The Waylanders Gamescom Preview

Last year at Gamescom I saw The Waylanders for the first time. The game was announced  just before the start of Gamescom that year and since then they have received a lot of useful feedback from potential players. I won't go into details about what I already described last year, which is why this article is a bit shorter than usual. 
The game is inspired by the myths of the Spanish region of Galicia and the story takes place in the Celtic era in Brigantia and in the middle ages, both in Galicia. You start the game in the Celtic era, where magic exists and is considered to be something normal. In the medieval era, magic is forbidden.  
At the end of the first act you will learn how to travel through time. And although The Waylanders is a party based game, you'll travel alone. However, you will meet some of your companions in the medieval era. But, they will not know you as they suffer from a mental disorder that prevents them from remembering you. It is your task to help them remember. Your choices are important, so what you do in one time era can impact the other time era. 
Independent of the era you are in, you and your companions will have the same skills, to prevent you to use completely different tactics in each of the eras.  

There are 6 basic classes in The Waylanders: warrior, guardian, ranger, rogue, sorcerer and healer. Each class also has 5 specializations, totaling to 30 different specializations. From these you create your own character at the start of the game.
Your party consists of five characters and there are nine potential companions in total, six of them will have the mental condition in the medieval era. Three of them are special as they are immortal. When you gain experience all your companions will gain experience as well. This makes sure that every companion stays interesting.  
All of the companions will have a few quests, but you will only receive these quests when you have a good relationship with that companion. Decisions you take during the game will affect the relationship you have with your companions and because of that you will not be able to access all of the companion quests in one playthrough. 

The idea behind the combat system has not changed from last year. It is real-time with pause and you can queue your commands for the party members, when the game is paused. When the game is unpaused the commands are executed quite fast. Faster than last year, because they felt it made combat more tactical to speed things up.

Next to that, in combat you can use formations, where some, or all of the party members join to create a formation and act as one. In the process the stats of the combined formation is the summation of the individual stats of the party members in that formation. Each of the party members has to two unique formations and they are dependent on the class. As the healer class was new this year, a formation of that class was shown, where the party members change into a huge creature that has the life force of the combined members of the team and can do quite some damage.
The three special, immortal companions can neither start nor join a formation. Instead they have special abilities that are unique to them.
In case someone in the party dies, this lasts as long as the combat lasts. At the end of the combat the party member is resurrected at full health, also the health of other party members will be restored at the end of combat. 

What is noticeable from last year is that the game looks somewhat better. Also the user interface is very clean and there are no UI elements that need to bevisible when exploring to give a maximum view of the environment to the player. The camera can be rotated freely and can be zoomed in and out. 
The game plays with keyboard and mouse, but if you prefer to play with a controller that is possible too. The UI when using a controller is very different from the UI when using keyboard and mouse, to make sure the optimal UI is available depending on your preferences. 

The Waylanders is not an open world game. The narrative is linear and takes you through the various locations in the Celtic and medieval eras and has an estimated playing time of about 40 hours. Your decisions will have consequences though, on both the story and your companions and there will be more than one ending possible.

The Waylanders is scheduled to be released in June 2020.

Here is the cinematic trailer: