14 DAY TRIAL // During today's press conference at Gamescom, EA announced that BioWare's next project is Shadow Realms, a modern fantasy story, featuring asymmetrical online multiplayer.
The marketing for the game so far, with the creepy live-action trailers, the augmented reality feature related to tracking a missing person, was a tad misleading to say the least, as nobody expected Bioware's next game to be an action-oriented MMO.
Supernatural horror story, yes, based on a very real modern world, yes, but a 4v1 online action role-playing game, not so much. In any case, here it is, and it follows four plain, old ordinary people waking up with supernatural powers all of a sudden, and joining forces to murder monsters that will be controlled by a fifth player.
Jeff Hickman, the studio's general manager, told that the team drew inspiration from classic pen and paper role-playing games, detailing how the game takes place in a modern fantasy setting where teams of four heroes battle against the forces of the Shadow Lord.
The Shadow Lord controls a wide array of evil creatures and is able to lay traps and change the environments to hinder the four heroes' progress, similar to how a dungeon master might throw various obstacles and fiends at adventurers, to spice up their experience.
Shadow Realms is an online role-playing game with asymmetrical multiplayer, eerily similar to Turtle Rock Studios' upcoming shooter, Evolve, where a team of four different hunters have to work together, using each individual's unique specialization, in order to take down a huge, powerful monster.
That's not a bad thing, though, as the two games approach the subject manner in different ways, and more multiplayer cooperative games are always welcome, especially if they come from such an esteemed pedigree.
Evidently, as BioWare is famous for its focus on story, once again the narrative will play a big role in the upcoming game. The studio revealed its plans to release content for Shadow Realms on an episodic basis, so that the community members would be able to experience the progression of the story gradually, as they evolve together.
The trailer released at Gamescom offers a glimpse of the action that we'll be seeing later on, complete with a peek at the Shadow Lord.
Shadow Realms is scheduled for release exclusively on PC for now, coming sometime during late 2015, but it's already playable at Gamescom, and interested players can head over to the game's official website to sign up for the upcoming alpha test.
