Dustborn Preview

We recently had a chance to play an extended demo for the upcoming narrative adventure Dustborn, developed by Red Thread Games and one of the first titles to come out of Quantic Dreams foray into publishing. In our 2-ish hours, we got to sample the combat, explore the relationships between the main crew, and get a taste for the adventure to come this August.

We pick up with protagonist Pax and her crew as they are recovering after what sounds like a hell of a battle. The crew are a bit battered and bruised, and in need of fuel – both for their bus and their bodies – so decide to stop at a gas station. Pax is joined by her sister Ziggy, group leader Theo, strong lady Sai, a sleepy Noam, and the bus driver Robot, who it’s immediately apparent no-one other than Ziggy (the one it transpires who purchased it) is a fan of. In this brief taste of their interconnected stories we grew to be very invested in what was going on, from Pax and Noam’s on/off relationship to Ziggy’s hostility to her sister over things that happened in their past. The writing and performances were great in this demo here, and hopefully they can keep up the standard for the rest of the game.

Conversations are a big part of the Dustborn experience as you may expect, but the way they’re handled here is slightly more nuanced than other titles. Whereas in something like The Walking Dead we get a choice of a few grey-area decisions, in Dustborn there’s more of a focus on specific words and how they may be perceived.

Regularly in a conversation we’re be presented a series of prompts to keep the conversation going. Each of these are single words that offer the chance to ask more questions on a topic or move things along. Tapping the associated button won’t immediately launch into the dialogue though; rather, the character can keep talking while we weigh up our options, with a text box appearing at the top of the screen to flesh out our selection and give us an idea of what may happen should we go with that choice. It’s a neat way to handle these dialogue choices that I’ve not come across before.

We can also highlight certain surroundings mid-conversation. Some are optional extras, whereas one example saw us need to distract the gas station clerk, A few options present themselves, and we went for getting him chatting about a picture of his beloved Betty while Ziggy nipped behind the counter to ‘borrow’ a bottle of alcohol. Again, it’s another neat addition to the (by now) tried and tested dialogue choice conversation style.

When we’re not chatting up a storm we can explore the area we’re currently in, looking for clues and extra exposition. It’s not unfamiliar stuff, but it’s all handled well with some decent gags and intrigue thrown in.

We also get to sample some of the games real time combat in the demo. This plays well, although it’s not the most fluid combat we’ll ever play. Pax and co. are Anomals, and as such have certain abilities that can be used in combat. Pax herself uses her words to affect enemies in her Shouts – a meter slowly charges as we fight and once full we can choose from one of her learned words such as Push – which shoves enemies back -, Block – which freezes enemies to the spot – as well as a handful of others. They’re not one size fits all, with some being more AOE attacks, while others won’t affect certain enemies.

She also has a combo move that regains some health as long as we hit all the button prompts, and can use her team mates abilities in conjunction with some of her moves. A skill tree lets us upgrade her bat and moveset, though we only get chance to sample a one or two levels in our short time with the game.

As we said, it’s decent combat that breaks up the exploration and conversations, though we’ll be keen to see if it can win us over a bit more in the final release. Even in this short demo we were happy to move past the combat sections to get back to the rest of the game.

Luckily, we were much more into the other aspects of Dustborn, with the cool dialogue mechanic and great writing having us itching for more just as the demo came to a close. We don’t have long to wait – the game is out August 20th this year – so be sure to come back then to see whether it lived up to our (now slightly higher) expectations.

This game was previewed on PC (via Steam). All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by the publisher.