The Gothic developers are coming back with an RPG mixing their SF / Fantasy / Post-apocalyptic universe.
The idea of Elex, who takes the gamble to stand out from the crowd by offering a patchwork RPG, mixes fantasy with science fiction at the same time, going through a post-apocalyptic and filthy Mad Max universe.
A mosaic completely convoluted on paper but still offers a hint of curiosity.
Before I start this article I really want to warn you: what makes the strength of Elex can be perceived as negative for the casual players who do not want to get too involved and prefer to play an hour from time to time, the hand in the underpants, on mainstream RPGs (Elex remains a niche game).
Piranha Bytes, the little story made in Germany
In 1997 was born Piranha Bytes, a studio which, since its creation, is unlike any other.
Known for two trilogies, those of the Gothic and Risen, the only games to his credit, the studio has developed its role-playing formula, pinched with some simulationist DNA.
If this recipe is a success in Germany, the studio has struggled for several years to find a place with the players in other countries.
On the one hand, because of its status as a craftsman, AA game maker (could be even Triple-i), median budget and reduced teams - 25 people worked in the studio in 2016 - and secondly because the formula is unique in the world and wants to be more realistic than its compe*****s.
If it brings many benefits, and the one who writes these lines has already declared his love to this unique studios in many occasion with its fellow gamer friends, their recipe remains rigid and is neither easy to access nor appreciable for all.
So here comes finally the last born of the studio, ELEX, an ambitious title which, thanks to the support of THQ Nordic, is more imposing than the trilogy of the Risen, a real return to the open world and renewal of a excellent formula who, let's face it, sometimes went around in circles.
To say that the formula of the Germans at Piranha Bytes will divide is a mild euphemism. Explanation!
ELEX, or the mix of genres
Piranha Bytes rhymes with classicism: since 2001, date of release of the first Gothic, the universe presented revolves around fantasy (even if the Risen, from the second, also brought a strong Caribbean touch through piracy), very similar gameplay, graphical assets reused almost to excess with a few improvement, and the same bestiary, mixing wild boar and raptor, that we can find in all their titles.
ELEX, meanwhile, intends to change the situation with its atypical universe - although we do find mutant wild boars and raptors... you do not change a team that wins.
Taking place on Malagan's planet, similar to Earth in many ways, developers are venturing the players into an amazing mix of genres.
Indeed, Malagan suffered a cataclysm: the arrival of a comet having upset the fauna, the flora, the environment and which almost exterminate the human race.
Fortunately, we have hard skin and, two centuries later, humanity has gone from survival to intestine warfare.
The Elex dictacte them all !
It must be known that the comet brought with it the Elex.
The Elex is a strange and still poorly understood substance that serves each faction in a very different way.
The Berserkers turn it into mana, the Clerics use it to power their machines, the Outlaws to create ********s improving certain physical abilities and the Albes, they consume it directly to gain power at the expense of their emotions that are then inhibited.
As tradition dictates with Piranha Bytes, these cleavages signify much more than just the use of Elex, they translate different philosophies that oppose and offer some depth to each clan.
Thus, the Berserkers are convinced that technology is responsible for all the evils of Magalan, it must be destroyed and is prohibited in their ranks, they live in harmony with nature. In fact, the Elex must be transmuted into mana, which allows them to use a particular magic as well as to feed world hearts, weird plants that once fed by this transmuted Elex give back little by little wasteland by relocating vegetation.
The outlaws are much more pragmatic, living in the desert region of Travar, individual liberties are sacred and legal impediments can not imprison them, since the only existing laws are those which aim to make hold their semblance of government, based on the law of the strongest. The important thing is first and foremost the profit that it is obtained by trade, theft or other crimes.
The Clerics are a believing people, venerating the Calaan God whose precepts based on wisdom guide them, but are also, paradoxically, great scientists seeking to understand the ancient world and using its many technological wonders, high-tech armor to the mechas.
There remains the Albes, a faction born of the Clerics and having rejected Calaan to seek power. They, unlike the other three factions, are at the heart of the main plot, our main character being from their rank.
