'Absolver' shakes up everything you know about fighting games
There are two main things to know about Absolver: it's visually gorgeous, and its combat will ask more of you than most other games would dare.
It’s not just a brutally specific set of controls like the Dark Souls series, or an impressive array of stance-specific combos like in Ubisoft’s upcoming For Honor (with which Absolver shares a small amount of spiritual DNA, as members of developer Sloclap work previously at Ubisoft); it’s that Absolver lets players customize their fighting styles to a degree of detail rarely, if ever, seen in video games.
The game’s “combat deck” system lets players stack up custom move combos within a variety of stances that flow into and out of one another during fights. One move might start in the front-right stance, for example, but the final move you’ve stacked in the combo will end in the back-left stance.
From there you launch into other combos that use other moves in other stances, and so on, all with the goal of keeping foes on their toes. It sounds like a lot, but the developers feel it's not hard to get the hang of setting up your combat deck.
“It’s actually accessible,” creative lead Pierre Tarno told Mashable. "'Deep' is probably a better word [to describe it]." The goal was to make a system that welcomes casual, pick-up-and-play combatants, but “that also has enough layers for competitive [player-versus-player] gameplay."
As you master the system, Absolver starts feeling less and less like a traditional fighting game.
"Besides the combat deck, you have in the PvP combat mechanics [like] feints, cancels, parries, special abilities coming into play," Tarno said. "At high levels you reach something that’s more of a mind game."
Absolver isn't just about high-level play, however. The game's overworld is filled with ruins and mysterious, violent characters. Players explore it cooperatively, unearthing the narrative and learning the ropes before entering the online PvP fray.
"It’s a desolate world," Tarno said, and one that is mainly inhabited by other mask-wearing "Prospects," like the character you play as. The masked denizens of this land "became crazy, basically, for reasons that are explained in the game."
Tarno hopes that players will discover and enjoy the game's narrative, but he also hopes to use the story as a dangling carrot.
"What we do want is to actually bring in players who are not necessarily competitive action game players and who are interested by the world, the story, its universe, its gameplay. [We want to] bring some of these players -- probably not all, but some of them -- progressively toward the competitive PVP," he said.
"And players who could have told themselves ‘No, that’s not for me, this multiplayer competitive thing,’ I think we can slowly bring them toward it and make them interested in it."
Absolver players will be online from the moment they enter the game world, and they can choose to explore, trade, make wagers, or fight with one another as they please. But the game will funnel them toward points in the world where they can enter into competitive bouts with other players, up to three-on-three matches.
"We'd rather do something that's tight [than bigger matches]," Tarno explained. Competitive play will be the "core end game" at launch -- meaning, that's what you'll want to focus on after you finish the story -- at least until the developers start adding more co-op story content, which they plan to do.
"I’m not saying this is going to become an esport or anything. But we certainly hope that with hundreds of attacks ... and hundreds of thousands of different combinations, you’re going to have a meta that emerges with strategies and different combat deck styles and a game that’s rich enough, balanced enough, for competitive gameplay," Tarno said.
That question of "balance" -- making sure there's no single or handful of weapons, moves, or strategies that's totally dominant over all others -- is essential for any game developer that wants to retain a healthy online community.
That's a huge challenge even for blockbuster game studios with hundreds of employees -- just look at the fanfare around Destiny and Overwatch updates -- much less for a small studio like Sloclap. But Tarno believes the sheer number of potential moves and combinations will allow the community to self-correct whenever one strat starts to rule the meta.
"My personal belief is that when we’ll see dominant strategies emerge, pretty soon afterward there will be ... counter-strategies that will be put into place by the community using the existing tools and attacks,” he said.
"I wouldn’t be surprised if, eventually, the top 10 players use actually very significantly different movesets and combat styles."
What about everything else a game needs to have to truly attract that potentially lucrative esports fanbase? Leaderboards, spectator modes, private matches, and a hundred other things?
"We’re certainly thinking about it," Tarno said. "We’re an independent studio. The only question is what are we going to have at launch... will you have [that stuff] day one at launch? I cannot say today. But for sure if we see that the community picks it up and that there’s demand for it, we’re going to be updating this game on a very regular basis."
Until then, Absolver is at the very least a beautiful, mysterious game with an incredibly deep -- yet accessible, according to the developers -- combat system.
"As a team we’re having fun," Tarno said, "so I think that’s a good sign."
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
