It’s not being burned at the stake!
It’s hard to believe it’s been a little over a year since we’ve last heard about Witchfire. Coming from developer The Astronauts (The Vanishing of Ethan Carter), the game looks to be adapting some of the graphical techniques used in that game along with the pedigree of the studio’s past (these guys previously worked on Painkiller and Bulletstorm). While we still don’t have a lot more news to go off of, that is going to change very quickly.
In the first of many updates to come, The Astronauts have announced that weekly updates on the development of Witchfire will be coming every Wednesday. Whether that means the game will be releasing next year is anyone’s guess, but preliminary work on level design and art has been completed and guns are getting modeled.
As the blog post puts it, “A lot of asset work has been done. We have dozens of guns ready, they’re being animated at this very moment. We have enough modeled and animated enemy models to make a significant portion of the game, and one of us is currently finishing the work on the core AI that will govern them all. For two years now, the graphic artists have been working on the map assets mostly using the photogrammetry tech. The actual levels are being meshed. The main features have all been designed and just wait until their implementation time comes.”
The best part, though? “Witchfire is not a story-based game. There’s lore to discover and decipher, but no cut-scenes to follow.” That sounds like absolute heaven to me. I don’t mind a strong story (my love of Yakuza wouldn’t make sense if I did), but environmental storytelling is where shooters excel. Making me care about the maps I’m digging through and picking up on enemy cues should be more important than stopping the action to exposit at me for minutes on end.
If you’re interested in following up with each new update, make sure to follow The Astronauts on Twitter and Facebook. Any new Witchfire info will hit there, first.
Witchfire, a Year After Reveal [The Astronauts]
