ELEX - Preview @ GamePressure

Farflame spotted this ELEX-preview at GamePressure:

Elex hands-on – science-fantasy for the fans of Gothic

After some time spent watching and then playing Elex, an RPG by the German studio Piranha Bytes, it’s hard to believe it will be on par with Gothic. Will a well-developed world make up for technical shortcomings?

When we interviewed Björn Pankratz from Piranha Bytes a year ago, he told us that there would be more Gothic than Risen in their upcoming RPG, and I was really pleased to hear that. During Warsaw Games Week I personally had a chance to talk with the developers, see a considerable portion of gameplay, and – most importantly – take Elex for a spin myself. Indeed, from the very beginning, despite the futuristic tech and the ruins of a highly developed civilization on the horizon, I was half-expecting to bump into Diego or Xardas at any moment. However, it’s too early to fetch a nice bottle of champagne just yet – although every fan of Gothic will find something of interest quicker than you can say “Welcome to the Colony”, we also need to bear in mind that Elex's heritage sadly includes all the characteristic shortcomings of the developer’s games too.

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In its current form Elex looks rather mediocre, and it probably won’t be a breakthrough in the genre… but then again, we don’t expect it to be. I hope that the world created by Piranha Bytes will make up for the game’s shortcomings, which are worryingly numerous in the alpha build I’ve seen. However, we have to remember that the games by the German studio have always been more than simply a sum of all their parts. After the presentation, I was disappointed, but then again would you be impressed if someone threw you into the middle of the first Gothic with the best weapon and armor just to kill some monsters? Probably not. There are many things that the players are able to forgive the makers of Gothic should their game have a great mood and a complex, captivating game world. Luckily for us, the German team seems to have a particular knack for this sort of thing.