To challenge the undisputed champion of Souls-like video games, a genre acclaimed for its opaque stories, epic boss battles, and punishing difficulty, a young South Korean studio turned to an insecure puppet whose quest for truth is Have an unstable relationship with.
However, this version of Pinocchio has a mechanical arm that can be fitted with a grappling hook to pull enemies into range or a flamethrower that incinerates them.
Jiwon Choi, director of Lies of P for Round8 Studio, said that when they began the project their team looked for a globally recognizable character with a promising lore. “The story had everything we were looking for for Lies of P: elements of innocence and gore mixed with dark humor and compelling characters,” he wrote in an email.
FromSoftware has taken this genre of games to task since releasing Demon’s Souls in 2009. Games now known as Souls-like have become a genre in their own right, known for frequent, difficult twists and turns and euphoric spikes of victory. The latest iteration of FromSoftware, Last year’s open-world Elden RingOver 20 million copies were sold.
Lies of P, which officially releases Tuesday for PC and the last two generations of PlayStation and Xbox consoles, appears to be inspired by other FromSoftware titles, combining the Gothic horror of Bloodborne and the laser-precision of Sekiro. Combat Highlights: Shadows Die Twice. it is received generally positive reviews But the hardcore community still needs to be convinced that these are real spirits and not just wooden imitations.
Taking ideas from Carlo Collodi’s “The Adventures of Pinocchio” to the fictional town of Crete, inspired by the Belle Epoque period, Lies of P presents a dark, lush and terrifying world. A slender figure in Victorian attire walks cautiously through the streets of a ruined city with a sword in hand. Bloodied, broken figures are everywhere, and the air soon echoes with the loud sounds of striking steel.
Soul-like souls live and die – and die and die – on their battle systems. Lies of P wears Sekiro and Bloodborne inspirations on its sleeve, requiring the main character, P, to flank or fend off enemies in frantic battles with little margin for error. Completely blocking an incoming attack can weaken the enemies P faces, ranging from simple soldier puppets to massive bosses, leaving them vulnerable to a powerful attack.
One system that sets Lies of the Pi apart is the ability for players to separate weapons into handles and blades and then fuse them into any combination they wish. Wielding a giant wrench attached to the hilt of a saber may better fit one’s preferred fighting style. Choi said, “The broader freedom it offers in combat will create a unique gameplay experience.”
Providing the tools to succeed is a vital component of well-crafted spirits, which should overwhelm players by convincing them that victory is ultimately in their hands. Upsetting that balance can feel like you’re trying to win the Daytona 500 on a unicycle.
Souls-like combat has been compared to rhythm and memorization games, where improvement requires learning how enemies fight. If an attack’s animation seems too random or hard to read, the fight may depend on luck rather than skill. The game’s camera angle can also be a factor, blinding the player to incoming attacks.
Studio8 knows it may not please everyone with the level of difficulty in P’s Lie – what frustrates one player fascinates another – but Choi says the early sections of the game will help players slowly ease into the game. Are designed to guide from. A shop and a dummy that players can use to practice parrying are placed right before the first boss, though the difficulty increases significantly from there.
P’s Lie is the closest any soul-like can come to perfecting FromSoftware’s formula this year; Lords of the Fallen, which failed to shake up the genre when it first released in 2014, is expected to arrive in a new version from Hexworks and CI Games next month. FromSoftware, which did not respond to a request for comment, has announced the Elden Ring expansion, but has not detailed any plans for a Bloodborne or Sekiro sequel. Instead, it turned to one of its oldest franchises this year Armored Corps VI: Rubicon of Fire continuesA mechanical war game.
Other aspects of the story Geppetto and Pinocchio became popular in 1940 disney film and discovered by many Other film makers – are woven into P’s lies. In an echo of Isaac Asimov’s fictional laws of robotics, the game’s puppets are created to serve humans and are bound by a series of laws. One states that puppets cannot harm humans, a rule that has apparently been broken, and the other forces the puppet to always tell the truth.
Yet P is different: he can lie, which affects the game’s story. In an early meeting, a sick woman asks P to find her child. When he does so, P must decide between the sad truth or the merciful lie. Choi said he hoped the game aspect would promote moments of reflection on what it means to be human.
