Don’t Call The Surge “Sci-fi Dark Souls”

PCGamesN has published a preview/interview for Deck13’s The Surge, a sci-fi action-RPG inspired in parts to Dark Souls and the company’s previous project, Lords of the Fallen, which they developed in conjunction with City Interactive. Studio CEO Jan Klose is quick to note, however, that this won’t be a simple rip-off of From Software’s action-RPG. Based on his words, I’m inclined to agree:

(The special thing we have in our combat is you can, in real-time, target the body part that you want to hit,) explains Klose. (We want to give you more control over what you are doing. So we use this in a variety of ways. You can attack the limbs of your enemy that are not armoured, so this gives you an advantage by making the fight easier for you. If you target the right body part, you have more impact, then you can defeat the enemy faster.)

Essentially, combat is about finding weak spots and exploiting them. But that’s only if you want to get the fight over with, quickly. There’s another option in situations where you might notice that your foe is wearing some nifty looking mechanical gear. Targeting the gear that you want is trickier, and might make the fight go on for longer, but the payoff is lovely junk that you can fit onto your own frame or scan for blueprints, potentially making future battles easier.

Gear is more than weapons and armour, though. Implants can be discovered and crammed inside your body, with game-changing effects. While some implants offer more conventional bonuses, like health regeneration, others change the HUD, revealing enemy health bars and weak spots, lowering the difficulty a bit if you’re finding the fights too tricky or simply want more information.

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(In terms of story and things, we wanted to do it a little over the top,) Klose explains. (It’s not serious. I mean, it’s no comedy, it’s not Army of Darkness or something. In terms of the tone, we make the comparison with maybe Fallout, where you have the grim tone and the destroyed world, but in the end it’s weird and it’s interesting. it’s not just grim, dark, and serious.)