Redwall meets Skyrim in this new game from Bethesda, BioWare, and Naughty Dog alumni
Why, Hawthorne, must you put in me a position where I have to balance my love of woodland fantasy against my complete exhaustion with chopping things down to build other things? There are two scurrying mammals wearing robes inside of me, and they both love Redwall, Mice And Mystics, and Mouse Guard, but might spontaneously combust if they have to craft another hatchet. A trailer, eh? Is...is that a mouse and an otter dancing on top of a table, each grasping a mug of ale of their tiny paws and dancing to fiddle music? Fine! Fine! I’m not happy about this, but Fine!
My experience watching that trailer went something like this. “Oh, building furniture from gathered materials. Great”. Then, “he’s too small to reach the table but he’s still trying his best!”. “Hitting pumpkins with an axe. Wow”. Then, “he’s dragging the pumpkin! It’s five times the size of him but he’s still dragging it!”. At one point, a mouse wearing a flatcap asks “Cuppa time, innit?”. I’ve…never felt so conflicted before. It’s everything I could ever want from an almost entirely different videogame.
“Former developers from Bethesda, BioWare, and Naughty Dog bring you a sandbox RPG realm of anthropomorphic animals and fairy creatures,” reads the Steam page. “Play co-op or solo as you build a village of memorable NPCs, farm, craft, explore, and celebrate the seasons in an ever-changing world bigger than you.”
It’s from NEARstudios, who include Jason Richardson (Bioshock Infinite, Mass Effect: Andromeda), artist Heather Cerlan (The Last Of Us, Dragon Age 2), and Bruce Nesmith (Skyrim). You can play either solo or co-op, and, oh…what’s this? “Tasks you’d rather not do? Your NPC villagers can take them on instead!” Rodentured servitude!? That is all you had to say, Hawthorne. I will feed them one small slice of pumpkin a day, fill their heads with fabricated fables about how glorious it is to serve me specifically, and I will sit around all day drinking ale.
“Harvest, fish, and farm,” it adds. The trailer
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