Rob the town blind and cheat gods in Dread Delusion's Early Access
Dread Delusion(opens in new tab)'s first town of Hallow, built into an asteroid suspended above an unforgiving countryside, fulfilled a craving I wasn't even fully aware I'd had: one for the dense, multilayered urban areas of Deus Ex and Vampire: the Masquerade—Bloodlines. Elder Scrolls towns come close for me, but don't quite have the intricacy and depth of their more immersive sim-y cousins. Hallow, with its secret tunnels, hidden doors, and vertical exploration, gives a bite-sized reprisal of Deus Ex and VtMB's game-long exercises in breaking into peoples' apartments and reading their emails.
I've been finding it hard to gather my thoughts and write about Dread Delusion because I just want to go back in and play it more. For some time, developer Lovely Hellplace(opens in new tab) has been posting tantalizing screenshots of his open world RPG set in the remnants of a civilization clinging to the asteroids in orbit around a neutron star, and on June 15, Dread Delusion finally launched in Early Access on Steam.
Dread Delusion begins in a fashion familiar to any Elder Scrolls fan—you're a prisoner waking up in a strange new land, you choose your background and stats, and you are then sent on an important mission by the local representatives of an imperial government. I ran into more trouble than usual settling on a character in Dread Delusion—it has different priorities than many other RPGs, and this accordingly changed how I interacted with the world.
I've found the combat to be merely serviceable so far, an even more simplified version of using the W and S keys to juke enemies while wailing on them with a sword like in an Elder Scrolls game. Thankfully, combat is rarely a requirement, and doesn't directly award
Read more on pcgamer.com
