Fatekeeper - Blood and Gore Effects

Going into this one I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. There was a gameplay demo showcased some time ago and I haven't heard of the game again until the release date announcement.

Having been disappointed with some recent releases (including a few I had on my radar for a good while) I was bracing for a rough experience, but I can say straight up - I've been quite pleasantly surprised. We're not talking about something that will blow you away and there will be a fair bit of feedback in this review but overall I can say straight up - it is a pretty good experience.

Now let's get into the why.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et77_WC1ujo

Body damage

As far as I saw what you have is dismemberment for the head and one point of amputation for the arms. Nothing for the legs and for the bits that do get chopped off there actually is no stump. Just a cut.

Not the roughest that I saw but hopefully the lack of stump and the lack of leg dismemberment are just early access things.

The latter is not here for realism reason (in case you thought leg bones might be a bit harder to chop), you can kick heads off. So once again, hopefully those are just early access things.

Now the non dismembering damage is going to be quite consistent with wounds at the point of impact. For each slice and I've seen wounds for kicking too. The latter isn't a must but with the small kind of slice you have here I won't object to that.

The issues that I have seen with this feature are that the wound may get registered not where it should and I've seen the direction of the wound not always fitting with the direction of your slice.

I do want to note the impalement - what we have here is just a sticky wall of death with currently no response on the body. That's impalement in most games, and usually the response on the body is just an overlay.

I'm yet to see a game do gnarly wounds for every spike going through the character in such a wall of death.

Environment

In the environment aspect the response is going to be very consistent as well. With stains on the impacts (slices and kicks) and additional spilling on dismemberment. You will have stains spawning around the stump and the severed limb for a few seconds and that will generally deliver nice and bloody results.

So I think the feedback here goes somewhat beyond just the basic response, but I do have several points of feedback, some of which are quite important:

The biggest one - blood stains will disappear. They start fading away after about 40 seconds and they're gone by the 60 second mark. I haven't seen any option\slider for that.

Aftermath is an important factor, and we already have lasting bodies, body parts and as far as I can see wounds too. It doesn't necessarily have to be at the core of the game (though in some games it is a key feature), but you absolutely have an option to make the blood last longer.

Let's say an option to keep blood for longer is added, there's one issue that would still make the aftermaths not feel quite right. Characters are very easily kicked around after death (as you can see in the showcase), both by the player and by other enemies. And interestingly they're not sent flying by kicks after they're dead, but rather by just characters passing by.

It's not an uncommon issue unfortunately and it never looks good. Basically if you had the blood stick around you would for the most part see the stains and the bodies in different unrelated locations and that aftermath wouldn't really make much sense.

That may possibly be just an early access thing. If you kick a dead body it will move, but entirely within reason and it isn't sent sliding across the room. So I think the best option here is for ragdolls just not to respond to passing by characters. Yes, if you had enemies stumble and fall from dead bodies that would be sweet (like in this video at about the 0:25 mark), but it won't have that impact without a complex physics system which I'm not expecting from a small project like this.

Another one for the aftermaths - there are no blood pools. And for this one too the point above would be quite relevant. If you have the character laying on a clean surface with the blood pool far away that just won't be a great aftermath.

And lastly I do want to talk about the looks of the stains. What we have right now is something I can only describe as a mildly compressed can explosion. Not the most inappropriate decal I've seen as a response for a slice, but with more specific stains the result could be just a lot more impactful.

Appropriate stains for a bladed weapon slash (with some difference based on the weapon size), different stains for a blunt hit, something splatty for a ragdoll forcefully impacting a surface, something milder if the hit was light and so on.

As I mentioned above what we have right now will deliver overall decent feedback but I do see the potential here and I think that specific stains for the various hits would make a massive difference.

Animations

In a game like this solid response animations wise is key, and that's basically what we have. Really nice and weighty responses for the impacts, characters can be knocked over (and that feels quite satisfying), I've seen a character survive losing an arm (though I should mention - only once, in the instance you see in the demonstration) and on death you will for the most part have ragdolls (burning is the only time I've seen a death animation).

Personally I'd love to see active ragdolls too, and it would make a difference. But really, what we have here feels quite good.

Conclusion

So as you can see there definitely are things to improve, some early access bits are showing here and there, but overall, I think it's quite nice. And I'm happy on a personal level that we're starting to see games that are inspired by Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. For a long while there was nothing that I'm aware of to really scratch that itch, and now we have Fatekeeper and the upcoming Alkahest.

I really hope that the gore side of the game will be seeing some enhancements over the course of early access too. And if you agree with the points in this review, be sure to share this review where that may be appropriate.

You can get Fatekeeper here.

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