Greetings fellow Eternal Crusaders, and welcome to this week's Eternal Crusade article. I hope everyone had a safe and pleasant holiday, if you had one, or a fun weekend, if you did not. This week we will be looking at a few different things, the models for the Chaos Sorcerer and for the Chaos Raptor were revealed during episode thirteen of Into the Warp, the Eternal Crusade twitch show. There were also a couple of “surprise reveals” during the show, and, for once, it was NOT Miguel who slipped.
While preparing to show the new Sorcerer model, Eternal Crusade's Art Director, Ghislain Barbe, revealed a couple of Mission Planning screens. The first was a map with a series of linked points marked on it, like potential hotspots across the continent. The second was a more detailed Mission Objective screen, which showed a more detailed map, with drop points, objectives and areas of resistance all mapped out. A brief peek at what is yet to come, but very cool looking.
The Chaos Sorcerer model itself is still very basic looking, but it has all the classic hallmarks of the Sorcerer: the helmet is more elaborate than the usual Chaos Marine helmet, with a pair of horns that protrude from either side, then curve upwards to join in a skull over the Sorcerer's head, the backpack has elaborately carved dragon heads that extend upward and outward from the shoulder-y area, the model is armed with a chainsword and pistol.
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The new Chaos Raptor model, in it's early and very vanilla appearance.
The new Raptor model is also very basic, representative of a soldier new to the campaign, and Ghislain explained how the model would advance and change over time, becoming more veteran looking and personalized to the player who is playing it. The new Raptor has clawed feet, but in a very basic way, with steel talons welded on to the tips of his boots. The Chaos community appears to be split right now over whether they prefer the more mutated clawed feet that the tabletop model has, or the welded talons look; but it is entirely possible that both mindsets will get their way, as the more mutated claw-foot could very well be one of the things that changes about the Raptor over time.
There were also some changes to the melee combat system, there are now two kinds of attack, normal and power attacks. Normal attacks can be defended against by blocking, but power attacks break through the guard. There is also a fatigue factor for the guard system in place as well, so if your guard is broken, you will need to recharge your fatigue over a few seconds. The chainsword execution is probably my favorite, they really got the “feel” of it perfect, the Chaos Marine really looks like he is expending a good bit of effort to heft the Space Marine on the end of his blade.
It really looks like they are trying to create a melee system that is simple to use and implement, but has lots of interactions between combatants. Swings, blocks, counters, powerful attacks, rolling dodges and several other maneuvers are available to the players, making combat look more fluid and natural. The much-loved kicks are currently missing from this build, as the team is currently looking for a new niche for this move to fill, since the new power attack is what one uses to break the guard.
The Leader buff system has also been added to the current build, where the squad leaders have a buff or buffs that they grant to all members of their squad. Visually, the squad leader will have an icon on his back, a chaos star for the Chaos faction, and an Aquila for the Space Marines. All squad members that stay within a certain radius of the leader will receive one of several buffs, like damage mitigation, accuracy bonuses, health bonuses, etc. The type of buff will be selectable as part of the leaders loadout.
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The forces of Chaos rush enemy lines. Fun fact: Tactical Chaos Marines are now called Traitors
We also learned that December 19th will be another big day for fans of Eternal Crusade, as Miguel has promised to reveal (finally) the graphic engine will be used in the game, but more importantly we're actually going to get a look at the Early Game Access Module that the dev team is preparing. While the module has been delayed from “before the snow hits Montreal” to First Quarter 2015, the scope of the module has increased substantially, and the module appears to almost be a miniature version of Eternal Crusade at this point. The team is very excited to get this Module out to the fans, and I cannot wait to see what they have put together.
Miguel also spoke about the $5 million dollar “loan” that Behaviour received from the Quebec government, confirming that it is indeed a low interest loan given by the government to encourage Canadian digital media companies (video games, cinema television, etc.) to export their efforts outside of Canada.
As always, I want to encourage everyone to visit the Eternal Crusade website and register for their forums, where you can join the Crusade and make your opinions heard on the direction and development of the game thus far, and down the road.
