Hunted: The Demon’s Forge announced. Brings Gears of Warcraft gameplay to PC, Xbox 360 and PS3

1 September 2010

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Posted by:Josh Romero

Hunted: The Demon’s Forge has been announced for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC by developer “inXile”.

A mixture of Gears of War-style third-person dungeon-crawling action with World of Warcraft-style fantasy, the game promises lots of cooperative action that is “uncompromisingly violent”.

“We’ve always wanted to update the dungeon crawl,” says developer president Matt Finlay. “If you think about its origins as tabletop Dungeons & Dragons, that was a co-op experience – you and your buddies versus the Dungeon Master. We wanted to create that experience, but set it in a way that’s much more recognizable to a wider audience. I love action games – you can do them in outer space, you can do them in World War II, you can kill zombies – but the genre I care about the most just wasn’t represented.”

“We have a love of modern action games, cover-based action games, and we love the fantasy genre, so what we’re trying to do is bring those two behemoth things together. If you’ve played any action game in the last five years, you already understand our controls.”

As you’d expect, the game plays like a cover-based shooter, although like another sci-fi Gears-style game (Tecmo’s Quantum Theory), you can also use Magic Attacks and fight with melee weapons like Swords.

“We have a love of modern action games, cover-based action games, and we love the fantasy genre, so what we’re trying to do is bring those two behemoth things together. If you’ve played any action game in the last five years, you already understand our controls.”

There are two playable characters, the tank-like Caddoc, and the Mage E’lara. As you’d imagine, Caddoc is tougher and stronger at melee attacks, while E’lara is swifter and can attack at long range with arrows and spells. But the game puts an emphasis on cooperative teamwork to survive the hordes. Such as using the Mage’s magic to enchant Caddoc’s weapons or give you a burst of strength at the right moment.

“We want the singleplayer game to feel like you’re playing a co-op game. We’re making the AI smart, and also making them true to their personalities – her tendency is to try and take high cover, and his is to run out into the middle of the room and smash things with a sword.”

In addition, exploration will also play a big role.

“A lot of the time, this game is action action action, but we keep talking about exploration and our love of old-school dungeon crawls. Once you’ve killed all the creatures in an area, we want to try and reward you for taking the time to look around. We have a lot of the concepts of those older games that we love – the exploration, the magic, the creepy mouths giving you riddles that you have to solve to open secret doors and find magic weapons. We want to have the spirit and the soul of the old-school dungeon crawl, but really have a visceral, swords and magic based action game as well.”

The game is scheduled for release next year.

Here is the debut trailer.

Via VG247