A44 Games is set to release Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn in early 2023, and this new Flintlock Fantasy RPG includes a diverse set of mechanics and scenery to explore. The game will have an open-world design that includes the main story and a large number of side activities to complete. After being in development for years, this new title is approaching release, and there are many exciting aspects to look forward to.
Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn is set in a world where gods have taken over, and legions of the undead fight against the forces of humanity. The story follows Nor, a soldier fighting for the human coalition, and Enki, a mischievous and magical fox-like creature. The pair grow together as they attempt to take on powerful gods, banish the undead, and regain control of their world. Both Nor and Enki will unlock new abilities and grow stronger as they adventure through a carefully crafted world.
Gameplay footage was recently released showing some of the exploration mechanics and combat abilities that Nor and Enki possess. Derek Bradley, A44 Games CEO and Game Director for the studio's previously released challenging but satisfying title, Ashen, sat down for an interview with Screen Rant to discuss the world of Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn. Information was shared regarding the crafting system, skill trees, biomes, gods, and more.
What is the main character's motivation for seeking out these gods?
Derek Bradley: I suppose the biggest underpinning of the story is that it's a small genre called Flintlock Fantasy. That means the magic that you would have in a high fantasy world has been tipped, or there's a tipping point where a certain amount of technology has been invented. We've got Flintlock weaponry, and it's historical reenactment-inspired, I guess you could call it. The difference between it and Steampunk is that in Steampunk the magic melds in with the technology, whereas in Flintlock fantasy, it's almost like, "If all we had was muskets or cannons or Flintlock pistols, what could we do against Gods that could throw fireballs?"
The gods have come, they've taken over the world, and humanity is in this stalemate with them. In The Siege of Dawn, it's been a long, drawn-out, ongoing war. You're a soldier in the coalition army, which was the forces of the humans, and you've been fighting against the gods and the undead that have come with them as well. The gods happen to be very associated with a door to the afterlife.
The issue you come against that's more personal, is that at the start of the game the gods are actually a little bit more mysterious. No one's ever really seen one of them, because hordes and hordes of undead are enough for humanity to fight against, and that they're this unending tide. The gods are whispered of, or people believe that they've seen one in the distance - or they might be a whole platoon of soldiers found dead, but no one knows why. And there's a giant explosion, but no one gets to see a god or no one really believes it. But in this case, you start the game with the other soldiers around you, and you love one of them. The gods kill this person, or a specific god kills this person, and that's why you are sent on your own quest for vengeance.
But that's really backed up as well by humanity being in a really tough place. And the reason that you persist through the whole 40 hours of the game is that you're wanting to resolve. I suppose there are hundreds of things that are going on in the world, right from seeing the effects of the undead and what they would do in the world to having one of your team or your village contract the equivalent of some undead disease that they wouldn't have had if the war wasn't going on. And then of course, there's your mysterious magical companion Enki; a little fox thing with monkey paws and bird feet. He has his own reasons, and pushes you along in his fashion to manipulate you in there as well.
You've got a lot of reasons to want to fight the gods.
Does Enki assist in combat and have any abilities that can be changed or upgraded?
Derek Bradley: Yeah, absolutely. The broadest answer is yes, very much. I'd say the closest analogous thing I can imagine to it would be Atreus in God of War, so you can actually get him to do things very responsibly in combat. The way that your character progression works in the game and the skill tree works, is that there are actually three sections to it. One is firearms and explosives and black powder, so that ends up being quite a bombastic, jack-of-all-trades type. You can shoot things; you can blow things up; you could fight in the mid-range quite well and do that tactically.
There's the axe and armor route right in the middle of the skill tree, and that's very rhythm-based gameplay. It's really about ducking around things, pairing things, using your armor against enemies and getting right in the face of enemies, and fighting that way.
The third one is actually the magic part of the tree, and that is all Enki-focused. Interestingly, he's kind of a part of you, and you're a part of him as far as the skill tree is concerned. You are actually two completely distinct characters, so there's no sense of you actually summoning a symbiote or something. But just in of how we treat the skill tree, that becomes very tactical. I think for players that might get frustrated by the harshness of like, "I missed that dodge just slightly, and this enemy completely trolleyed me," the other two skill trees are just as challenging, but strategic in positioning, and tactical kind of way. Can you get the higher ground and can you use just the right gun at the right time? Because you end up having quite an arsenal to choose from.
