Why Hunted: The Demon's Forge Isn't the Game inXile Thinks It Is

After listening to inXile's Brian Fargo talk about the inspirations behind Hunted: The Demon's Forge and then actually seeing the game firsthand, the editors at Bitmob don't think it's the Wizardry/Bard's Tale/Ultima-inspired game that Brian thinks it is. In fact, they liken it to Gears of War in a fantasy setting:
"Wizardry was the first game I became totally addicted to," he says, explaining his passion for fantasy gaming. Fargo goes on to discuss how the genre evolved from there to The Bard's Tale, the Ultima series, Might and Magic, and Dungeon Master, before they became more action-oriented with Ultima Underworld and even first-person shooters like Heretic and Hexen. "All those games did well, because I think they went back to the original, romantic notion of going into a dungeon, looking for the secret doors, finding the chest, finding the berserkers...all that great stuff."

Anyone who's encountered the room of 396 berserkers in the original Bard's Tale (1985) can probably relate to what Fargo is saying, but might he be a little stuck in the past? "I sit at home with my big TV and wonder what it would be like to play that [traditional] style of gameplay today," he says. "The users who play those products are different today, right? It's 2010. So we want to take who gamers are today and mix it up with the essence of those old, classic dungeon crawls, especially for those who haven't experienced those or who want to experience them again -- and that's how this product was born."

...

Heretic and Hexen? Maybe, but the game that immediately comes to mind when seeing Hunted in action is...Gears of War, believe it or not. Gears of War in a fantasy setting.
That's the vibe I've been getting from the previews, too, so I'm glad Bitmob finally spelled it out.