Hands-on preview with Of Ash & Steel — We aren't holding your hand

You step out into the wide world, and on the horizon, you see trees sway in the distance. Grass reaches up to grasp the morning sun.  Limitless and mysterious potential lies ahead…or it would if the game didn’t then drop a pin at the foot of every single quest objective. The developers at Fire & Frost remember a time when RPGs asked you to figure it out for yourself, and that’s precisely what they’re trying to build with their upcoming third-person open world RPG, Of Ash & Steel.  I spent a good bit of time exploring the Kingdom of the Seven, and I’m happy to report that I still have no idea where I’m going, and that’s the best part. Let’s take off the RPG training wheels and see what the land of Grayshaft has to offer.

First and foremost, Of Ash and Steel is a modern game with old-school sensibilities.  It’s easy to look at it and say “Skyrim” but that’d be not only reductive, it’d also be wrong.  You aren’t some savior given a magical doodad to run off and make the universe a better place.  Nope, you’re the guy who starts the game hunched over and puking your guts out.  Your ability to swing a club isn’t legendary, it’s not even competent. If you want to survive here, you’ll need to get out there and earn it.  Not to worry – there are plenty of folks who will happily help you “learn” the ropes of this new world, and only most of them want to take your head off and steal everything but your teeth.  

Once I got on my feet (I won’t spoil how I ended up off them), I managed to make at least one friend.  He set me on my path towards a nearby village where I might find some information to navigate to the town I needed to find.  You see, out in the world, the lack of handholding continues.  Nobody is dropping a pin at the foot of the person you need to talk to, and similarly, nobody is pinning where you should go next.  There isn’t even a “next” to identify – you’ll have to find where you are headed with your own two feet.  My ‘friend’ pointed to my next objective by saying “follow the path past the abandoned village and go straight through the ravine”. Once I got there, I could ask for further directions but getting to that first stop won’t come with a marked compass. 

Heading towards the next objective gave me plenty of opportunity to wander off the beaten path. Looking down those paths revealed what looked like a bear in one direction.  Nope.  Another area had somebody say “Hey…where’re you goin’?” in a raspy voice. Nope.  At level one, wearing rags, and without any discernable skill, I knew I’d end up a corpse if I tangled with any of those.  Swatting a few rats (which are the size of Great Danes) gave me enough XP to level up. This was going to be a long road.

You have the usual trappings of any good adventurer – stats including Strength, Dexterity, Stamina, Insight, and Fortitude, with Insight being more akin to a combination of perception and intelligence, and Fortitude being not only health but regeneration.  You also have three categories of skills that combine with those attributes falling into “World Sense”, “Will to Live”, and “Ancient Knowledge”. These are all locked without any information to see what they might be, so they will remain shrouded in the mist until we get the final game.

You’ll also learn skills to shape who your character, Tristan, ultimately can become just about any combination of skills you want, be that a heavily armored knight, a stealthy archer, or anything in between.  These skills are broken into three categories – Basic Survival, Craftsmanship, and War. Basic Survival gives you access to knowledge like learning to set up a camp, critical strikes, and similar survival skills. Cooking food more effectively, burning it less often, and eventually cooking a greater variety of them. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are substantial meals, but you can also craft some snacks for the road for getting a bite between camping and meals. Craftsmanship, as the name suggests, is about learning how to make things from other things. Use better things to make those things, and the things you make will be better – simple!  Finally, War is the skill to understand which end of the sword is the pointy end. Basic combat skills, more complex attacks, blocking, heavy strikes, and more await you in this section. None of these things appear as if by magic, however, so you’ll also need to track down a teacher to instruct you, have the right stats to use it, and then cough up the coin for the privilege. 

Crafting takes a small but not insignificant twist from the norm. For example, a knife you purchase might have a set of requirements that puts it above your ability to use it, but that same knife crafted by your hands might have lower requirements and added bonuses. It encourages you to hammer out your own gear. You can’t just intuit your way to full plate armor, however – you’ll need training and recipes to advance here. Though it’s outside the realm of the hands-on demo I got to play, there’s even a skill called Treasure of Tantares that will allow you to craft a unique sword tailored to your personal tastes. I’m not sure that that ultimately means, but time will tell. Similar to the crafting systems, a workbench can allow you to reinforce your clothing, build new gear, or create new tools. An armor smithing bench, as suggested, is for banging out armor. A sharpening wheel, when combined with a sharpening kit, is your chance to sharpen your gear. And so it goes for just about any other sort of bench you’d expect.  

One of the loading screens mentioned that combat stances exist. Quick, Power, and Balanced suggest that you can balance out your attack for speed, damage, or a balance of the two, though it also mentions that not every stance works with every weapon, so plan accordingly.  

Like any good RPG, the choices you make in dialogue can have a profound effect on the outcomes. Similarly, your stats will open up secondary dialogue choices that can lead to entirely new paths. I got a small taste of this in the early parts of the game where I had a choice that appeared with my Intellect stat being high enough to engage the ship captain in a much longer conversation, suggesting a mission I’d otherwise miss. Seizing upon these skill-based conversations also seems to be one-chance only, as I couldn’t just go back and tack that conversation on when my stats were high enough.  

Injuries are a big part of adventuring, and the degree to which they affect your survival is heightened in Of Ash & Steel. Minor wounds slightly lessen your combat capabilities, healing in their own time if you rest and don’t make them worse.  Compound them, however, and you can end up with a serious wound.  As the name suggests, it’s more dire and can greatly impact your combat effectiveness. I didn’t get beat up (and survive anyway) enough to see if that continues to compound but it suggests that being reckless in Of Ash and Steel will cost you.  

There are a handful of things that are still shrouded in mystery.  Yes, there is a map in the game, but I suspect I’ll need to find somebody to buy it from, or somehow craft it – it was grayed out in my menu.  Similarly, something called “Ranta” is also grayed out.  I didn’t see a great deal of magical properties in the game, but this could be something in that line – who knows? 

The demo I played was just a small slice of a far larger world.  Alchemy, mining, fishing, and exploration lies ahead, and promises that your decisions will shape the island, changing it as you align with various factions and make global decisions.  Ambitious, to be sure. While we don’t have a release date beyond “Late 2025”, Of Ash & Steel is a nod to exploration the way it used to be. Here’s the world, now go find your adventure. 

Stay tuned here at GamingTrend.com for more on Of Ash & Steel and look for our full review of the game on its eventual release.