Tweet
Inkle, the developer behind 2014's superlative 80 Days, is making its debut on console with its next project. Dubbed Heaven's Vault, it's a narrative heavy sci-fi adventure set in an explorable 3D world, and having sat down with it for a couple of hours today at GDC I can say that it looks fantastic. It's also very different from what Inkle has done before, though you'll still see the same warmth, inventiveness and character witnessed in 80 Days (and the Sorcery series, which I'll admit with some shame I haven't played just yet). Heaven's Vault, Inkle's narrative director Jon Ingold admits with a small measure of surprise, "feels like an actual video game". It's a game in which you move with the left stick and look around with the right - fairly radical stuff, I'm sure you'll agree, from a studio whose games have traditionally been so text heavy.
Heaven's Vault remains a very writerly game, though, an adventure with a literary bent and a narrative that's effortlessly complex in its underpinnings. You're Aliya 'El' Elasra, an archaeologist who along with her robot assistant Six explores the stars via The Nebula, a stream that flows from one planet to the next, before returning home to share her findings. It's from The Nebula that you sail forth, free to break from its current and explore the many different worlds it courses through.
Read more…
More...