They use technology similar to that of the Clerics, but they also consume the Elex, which gives them physical power and magical powers - their magic is very different from that of the Berserkers - in exchange for their emotions, seen as a weakness and a hindrance. Reasoning therefore only by pure logic, they believe that they must dominate the world and exterminate the free peoples - the other three factions - to seize all the existing Elex, in a perpetual search for power.
Jax, our main protagonist, is an Albe commander who finds himself betrayed by his family, narrowly escaping his assassination attempt. Weaned from Elex and rediscovering, with difficulty, the role of emotions, he will have to mingle with the free people to fight against his old faction and try to understand the reasons for the betrayal that left him dead.
Note that a fourth minor faction exists: the Albian Separatists who, if they still consume Elex, struggle to understand the endless conflicts engendered by their leaders and therefore attempt to overthrow their former leaders.
A coherent world
All this having been said, it would be easy to see ELEX as a messy title where technophobic hippies attack Mechas and religious fanatics armed with laser and plasma weapons, with sword, while the Outlaws would then be discounted raiders with a soft spot for guns.
However, if this cocktail can seem sordid to the writing, one of the great qualities of the title is indeed his universe and the coherence of it. Whether to narrate, through the environment and comments of our companions, the story of Magalan before the Fall or to move the player from a fantasy to a post-apocalyptic atmosphere through the more traditional science fiction set.
Indeed, the factions are well characterized, and although each has a well-defined territory with a specific biome - forests for the Berserker, volcanic lands for the Clerics, wasteland for the Outlaws and icy lands for the Albes - all has been thought so that nothing gets the player out of the experience.
O' you, my delights, my dear factions ...
We also get back what made the success of the german studio : namely his writing, certainly very crude, but also rocked by quality: the members of each faction are not forming a block of monolithic ideas and the quests across factions have many consequences on the story.
In addition, the world-specific design, realistic and giving great importance to topography, is proving its worth again. The exploration is never smooth, always renewed and, since the terrain offered to the players plays on the relief, the landscapes are always sublime compositions hiding many secrets, despite the "Old World" buildings quickly redundant with their interior at the level design very realistic and, indeed, not necessarily exciting. In addition, teleporters are relatively rare and the player will have to agree to explore using his only legs and jetpack (the jetpack is allowing you to explore otherwise inaccessible places and to avoid many fights with monsters more powerful than the player at the beginning of the game).
The only regret is the environmental narrative, which, although it is present, is still in its infancy and relies much more on texts to read than on the environment itself.
ELEX sets up a vast open world certainly, but, unlike Gothic 3, centers of life are rare and if there are many NPCs hidden in nature, there are only four cities - three large factional capitals and a small neutral city.
In fact, the consequences of your actions or quests success, if they do exist, do not have a clearly visible impact on the world and the ELEX map.
The main issue is that the world to explore is too big for the current game quest and faction content... The game ending in about 50h including the vast majority of side quests.
Since the game is developed by less than thirty people it is easily explained, but remains regrettable as the title could have offered more and dig deeper into some themes.
One of the major flaw of ELEX is related to its factions: almost all of their quests are accessible to the player even before he chooses the one he will join the ranks.
On the left, find the order of the grenade pins. On the right, play "hot and Cold" with numbers.
Indeed, although the three factions are central and have a place in history, the main plot revolves around the Albes, the conflict between them and the Free Peoples, as well as our quest for revenge.
Also, joining a faction is certainly obligatory, but is only a way to get new skills, crafts and equipment exclusive to each and if you did not care about the simplicity with which you climb in Skyrim's guilds, your are going to force yourself to laugh.
A defect more than regrettable, not to say absolutely major in my opinion, especially from a studio that has so far been successful in each of his titles to create a real experience of play by faction, whether on the screenplay or on the gameplay.
Fortunately, the main plot is interesting to follow, and full of twists - although some twists are badly brought as we see them coming hours in advance, the side quests are for the most part very pleasant and there is very little "FedEx" content to report.
Still, ELEX is probably by far the least replayable game of the Germans in Essen.