The magical side, which is all Enki, is very crowd control in of how it works. Enki applies cursors to enemies, and a simple curse would be one that lets you stack a damage buff; it adds 25% damage for every little swipe you do at them. You'll see in the trailer, him swiping and swimming through enemies. And you can stack that up, so as you're running towards them, when you hit them, they just die in one shot. But he can also grab them and hold certain key enemies.
The other big thing with Enki and how he works is that he's actually a little bit of a trickster; a little bit of a thief in the Loki vein. Because of that, he steals powers from bosses or gods that you kill along the way in a Megaman sort of fashion. As you defeat the gods, you get their powers and those end up being massive, game-changing things that you can do as well. They really change your playstyle, and by upgrading him, you get to access those things more and more as well.
That's also the other key part about him and you, and why you're even a team: he needs your muscle, and you need him because he eats the souls of gods and steals their power. It's the only way to kill an immortal in this game, and humanity has struggled against even the lower levels of them. Now you have Enki, and he essentially has to grab them and hold them. And while he's doing that, you shoot them to weaken them enough, and then he can absorb their soul. And in the case of gods, you can steal their powers.
Is there any specific reason that Enki chose to be the companion of the main character? Is there some deeper connection between them?
Derek Bradley: I think he's quite interesting. At the start of the game, he considers everyone disposable, and you're just a puppet. He's really the star of the show, as far as he's concerned, and you're along for the ride. I think you sort of prove yourself to him as you go. But I think nonetheless, you start the game, and you test yourself against this God. You're one of the few people who doesn't die; who actually lives to tell the tale. That probably is a big part of it as well.
And that's right at the opening of the game?
Derek Bradley: Yeah, you very much start in these Napoleonic trenches; you make it through, you get to the walls of the city that the gods are inhabiting, and the first time you see a God is right there.
It looked like there were a lot of different environments. How many different areas would you say are there for people to explore?
Derek Bradley: There are three big continents, and each of them have got quite a few biomes to them. It's quite diverse overall, I suppose. Some of it looks like you're in the Swiss Alps; some of it looks like you're in Northern Africa. Other parts are very much a mighty Napoleonic type thing. But they're all quite unique as well, I would say, in relation to our world. We've tried to make them quite different.
And we've imagined the world more like an alternate reality that isn't really Earth. You've got three moons in the sky. We even used New Zealand flora and fauna as well, to just give that slightly tweaked, "Is this our world or not?" feel. Because we have a really large biome that's really complex in New Zealand, but everything looks just a little bit different. You might have had a concept artist go through and make all these plants that are almost like everywhere else in the world. I think they've been very excited about gathering references for that and representing their home as well, which has been quite fun in of what the whole world looks like.
I noticed there were also different creatures and animals that were being fought. Are there enemies to fight beside the undead and the gods, or are there just creatures out in the world?
Derek Bradley: Yeah, absolutely. I've lost count, but I think there are four types of giant spiders. They're kind of wildly different, each of them; one is some crazy demon spider thing made of goat heads. Another is this really hairy spider; one of those that kind of dance and do their little thing, and it's very colorful and vibrant and interesting. And then we've got spiders with really long tongues that will whip out and attack. Even within spiders, there's a lot.
But we certainly have birds; you would have seen that even the Coalition themselves and humans in this world don't use horses, but birds instead. The creatures that would pull carts and do all that kind of stuff are there, but then there are also aggressive versions of those as well - including some really crazy ones that are just like these featherless birds that attack you in the dark in caves and are quite terrifying. There's a whole range of other types of creatures.
Even beyond the gods, we've really crafted a big open world. We've pushed into magical creatures and things that are neither god nor undead. But if you find them, there might be an open-world side content boss that's just as tough and nuanced as the main boss of the zone, and represents a whole other category of things that you could encounter.
Are there other side activities to do besides combat encounters?
