The Surge, the upcoming action role-playing game from Lords of the Fallen studio Deck13, features a combat style that carries a sense of weight and power that isn’t seen in other games. In order to make each of protagonist Warren’s swings as realistic as possible, the studio weighed down its motion capture stuntman.
“We wanted to make [the combat] look really heavy but at the same time he needed to have this incredible speed, and he has this enormous power to him now,” managing director Jan Klose says in a new behind-the-scenes video. “What we did was we attached like 20-something kilos to our stuntman and made him do even the fastest attack with it to really show the weight we had there.”
The result appears to be a success, with Warren’s swings against enormous robots feeling like they are doing real damage, particularly when he targets a specific armored body part and destroys it in order to craft new weapons of his own. Deck13 avoided making the powerful finishing moves too “fancy,” as Warren’s ultimate goal is just to eliminate the threats standing in his way, but they still offer an appropriate level of brutality.
Though its Dark Souls and Bloodborne influences are clear, one area where The Surge will not draw inspiration from is its narrative. As seen near the end of the behind-the-scenes video, dialogue options and traditional cinematic should make the game’s story coherent without needing to read every item description and learn the background of every side character. In fact, some side content could actually cause you to stray further from the path.
“We really tried to have different layers of stories. Some of them are really important for you and some aren’t. And some just lead you in the wrong direction,” Klose said.
We’ll be able to see all the secrets The Surge has in store for us when it launches on May 16. It will be available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