Another major problem comes from the mechanism of coolness proposed by the title. As a former Albe, you gradually rediscover your emotions and can therefore choose to act in an emotional or logical way - for simplicity, knowing that a third neutral choice is often proposed and that the emotional / logical responses are only accessible if your coolness score allows it.
The problem with this mechanic is that it can easily lock the player in the order in which he does the quests. So during my run, I was quite neutral while having a little humanist inclination. Only, having done almost all the side quests before joining a faction and realizing those related to the companions, I found myself to act in the way that seemed good to me, the pragmatism, and thus locked up unintentionally in a purely cool character and logical, without being able to counterbalance it with other quests.
An unintended consequence that determines important dialogues at the conclusion of the story - and has almost no influence during the rest of the game.
In short, I ended up with an end that I did not want - and in contradiction with quite a lot of previous dialogues or quests - because I was a purebred Albe, it seems . Since the vast majority of quests remain accessible until the epilogue, I advise you not to follow my path and progress in parallel in the secondary and main content.
Before switching to game systems, let's stop for a moment and talk about our seven companions. If brothers-in-arms are present in the studio's games since Risen 2, they have rarely been so well implemented. Their quests are real story lines, some pretty rich, they have different skills, comment on the universe for your enjoyment - I have sometimes returned to places devoid of any content to know how this or that fellow was going to react - and above all they judge your actions and will not hesitate to let you know if your behavior displeases them.
That being said, it remains unfortunate that they judge your relationship, in addition to your choices in the main plot, only in the light of the choices you make in their company, which makes it possible to be loved by all embodying a hateful avatar whose values are fundamentally opposed to theirs.
The not so Roleplay game system
If the gaming experience delivered by ELEX is relatively far from Gothic and Risen, so is the gaming system. We find in this a fairly classical system composed of five main attributes (Strenght, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Cunning) that you can increase at each level by spreading 10 points - knowing that, the cost of improvement increases the more you spend points on attributes. You will also earn learning points, one per level, which will allow you to learn various skills-abilities in several categories. First, the combat tree, whose skills allow you to maximize your damage with different types of weapons, to defeat more easily robots and mutants, or to use its jetpack for air attacks. Note that it is no longer necessary to learn to master various types of weapons or armor, only your main attributes will determine the equipment you can wear. Then comes the survival tree, offering passive skills, increasing your resistance to the elements or armor, allowing you to collect trophies on monsters, increase your life and stamina, or display all the teleportation points of the map.
Craftsmanship-Crafting, as its name suggests, will allow you to craft potions, improve your weapons, bind gems, or to picklock and hacking chests. Finally, the personality tree will allow you to maximize your gain of experience during quests, killing monsters or reading books, but also to haggle more easily, improve the offensive abilities of your companions, or , depending on your coolness score, gain attack bonuses for different types of weapons. In addition, the total score of each of these four trees will allow you to unlock new dialogue options. Finally, each of the three main factions has a skill tree unlocking specific crafts as well as faction skills. The Berserkers will give you access to magic - with spells as varied as the invocation of a spiritual wolf, a toxic aura spell or armor - and the enchantment of your weapons to achieve elemental attacks. Outlaws, they are specialized in the production of ********s, the prods, with various and varied effects: elementary resistance, immunity to alteration.
As good survivors of the wasteland, they will also make ammunition and disassemble weapons.
Finally, the Clerics will use psychic powers ranging from suggestion - allowing, via dialog options, to influence NPCs - to basic resistance spells and phases to move away from combat, or a spell that can deceive the death.
As is the custom, to unlock these skills, you will find trainers to teach you, and you will have to pay in currency. Unfortunately, this system loses its superb roleplaying as the mentioned masters-trainers will not comment on your choice of perks - the menu opens and you click, use a point - and everyone can teach you all the skills of the tree.
Since you are an Albe, you will also be able to loot or craft - for little to find or buy recipes - Elex potions. The small ones will simply bring you experience, the averages will give you two points of attributes per potion, and the powerful one point of learning.