Derek Bradley: Yeah, absolutely. We have a mini-game that we've spent a lot of time on, which our team is really excited about. We have a ton of other quests that lead you through a whole bunch of different story things. We even have this thing called influence, and it's pretty much just how much people recognize you out in the world, or how much they recognize your contribution to the world.
Essentially, it works a little bit like scoring points in Tony Hawk. If you slide down a slope, jump, double jump, shoot something - whatever it is, any sort of combo you can do, you actually score combos out in the world. And you can just do those as much as you want. You get influence points for completing quests, and you get it for doing all sorts of stuff, but it's a nod towards us wanting players to just play out in the open world and have fun. We reward that, and those points you can actually exchange for things at requisitions offices.
To some degree, it's how known you are. You can go and use it as some form of currency.
What would you buy with that?
Derek Bradley: At the moment, the simple things that you can always get for it are you can replenish your armor, you can replenish your ammunition, and you can replenish your health. But at the same time, there's a whole store of upgrades and crafting materials. Crafting is another one; that's a whole big separate thing. We have gold as well as a separate thing completely to this, and then crafting materials as well - all these separate, nuanced currencies.
You have a caravan, which follows you around, so to speak. You actually activate your caravan. It was something that we got a lot of positive responses about the town, and that when you did things in the town, you left and came back; it felt like your townsfolk had gone out and done their own things. They weren't just waiting for you, and they actually built a town from nothing. In Ashen, you started your town pretty much with a rock that you found - a big, monolithic rock, and your town slowly formed over the course of the game to have a bustling town at the end.
We've done the same thing again, but in this case, it's more of a campfire with an NPC or one of your companions, who plays guitar very badly at the start of the game. It grows to have a field tent and other caravans as you find other party and all sorts of stuff, and they end up offering you crafting services. You end up doing their own personal stories as opposed to the main story quests, and as you do that, they gain more and more things that they could potentially offer you. Your companion also learns to play guitar better as you go along, so the music of the campsite evolves and matures as you do and as your team does around you.
There's deeper storytelling and emotional moments. All of those kinds of things, we really pushed into in this game, which has been new territory for us as well.
As far as crafting, would it be new armor or weapons? I noticed an axe that was being used, but is there any other kind of melee weapon? Or do you upgrade that one?
Derek Bradley: We've actually been really focused on the axe. I'll divert slightly into the axe for a moment, just to explain it, because I think it is worth justifying why just an axe. You've got a whole bunch of guns; you've got a whole bunch of magic, and you have just one axe - and you use that axe.
But it was really one of the things our animators and programmers and designers are really proud of. The whole design of the axe, how it works with the guns and how it works with almost everything, was that we wanted to put the scope that you would put into 100 weapons into this one axe to make it as clean and as precise and as perfect as possible. That does translate into abilities with the axe, but it's not even just that. It is literally that it's been polished right down to the millisecond of how the animations work and how they all flow with each other.
I've had people watching it comment, "Is this like Batman Arkham Asylum, in that you're doing scripted moves on enemies?" Because the way that you hit someone with your axe, then you pull out your gun and shoot, and then you use the axe again... It all perfectly flows. There's an animation for each of those things that is super deep. That's why it's just the axe overall.
But in of crafting: you craft a whole bunch of things. You've got an engineer, who's an explosives expert, that s you. You can craft a whole bunch of interesting grenades and potions and things like that there. You have a gunsmith that s you who also dabbles in stones, so you can add curses to all of your weapons and change how they work. You can add those to your axe, and you can add cursed stones to your armor as well; you can upgrade your armor.
Enki himself has got his own little abilities, and he's the one who actually crafts the cursed stones for you, or applies curses to them and figures that out as you find the materials for that. Quite a wide range of stuff, in of how you equip yourself and how it all changes. It makes it play differently.
As far as the armor, is there any level of appearance customization?
Derek Bradley: We are actually looking at that at the moment. It's kind of in progress as we speak since it's still in development. We're trying to push it as far as we can, but our initial massive push was more towards giving the player the most nuanced story attached to the armor; how their clothing changes, and what the options are there.
