The Ascent - Interviews & Hands-on Video

Wccftech have a Q&A with the developers of The Ascent, additionally the outlet has gone hands-on with the game.  Gamingbolt have also interviewed the developers and asked about the world, progression, story, and more.

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Do you have difficulty levels in the game?

No, you can't set the difficulty in the options. What we're trying to do is we have what we feel is a balanced difficulty curve, and then we say that we want to reward the skill because since we are doing something to meet both the action enthusiasts and the RPG enthusiasts, they might have different skill sets. For someone who's very good at playing action games, we expect you to be able to tackle challenges earlier, smarter, better. And then we'll say, if the game is a bit too hard, that's where the RPG aspects of making sure you have a good build, maybe leveling up a bit more so you're ready to take on the challenge, come in. That's how we try to make the game meet you at your skill level.

Basically, you can go do some side content to level up your character, get better stats and come back to rock whatever hurdle stood in your way.

Yeah, exactly.

I just managed to unlock the hydraulic punch, which is quite nice as someone who loves melee. I'm wondering if you can upgrade it somehow and perhaps use it more often, something like that.

You can scale its efficiency. Every single augmentation ability in the game can be scaled, they scale based on the attributes your character has. That one I believe is driven by your motor skills. So if you put your skill points into for example weapon handling which has to do with your arms and your motor skills, then your hydraulic punch will also scale and then there are other abilities that will scale with other attributes. Depending on how you assign your skill points, different abilities will be better, or rather you will be better at using them than your co-op buddy. If you both have maybe the spray missile augmentation installed, maybe your friend can only fire three missiles but you can fire 18 because you've spent your points like that.

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When it comes to progression and customization, how much variety can players expect from the skills and cyberware augments in the game? How much of an emphasis does the game place on build variety?

There is a large number of augmentations available, each will give the player a different skill. All augmentations can be improved by improving the passive stats that are driving them. Put more skill points into cybernetics, and you can spawn more kamikaze spider robots! There are dozens of unique weapons that can be upgraded, a multitude of different gadgets like grenades, turrets, mech suits and many others. In short: there is quite a lot there. Different areas of the world and certain enemies are best tackled in different ways, so it’s up to the player to experiment and find what approach to take. Co-op of course brings a whole new level of experimentation to the table, so when teaming up with friends, you can experiment together on what works best.

Cyberpunk settings are always ripe for thematically rich storytelling. Can we expect something along those lines for The Ascent as well?

I would like to think so! We have put a lot of effort and love into the world, its lore, and the storytelling in it.  For the players who just want to breeze through the game and blow up as many things as possible, it’s all skippable, but for the players that want to immerse themselves more in the world, read all the lore, there is a lot to discover.

Does The Ascent have any choice and consequence mechanics as far as storytelling and story progression are concerned?

As players progress through the main story, you will be able to see things changing in the world, areas evolving, friendly areas becoming hostile, and vice versa. There is no choice and consequence mechanics, but players will be able to see their effect on the world, both through main and side content in various way, ranging from subtle things like a store owner changing his line of business, to corporate takeovers of entire facilities.

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Thanks Farflame!