That a weird release time. Forum bump!

The most bizarre thing about this game is I still have no idea what genre it is, what the gameplay is like. Is it a puzzle/adventure, 3rd person hack & slash, a dark walking simulator... The store descriptions both here and on Steam are devoid of any reasonable description or feature list. It's like, hey this game is so weird and creepy and awesome, buy it. :?

Downloading it now

Yeah, I'm at a bit of a loss here also. My gut reaction is that this is a Telltale-esque series of cutscenes with "mash X to win" combat/minigames inbetween. Does this have any exploration whatsoever? Would be awesome if someone who bought this could clarify.

If i have the time tommorow I will write up my thoughts on the game if nobody else does.

Curious about the reviews.

For some reasons this game gives me the vibes of ryse, son of rome, gameplay wise. It's definitely not on my wishlist, still i'm happy to see more games getting the same release date as steam!

I'm curious about the term "independent AAA production"... What does that even mean? Generally triple A implies they had a huge-ass production budget -- but if that is the case, where did the funding come from, if not from a traditional publishing company?

Anyhow, curious about the game, too. The initial reviews will probably be useless, but should be increasingly more interesting once some people have actually finished their playthrough. ( Note to reviewers: Please resist the urge to rush out a review, just for the "First!!1" status. Take your time and don't base your opinion on your first play session, so your review is actually useful for others interested in the game. If you just want to chat about your first impressions, there's always the game's sub-forum. )

I'm also positively surprised by the small download size ( around 13GB ), at least for a game of this technical quality. The final installation size is significantly bigger, so it seems this is one of those rare cases where they used some proper compression for their game installer/packages. Thanks to the game devs and GOG for that.

The PS4 gameplay/walkthrough videos are long up. What I've seen feels kind of FMV-esque. Instead of the comical, fuzzy, pulp-budget of the old, it's replaced with a high octane, cinematic, majestic view-scape kind of style. It's like, your hand is thrust through the ripple of a hollywood movie screen, and you are controlling things that way. This is different from how I feel when I play my usual Triple AAA RPGs, where I tend to feel like I've been excitedly thrust into an immersive, fantasy/sci-fi world I could sink into. Maybe, it's the motion-capture technical style, I don't know.

I think, if you enjoy the art styling and what you've seen of the trailer, it just might be your cup of tea.

After my first ~hour with it, I'd say... a mix of all three. It does have combat set pieces, which feel a lot like Dark Souls, but there's some exploration-based puzzles with creepy infodumps into the background, *and* some... ¿puzzles? where you may actually die; not QTEs, but more like timed challenges with enviromental hazards. Hard to go into detail without spoilers.

Gotta say, though, coolest part of the game so far is how they integrated the voices into the combat; I thought it was just a gimmick made for the trailer, but they do yell stuff like "careful!" or "behind you!" in between their usual commentary, which is... actually really helpful.

It's weird, it's beautiful, it's helishly dark, but I think the game's appeal lies mostly in its mood and storytelling; gameplay is far more involved than a Telltale game, but isn't terribly innovative thus far.

What it means is that they tried to come up with methods of creating AAA quality art/animations etc. on a much lower budget. Hellblade was basically an experiment to come up with a workflow that they will be able to use for future games, and judging by what they said I think they want to share their experience with other developers so we may see more AAA quality indie games.

You can check out the dev diaries if you are interested, here's one that shows perfectly the experimenting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzUkngN6SBE

I'm in.
Enslaved: Odyssey To The West is one of my favorite games of the last gen console.

Size is an indication of how much content there is. 30gb requirement, 13gb size

Little nightmares was similar 10gb requirement, 2.5 gb size. It appears these arent game sizes but installer + game. Looks like little content in the games. Tomb raider 2013 was 13gb and i expect this game to have higher textures, so fewer gameplay. I had high hopes for this but im liking this less and less

Oh, same devs?

Pass then. :P