written by Rhett Quiban
When an aptly named Tree of Life is the main source of a planet’s being—decay, corruption, and poor choices of the inhabitants will ultimately be the doom of that very planet. That seems to be the case of THQ Nordiq’s upcoming open-world RPG game called Biomutant.
The game is set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland inhabited by anthropomorphic characters and is mainly controlled by six tribes. Judging by everything we’ve seen from the game’s marketing material so far, it looks like the game will be an absolute visual relish and will contain marvelous gameplay. Its color and vibrance make the game look like it took inspiration from Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but given the fact Biomutant started its development before Breath of the Wild was even announced makes all of this just a serendipitous situation.
Being an RPG game, players will be given the chance to create their characters. The creators of the game developer Experiment 101 refer to the characters as “muppets” and you’ll be given the liberty to “mutate” them to make them look as strange and interesting as you’d like. Everything from breed, body shape, and sex are all completely customizable. How your character ends up looking will affect their overall attribute. For example, if your character is bulky, they’ll move slower but will have a higher defense attribute. If your character is more slender-looking, they’re more prone to quick movements but will receive higher damage.
The game’s combat and traversal mechanics are all incredibly gorgeous to look at. They look very smooth now and we can only assume it will look even better once we get the final product. Players will get access to traversal tools that will allow them to move around the world as freely as possible. Players will also be able to unlock combat skills and biogenetic mutations that will help them fight the other creatures in the game. You will be able to select, pair, and match skill sets to match your play preference, E.G. you can play as a magic-user, a commando, or move around and fight like a kung-fu master.
On top of the combat skills and biogenetic mutations that you can utilize, you will also be able to play around with psionic mutations, which allows your character to levitate, use telekinesis, among others. The psionic mutations that a player will be able to use will be based on their dialogue and action choices, or karma, in the game.
Biomutant is heavily inspired by Asian culture, not just with the kung-fu combat gameplay but also with the overall art direction, according to the creators.
As for the story, Biomutant Creative Director Stefan Ljungqvist described the game as a “post-apocalyptic kung-fu fable.”
Fables have always been created in such a way to send a message in a creative, yet concise manner. And it seems this game’s narrative will follow suit with that pattern and the players will be able to influence how the story moves forward and ultimately ends through the choices made all throughout the playthrough.
The story of the game will revolve around the Tree of Life, a massive plant with a life force that fuels the entire planet. The six tribes in the game all have their motivations and end goals. Whichever tribe you align yourself with will affect the direction of the game’s overarching narrative for you. This is interesting to note as it heightens the replayability of the game if your story somehow changes depending on which tribe you align yourself with. Joining a tribe will also give you incentives, such as being able to use a weapon that’s exclusive only to that tribe.
In this game’s post-apocalyptic world, you will be able to see remnants of the world before. If you’re familiar with how Horizon Zero Dawn did this, you’ll know how interesting this gameplay aspect can be if done right. Perhaps players will be able to gather relic items that are more akin to real-world materials, reminding you of just how the state of the game’s world has changed due to an apocalyptic scenario.
It also sounds like this game is astounding in terms of size. This game is the most massive game Stefan Ljungqvist has ever worked on in terms of overall content, and he has worked on some pretty large games (Just Cause and Mad Max to name a few). What the game has to offer as a whole is still yet to come, but everything we’ve seen so far generally indicates this to be an amazing title.
As of writing, there’s no official release date for the game yet. It will come “when they are happy with it.” To be honest, that’s a good thing. It’s good to know that the creators of Biomutant aren’t just rushing the production of this game. They should be entrusted some leeway in terms of time window considering only 20 people are working on this game, which is incredibly admirable.
In the end, I’m incredibly excited for this game. It looks spectacular so far and integrating character choices to the game’s narrative is always fun to play around with. The combat and traversal options in this game look phenomenal and I can’t wait to create and control my character when the game comes out.