Last week, Techland announced its new game, Hellraid, with a few screenshots and some promises. This week, though, they’ve got a teaser trailer full of gameplay that backs up some of those promises, and it’s looking pretty interesting.
There’s a distinct taste of Skyrim in the visuals, but the melee combat in The Elder Scrolls has never had this much gravitas without extensive modding. Enemies counter and duck your sword, and parrying has an impact you can feel.
Watch for the trademarked front kick familiar from Techland’s last game, Dead Island, at about the 0:20 mark.
Hellraid will feature up to four person co-op, and I’m betting that it will follow the same drop-in-drop-out connection formula that worked pretty well (mostly) in Dead Island. Four classes are announced so far; the warrior and the mage get a lot of screen time in the trailer. It’s just a teaser, of course, but so far we haven’t seen any sign of the other two classes, the paladin and the rogue.
The other mystery involves the Game Master, the overseeing AI that will tweak, balance and randomize parts of the game like loot and spawn points. Like the director in Left 4 Dead, having a part of the game that is playing you can be an interesting experience.
Hellraid should be released later this year.