In addition, there are also Albes spells - in the form of usable objects - allowing you for example to invoke a combat drone to support you for a few seconds, to improve your armor, to detect the (hidden) objects present in the area, or to repel your opponents.
If the significant loss of roleplay during the learning phases saddens me, some things have significant and beneficial improvements. This is, for example, the case of fighting.
Arsenal maniac
The world of Malagan being varied, this will also be the case of your military paraphernalia: sword, ax with two hands, saw blade, flamethrower, plasma or laser rifle, or rocket launcher: no doubt that ELEX is full of a pleasant arsenal; remote weapons having, moreover, several modes of shooting.
Thus, an ordinary plasma rifle can be used to launch conventional ammunition as well as an EMP attack paralyzing robots, mechas or drones for a few seconds, or even send a plasma ball interrupting enemies or even sending them to the ground. And, if you do not find in ELEX an extraordinary TPS feedback, the fact remains that shooting sensations do the job.
In addition, hand-to-hand combat is more dynamic, playing again on the dodge and the counter. The title puts in place classic and powerful moves by encouraging you to vary both to make combos. Each chaining will load a bar unlocking a special attack, dependent on your weapon. The clashes are thus more nervous and much less rigid than before, without, though, being totally fluid.
When we talked about exploration I evoked the possibility of fleeing and avoiding fights using the jetpack: an obligation for the player, especially early in the game. Indeed, ELEX does not use any level scaling; the enemies, strong or weak, are where they should be and will not hesitate to annihilate you with a simple attack. A balance that will not be reminiscent of Gothic 3 and can easily frustrate some players in the early hours of play, but in return, you will be offered a real and tangible satisfaction feeling when rising in power.
Well optimized but rigid
A point on the technical part. Just a glance at the screenshot that illustrate this review to see the graphical gap between Risen 3 and the latest Piranha Bytes. Of course, the title remains far from the AAA standards - logical, since it is not one - but remains very pleasing to the eye regarding its landscapes. NPCs on the other hand are much less successful, especially the female characters poorly modeled, and especially some animations remain excessively rigid. However, the game is technically up to our expectations and, if its artistic direction remains excessively classic and uninspired, it is the landscapes and compositions that attract our retina.
Surprisingly for Piranha Bytes game, the bugs are few : some problems of pathfinding concerning companions and sometimes enemies, but it is well optimized on PC. The soundtrack does its job, without being particularly noteworthy, and the dubbing is much better bill than those of their previous title, without being there of a breathtaking quality. The real technical black spot is to look for the interface that is catastrophic: neither ergonomic, nor beautiful, nor even readable.
To conclude
Let's say it right away, ELEX leaves me a mixed feeling. If I can not deny the quality of its story, its atypical universe and the minutia of the developers on the world design, as well as the various possibilities of gameplay offering styles of games radically different, it does not live up to some promises.
ELEX, according to the words of its creators, is their most ambitious title since Gothic 3. However, I can only see an admission of failure in these factions reduced to nothing, in its lack of replayability, or in its secondary contents finally quickly finished compared to the size of his world map. It also seems to have lost the roleplay phases related to the progression system that gave a real identity to the previous titles of the studio, and the absence of villages and secondary bastions, certainly consistent with the context, is however regrettable because they are necessary for create a tangible and living world.
In that sense, yes, ELEX is unfortunately disappointing.
Nevertheless, in this year-and period- quite poor for the Western A-RPG, ELEX remains one of the titles to play, and one of the few good ones on the market.
It is worth a visit, if only to discover its fascinating universe and experience its contemplative exploration, dialogues and choices, but also to encourage a small studio that, for the first time in a long time, comes out of its comfort zone.
Because, of course, the title is far from bad. But unfortunately, by finally wanting to renew its formula, Piranha Bytes seems to have put under the carpet some proposals of game design that were, however, its strength.
Final verdict
Pros
The universe
World Design and Contemplative Landscapes
Proven gameplay
A varied arsenal
Main Storyline
Cons
Incorrectly implemented coolness
Factions having lost their superb
A vast world but a content that is much less...
An cumbersome interface
Available on https://www.gog.com/game/elex for USD 59