You do get a couple of different uniform options that you can play with in the game, and we're trying to just push that further and further. People can get a little bit more individualistic expression, as opposed to our very detailed story progression that we get from the armor. You'll see that Nor's arm has got a shoulder piece and armor going all down her arm. That's comprised of three pieces that you slowly cobbled together by doing quite detailed quests for people. They're not things that you can easily craft, I suppose. And that goes even further; the arm is quite an intense overall progression.
But we do want to push it further, so it's just seeing how much we can get in and what makes sense at this point.
Can we have an example of one of the god powers you can get?
Derek Bradley: Yeah, I suppose since we're talking about armor, there is a very sort of martial weaponry-focused boss. One of the things you can do with this boss is essentially turn yourself into a massive suit of haunted armor. You turn into a massive behemoth and just kind of lay into people. The paradigm shift is quite large, because when you do it, you can't climb ladders and do things - because you're just too heavy and too big. But you end up having three arms. You've got an arm on your back, I guess, and you can just go crazy for a little bit. And it's a lot of fun.
In this case, Enki's involved. Whenever you cast one, Enki's really doing it. He's grabbing Nor; she's told him to do it, but he's grabbing her and getting her into the armor and getting it all going, then popping off to the side.
Is there a trade-off with all the powers? You won't be able to climb ladders or anything with that particular one.
Derek Bradley: Not hugely. I think that one really has the biggest trade-off, because you actually move differently. It's a completely different move set to what we have in anything else; every part of it is quite custom. The others have their own things, but they don't necessarily have massive trade-offs. Even with that one, the trade-offs aren't that huge. What ends up happening is you kind of turn into it, you fight for a little bit, you break out of the armor until you pull that energy and go back into it. It's almost like stepping into a Gundam-type thing and going for a little bit.
Are there any powers that are not for combat? Is there anything that affects the environment or exploration?
Derek Bradley: Yeah, there are a whole bunch of things. I'm trying to think now what the best ones to speak of are. Enki has a whole bunch of stuff that he does, and that you can upgrade him towards. Because he's kind of more on the exploration side of things, with magic being a bit more tactical and about what you could find around you. For example, Enki can sense ambushes around you. If there's an enemy that's starting to think about you, Enki will let you know, so you can go in another direction. Which is, I suppose, helpful in that regard.
The bigger part of that is that there are a whole bunch of powers related to traversal, which are very much not combat. Nor herself gets the power to - and this is where she picks up a little bit of dark magic, I suppose - mix with gunpowder slightly. You can kind of blow yourself up midair and dodge to the side; you can double jump, and you can do all that kind of stuff. She's a bit stronger than your average human at this point, so because of that, you become extremely mobile. But at the same time, you can find these bones around the world that activates these triangles, which Enki can then use to absorb you into himself and fly through.
You essentially unlock these puzzles throughout the world that might get you to special vantage points that you couldn't get to otherwise. And they're quite interesting, because as you're moving towards them, you can choose what you want to do when you go through the triangle. If you press one button, you will jettison straight into the air; if you push another, you'll be shot through like a cannon; another, you'll hang on to it and hold off before falling straight down. There's quite a lot you can do. And even while you're moving towards the triangle, if you see an enemy, you can tell Enki to dart into them and divert off the triangle to do that instead of hopping into the triangle. But you do this, and then you get to the other end, and you're kind of free-falling. You're in control, and you can daisy chain these triangles together. You can hop between a whole bunch of them and solve the puzzle to get somewhere, and you can also use your black powder abilities at this point too, so you can continue to double jump and double dodge in the air to get places. It makes you ridiculously mobile.
But then beyond that, it actually ends up being a very transformative thing for the open world that you run around. You start each zone with no triangles unlocked, and you end with hundreds of triangles unlocked, so they actually become these motorways where you transform the game from Dark Souls into Spider-Man by the end of it. You have this sense of a lot of power. In Spider-Man, you can websling anywhere, but for this, there's a little bit of the Souls-like flavor. You have to work for it, but it's quite nice. I think that the zones change quite a lot, and things that might have been tough or you didn't want to engage with, you can actually just start flying over. I guess you've earned the right to do that at that point, which is quite fun.
So the zones aren't necessarily harder than each other? Do they all have difficult or easier areas?
