Feel my fiery blade crafted by my own hands!
We gamers love manual labour; that’s a cold, hard fact! Whether driving trains, planes, or automobiles, or simply farming the fruits of our labour in Stardew Valley, we love putting our effort, time and patience in the virtual world to craft and build something of our own. There is a lot of reasoning as to why, but the core of the reason is simple… I’m not a blacksmith, and most likely nor are you (my neighbour is, funnily enough!), and I can’t make my swords and weapons for many logistical and ethical reasons.
So, where’s the next best place to go? Gaming, of course!
But the funny thing is, much of the fantasy gaming scene doesn’t allow you to forge your weapons, but simply to buy or find them. And those which do, like Skyrim, offer a simple experience via a menu to combine materials and craft away. No in-depth interactive experience where you forge something with your own hands.
But Legendary studio MercurySteam, having brought us the fantastic reboot of Castlevania and the excellent Metroid Dread, decided, “Hey, we like the idea of being a forge master/Blacksmith, let's make a game around that”, and they did with their latest title, Blades of Fire.
This fantasy adventure epic puts players into the role of Aran, a former forger of steel and might, who is given the power to craft once again with a magical hammer handed over by a dying friend. With his new companion by his side, Adso, Aran will be guided through a kingdom in ruin and overrun with monsters. Traversing ancient ruins, shrouded villages, palaces and dungeons, to make their way to defeating Queen Nerea.
We had the pleasure to preview Blades of Fire a while back, and we were blown away by what we played. There was an engaging gameplay loop, brutal and enjoyable combat, and a core mechanic which we were excited to play even more of in the full game. And a mechanic, in all honesty, should be admired greatly as it adds something refreshing and new to the adventure genre.
Forging in fire to make something amazing
Now, when you do blacksmithing in video games, it’s usually a cutscene or a menu with a popup saying, “Congrats, you made a sword with +4 fire damage”, and nothing more. We don’t tend to do the job ourselves, aside from a recent example is Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. It is, in all fairness, an interactive experience that gamers would love to do for sure, as we love to make our own homes and other items in game worlds and call it our own.
And Blades of Fire pushes an immense crafting experience, which pays off in the rest of the game with meaningful circumstances. You make your tools for the job at hand, and there is a hell of a lot you can make when it comes to your dream armoury.
Players will have access to a forge, located in an unknown place, watched over by a colossal being, with all the tools and a bright, fiery furnace at their disposal. While in the world, Aran can gather resources such as timber, ores, and other items to bring back to the forge, and thus he can craft and create his weapons to help him venture forth. All the weapons you use, upgrade and will potentially lose forever have been made here with your own blood, sweat, and gamer tears. Instead of finding weapons out in the wild, players will be granted a chance, unlike many other games provide, to make what is yours and rightfully look after it.
There’s something deeply personal and gratifying about Blades of Fire, which is how you invest your time to gather resources and put them to good use. Plenty of games do this in some shape or form, but for Blades of Fire, it’s giving you the chance to fully customise the weapons you make, and you make them something personal and unique to you. Blades of Fire has you doing the planning, drawing out a chalk outline of your brand new weapon, then altering the design with a whole heap of customisable options, from hilts, length of the blade, type of blade end, what material you’ll use for each part of the weapon, quality of wood, steel, and any extra features you wish to add depending on your resources. Then, forging the metal by heating it and hammering it into shape.
Having the chance to make something with your bare hands, crafting it in your image and using it in the field is nothing short of exhilarating if you ask me. It’s wild to think that not many story-driven adventure games do this, and Blades of Fire seamlessly nails the mechanic outright. Whenever there are upgrades or customisation, it’s limited, restricted, and you would have something another player has in their game.
And this amazed me the most, just how much there was to alter. From the two or three dozen metals I saw in my preview, the different woods for handles, shafts, the kinds of blade tips, hammerheads, sword lengths, and other features which change the nature of the very weapon in magnificent detail. I could see myself very easily investing so much time in just experimenting and crafting weapons so unique to one another that I might feel a little overwhelmed, but also have a selection of weapons that feel much more personal to me, and what I can truly call my own.
I’ll tell you a story about when I was in university, which made me appreciate gaming even more. My tutor was leading a course, and she asked us to explain Skyrim and The Lord of the Rings. The class was a mix of game design students and literature students, who spoke about each in their own words. The literature students spoke in detail about what happens in the book and its themes. We, game design students, spoke of all the adventures we took part in while playing Skyrim, personal stories, and each was unique to us. And that was her point, in gaming we do and act out the adventure, rather than reading it.
And Blades of Fire’s forging mechanic captures that essence of gaming so beautifully, and in such an impactful way. I spent 3 hours with the game in my preview, and I can’t stop thinking of the possibilities that I could see when I play the game in full.
I was utterly fascinated and gobsmacked at the sheer depth I saw in the smithing/forging alone, and the new systems coming into play that made me want to invest even more into the short time I had with the game. The need for finding more materials, blueprints, and raw resources pushed me further into exploration, and choosing what I crafted became a methodical and deep process that I vastly enjoyed.
Forging an exciting future ahead
It might sound a little silly to be so excited for a mechanic that sounds like something we’ve seen before. But I assure you, we’ve rarely seen something like this. Being about to forge weapons in such grand detail and design is exceptional in concept and plays out magnificently well due to the sheer number of components, materials and designs there was on offer.
The open world gameplay, discovery and gathering resources pushes players into the forging mechanic and weapon crafting. And brilliantly, it does so vice versa, with the crafting pushing your progress in the open world further and further, making this one of the most exciting gameplay loops in recent memory.
It’s not long now until Blades of Fire launches for PC (Epic Game Store), PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, as it arrives on May 22nd. You can check out the recent trailers below, read our preview here, and pre-order the game day one from all good digital retailers.
