RPGWatch @ Gamescom - Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones Preview

To kick of our series of Gamescom articles, here is a preview of Stygian:Reign of the Old Ones. One of the Lovecraftian games that were present at Gamescom.

Stygian: Reign of the Old One takes place in an alternative history in the 1920's of New England. In the game you get to create your character from 8 different archetypes from that era, like an aristocrat, occultist or investigator. All modelled afteler Lovecraftian archetypes. The game takes place in the fictional town of Arkham after the awakening of the great Old Ones. You meet a character called the Dismal Man. He tells you to find him beyond Arkham after the Black Day. The main story is about following his footsteps in order to find some answers. You have a choice on how to approach that, like follow him for vengeance as you feel he is responsible for what happened to the world. Or maybe you end up joining him. The choices you make in the game will have an impact on the story and also the endings, of which there are eight. As mentioned, the ending you get is determined by the choices you make, such as who you are, who you are adding to your party, your relationship with them, your actions in the world and the pacts that you make with others in the game. Also people can react differently based on who you are and what choices you have made. If you are a criminal and you interact with another criminal you can have a different conversation than if you would be a soldier.

More information.

Here is the first article from a game I had the chance of playing at Gamescom.

Sounds like they've put some actual role playing in their RPG. I like the sound of it.

Yup, this seems very promising. I think I´m more eager to play this game than both "Call of Cthulhu" and "The Sinking City".

Partly that is because I really like the design of this game, partly because it has the most interesting sounding story and partly because I usually prefer "party based" rpgs to single character ones.

Reminder to anyone interested that there's a demo on steam

Yeah, the article refers to it

Thanks for the preview!

I seen the trailers but was hoping someone would post their first impressions.

It has the potential to be an instant classic. The character system is deep and allows a lot of diverse builds, with an emphasis on roleplaying rather than just combat. They nailed the Lovecraft vibe well and the world is very atmospheric.

Yeah, from playing the demo I really love the character creation options; reminds me of Fallout / Arcanum. The combat animations seem a bit slow to me though… While I understand that this fits the tone of the game, but I could see that getting tiresome. And I'm not a fan of that auto-save only business; just let players play a singleplayer game how they want. Still, this is easily a buy for me.

Agreed, plenty of good options for character creation is a huge plus for me. Another game I'm looking forward to playing.

Thanks for the preview but still not feeling it's a must buy. People keep comparing this game to Fallout/Arcanum, but my opinion is it's looks & plays nothing like them.

I may buy it on sale one day though but other games interest me more.

Originally Posted by daveyd
The combat animations seem a bit slow to me though… And I'm not a fan of that auto-save only business

These are definitely issues, but since it's just a demo, they'll hopefully be addressed.

Originally Posted by screeg
These are definitely issues, but since it's just a demo, they'll hopefully be addressed.

Weren't you doing some writing for this game or am I thinking of someone else?

My apologies for speaking for Screeg, but I believe he did some writing for Battle Brothers.

@daveyd I did do a contract for Battle Brothers as well as a post-translation rewrite for the Stygian demo, and now that they have a publisher am continuing with the rest of the story.

Also working with Dark Crystal Games.