Dungeon Hero E3 Previews

[GameBanshee News]

The guys over at Destructoid and gameSlave have both conjured up new E3-based previews of Firefly Studios' Dungeon Hero. An excerpt from Destructoid's article:

Firefly's presentation opened up with a comic book-style cutscene telling the story of a Goblin doctor who tends to those wounded during a brutal conflict. Using still images in an animated style that echoes Metal Gear Solid's digital graphic novel, the most striking thing about Dungeon Hero's narrative is how dark it all is. I'm not talking dark in the cliché sense either -- Dungeon Hero's world is a truly brutal and depressing place, and the imagery it conjures up borders on the disturbing.

The Goblin hospital that we were introduced to, for example, showed us some of the horrors of war that afflict our green-skinned friends. On one stretcher, some poor chap had inhaled a gas that was liquefying him from the inside out. Another sat laughing in a chair with his legs removed. He was giggling deliriously because he'd just seen a human, the "hero" of the game's name, tear apart a squad of enemies. "We could use a hero, human or otherwise," the goblin doctor remarks, before moving on, quite disaffected.

And an excerpt from gameSlave's article:

There will be no RPG-like distribution of attribute points. Instead, you are given 'skill points' that you can use to improve your offensive and defensive moves.

Another key point for Bradbury is story, as it will be here that team really try and hit home their 'anti-dungeon' motif. Firefly will be using a mix of comic-style sections that look like they're from a Frank Miller novel, and in-game hints via NPCs in order to drive the narrative. The story itself is being written by none other than Terry Pratchett, acclaimed author of the Discworld novels.

All this will serve to reinforce the idea that this 'Dungeon' is anything but. In the words of co-designer Andrew Parsons:

"It's not just a dungeon and you are not an ordinary hero."