Daedalic Entertainment has released the first video of a planned series to show punters some of the mechanics behind their roleplaying turn-based strategy game, Blackguards, with the first installment dealing with character creation. The game itself is an adaption of a popular European pen and paper roleplaying game called ‘The Dark Eye’ (woo!) with the narrative following the infamous (and the eponymous) group of rogues known as the ‘Blackguards’. Through the process of said adaption the developers have admitted to streamlining the mechanics from the original (Extremely complex) source into a more manageable format for those players who come completely fresh to the series. This is highlighted in their first video guide for the game with the narrator taking us through the basics of character creation.
Although your character will always start off as some manner of criminal scum (probably brought in for lollygagging), there are three classes to initially choose from with your choices limited to a ‘fighter’, ‘mage’, and ‘hunter’. All three appear to have their own specialisations but due to the use of a non-linear character upgrade system, there is much wriggle room to play a character with a wider range of abilities. In this system, character progression does not occur at set points when characters obtain ‘x’ amount of experience points, but rather each encounter awards ‘adventure points’ which can then be used to upgrade stats and skills/spells. This appears to be a similar system to that of Shadowrun’s ‘Karma points’… in case you needed a frame of reference. This free form character customisation will be available to players from the get go, due to the feedback received during the early access phase of the game’s development cycle.
Speaking of early access we covered the launch of this game’s early access period here, and the first four chapters of the game are still available via Steam’s early access program. The full game itself will be released on January 24th. The aforementioned video guide can be found below.
