one core while they wait for new engine updates from Epic. New things that will be added are flowing hair, cloth that gets wet in the rain and acts like it, and additional lighting effects. We have a nice big batch of new movies in the gallery for you to see how the game is looking right now. Make sure you check them out.

**** No no no, gives us all the same rpg elements as the pc, leave my rpg elements alone!!!!!!!! :( ****

Interesting... running on a single core still?

I pray everything is in order for games like mass effect, too human, gears of war (which ships this year...) I pray that Lost Odyssey is going well imagine the type of support they are getting over there with an american made engine....

Mass Effect will be ready!! Believe ops Believe ......

True, true !!!!!!! Do not f`k this game!

LOL, it's not like it's something to look forward at this stage. Have you seen the videos? It looks really bad.

I never watch ign videos as they are no good. Also, streaming doesn´t work.

"the developers are toying with the idea of including more RPG elements in the PC version and keeping the 360 build as a more streamlined action title"

Another watered down PC port, yay? I'll pass on this one, that's just dumb.