Derek Bradley: Well, there is a progression through the zones. They do kind of chronologically go through each other, and they kind of have an order. Each of them has stuff that's a little bit harder that you might want to return to, as well. And we do have a bit of fun with zones that you do return to on purpose as well, which has a little bit of that kind of Zelda vibe. You didn't have all the abilities to get to certain things in the zone, and now you can because you've unlocked new abilities as you've gone through the game. There's a bit of that too.
Do you have to pick and choose which abilities are unlocked, or do they all get unlocked eventually?
Derek Bradley: You do have to pick and choose, although the core ones that you end up needing for the really essential puzzles, you do get. But particularly with Enki, he has a whole bunch that you can unlock which you wouldn't necessarily have. It can be simple things, like when he darts through people do his curse, there's an ability where he'll actually do more of a chain lightning version of that.
But on the other side of the spectrum, you find a lot of guns that do a whole bunch of different things. From having hand mortars that will blow things up to having a Princess Mononoke-style cannon that sits on your shoulder. It will shoot through multiple enemies, which allows you to line them up and destroy whole bunches of enemies at once. There are a lot of different ways to play, because of the things you can find. Then you could just get rifles that are more like sniper rifles, which really change the game a lot.
Do you think that you'd be able to try everything out in one playthrough, or would it take a few different runs?
Derek Bradley: You could probably try everything out, if you really reset the skill tree a lot and played with it a lot. You could probably give it a go.
I think the cool thing is that it really makes the playthroughs quite different. And what's been really exciting for us, as we've play-tested it, has been finding people using it in ways that we didn't expect. I guess that's the metric for like, "That's what we were aiming for." People are starting to surprise us now, because it's complex enough that they can really choose what they want to do. They can add certain things together and just get these crazy builds that you didn't know were possible.
About how long would you say it takes to complete one full playthrough?
Derek Bradley: We're aiming for 40 hours. It's hard to promise it at this point, because I think it'd be 40 hours minimum. But it's hard to tell with all of the open-world content that's coming in, even now. It's getting to be bigger than we think, honestly. But I would promise 40 at this point.
I guess it depends on how much exploration is done, or how much you just stick to the story?
Derek Bradley: Yeah, absolutely. I think we will probably try and stick to a 40-hour average playthrough. But the hope is that somebody who was a completionist could spend a lot more time there. Or even just that people playing it multiple times can go to the left instead of the right this time, or explore other bits that they haven't gone through, and it'll give them a fresh experience while playing with the skill tree.
As far as the gods, are they inspired by any specific mythology or a combination of any?
Derek Bradley: We've done so much god research for this project. We started with as old as we could find, so a lot of the stuff we looked at was very ancient Mesopotamian. We went through patron saints as well, just to get the creative juices flowing for our concept team. But I think it's ended up being very unique, because it's just how many years we've spent on it. I feel like we've just built internal myths and legends at this point.
I'd say the strongest influences are certainly the really old, ancient Mesopotamian gods. But even to that point, we've had linguists build a whole god language, and we've really pushed quite hard on trying to make our own thing that just exists in this game.
Everything about it seems pretty unique. I feel like you've painted a really exciting picture for us. Is there anything else you wanted to add about the game?
Derek Bradley: I think that's pretty good. Actually, I think you've kind of ushered me through to a large degree. I guess the only thing to add is probably the relationship between Nor and Enki, how they kind of interact, and how much they do together as you kind of move through the game.
They've been really interesting for us, in of trying to make two living, breathing characters. We found it quite helpful that they talk to each other all the time, and they've got a lot of personality. You find out who this really tough, hard-bitten soldier Nor is and what that sort of toughness means for somebody we've tried to make as real as possible and have as much real adversity as possible against them. We're really leaning into, "We're just human," and representing that historical reenactment side of things, which would oppose the gods.
And then Enki is just this really charismatic, cheeky little fox creature. Sort of greedy, but also really charming. He's a cool little character as well. And between the two of them, there's a lot of interplay and a lot of character growth. I think it'll be really exciting.
Flintlock: Siege of Dawn is set to be released in early 2023 for Xbox One and Xbox X/S, and it will also be a day one release for Xbox Game .