Almost a test: We lost ourselves in an open world that makes us forget even Gothics Minental thanks to crafty game design.
This is not an earth-shattering realisation; anyone who has ever stood in front of the corresponding shelf when shopping on Saturdays knows about the additional burden on the wallet caused by attributes like “supersoft” or “comfort”. But in the post-apocalypse, hundreds of years after an asteroid wiped out civilisation, this is more than a little gag by the developers.
It is a testament to the passion and diligence with which Piranha Bytes built the world of Elex 2. The toilet paper is thus in line with the fact that there is a bed for every human character in the game, that monsters go to sleep at night and NPCs grumble when the player snoops through their things. It makes it clear: Elex 2 is Gothic through and through, except for the name. And the jetpack, because that really turns everything upside down.
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Elex 2 repackages familiar sights
There are still a good three months to go until the release of Elex 2, but the role-playing game is already as good as finished. For a good 30 hours I was allowed to play a PC version that was complete in terms of content and only had to stop because this article didn’t write itself. These 30 hours were just enough time to explore a large part of the game world of Elex 2, but I still had a long way to go before I finished the story campaign. My conservative estimate for the game time: Nothing less than 50 hours is possible here.
The planet Magalan is the setting of the game, as in the first part, but the accessible map section has shifted slightly: Compared to Elex 1, you advance deeper into the east and south, and there are also new areas in the north. On the other hand, the starting region from the predecessor is no longer accessible, and familiar areas have also changed after about seven years of in-game time. Especially the former desert region of Tavar is hardly recognisable, as green forests have conquered the wasteland.
The camps of the factions have also been shaken up vigorously, so the nature-loving Berserkers have made the Outlaws’ corrugated iron hut town their own and transformed it into a picturesque medieval village. You can get an impression of it from the comparison pictures in this article, I have distributed the slider elements throughout the text:
Once again you are in the role of Jax, the hero of the first part. The former general of the warlike Albs has to start at the bottom of the character ladder again after an attack by alien invaders and climbs back up in the course of the game by killing monsters and completing missions in his skin.
However, you do not pursue blind self-optimisation, but try to forge an alliance against the invaders, the so-called Skyands, bitterly evil aliens with purple moulds. Their towers and servant creatures are spreading across the world – as if Magalan didn’t already have enough bloodthirsty monsters and devious bandits wanting to get at you! Fortunately, Piranha Bytes has given you a new tool to help you fight off the danger.
Less cramp in battle
In the first Elex, many players ran into a seemingly insurmountable wall shortly after starting. Already in the starting area around the berserk city of Goliet, dangerous raptors were cavorting next to one of the strongest enemies in the game, plus there was a group of highwaymen – and as if that wasn’t enough, the controls and combat system were so inaccessible that frustration was a constant companion.
Elex 2 is far more intelligently designed. Piranha Bytes allows you to celebrate a sense of achievement at the beginning before you come up against big chunks that show you your limits. The five difficulty levels can be changed at any time and offer a good mix of challenge and accessibility.
Although there are one or two situations in which a screen death seems avoidable and an annoyed player mumbles something about “unfair dirty game” – but in contrast to part 1, in which I never really felt in control, these moments of failure in Elex 2 are almost always due to my own misjudgement.
The changes to the combat system are subtle, but nevertheless represent a noticeable improvement for those familiar with the first part. Jax is less likely to get caught in a state of helpless watching (“stunlock”) by a succession of enemy blows, and the stamina bar is less stingy this time around when it comes to stringing together multiple attacks early in the game. The handling also feels smoother, frequent dodging rolls to the side are easier to integrate into the movement sequence, blocking with shield and weapon is easier and enemies communicate their attacks better. This gives attentive players the chance to read the fight instead of blindly hitting it.
Zoom, zoom – the problem with the camera
A lot of things are moving in a very positive direction with Elex 2. There is only one design decision that I can’t understand for the life of me: the camera. While in the predecessor it was possible to zoom out in several steps to have a wider perspective (left), the camera in Elex 2 hangs penetratingly on Jax’s shoulder. If the character is standing, the camera zooms even further into the action (right). This feels constricting and unpleasant; we hope for an adjustment by the time of release.
Now Elex 2 is admittedly not yet a Dark Souls in this respect, despite optional enemy switching. Especially the hit feedback is ridiculous, opponents and Jax are generously transported to the other when hitting and confrontations develop into a monotonous thrashing in the long run.
Soon you have learned the behaviour of the enemy types by heart and can, for example, react as if in your sleep to the onslaught of the jackals, which were so frightening at the beginning. The fights are thus better than in the predecessor, but they are still far from being a high point of the game. That is elsewhere.
Eating dirt first, then polishing chewing groins
After 10 to 15 hours, the player reaches the typical Piranha Bytes point in Elex 2 where the balance tips: Finally your character is strong enough to carry better weapons, finally he has a decent armour or knows a powerful spell – and with that the twilight of the gods draws near for all the annoying critters that annoyed you so much in the early hours.
Enemies that previously required minutes of tractoring are now history after two sword strokes. Your crossbow, shotgun or plasma weapon will cut through smaller enemies from a distance in one shot. You feel superior, power-drunk, ready for new tasks – and realise that there are plenty of bigger, skull-marked monsters after all, who will ram you into the ground unpointed if you get too close.
This feeling of getting better, of “Now it’s your turn!” is more pronounced in Elex 2 than in any other role-playing game I know. And it’s really a lot of fun! Because I have earned this superiority. Because I have previously thrown in hundreds of pieces of food and dozens of healing potions to extend Jax’s pitifully short life bar time and time again when some scumbag has given me a full pound in the mouth.
The sense of progression is supported by the character system, which fixes one of Elex 1’s biggest flaws: Attribute increases now have traceable effects on your hero’s stats, no longer acting as mere progress blockers and ability prerequisites.
A capable man
Speaking of skills: The talent tree counts more than 80 entries, many of them multi-level. About 40 percent of them depend on the faction you belong to, the rest you can learn as you wish, as long as you have enough money and learning points and have found the appropriate teacher.
In this way, different class builds are possible, even though the basically free system is designed to create an all-rounder who can handle both close-range and long-range weapons, pick locks and brew potions.
The long-term motivation that comes with character development cannot be overestimated. After 30 hours, my Jax is level 28 and still has more than enough goals to work towards. Because almost every upgrade unlocks a new ability or allows you to interact with other objects (veins of ore, crafting tables, locked safes) – it feels valuable and adds to that wonderful role-playing feeling of improving yourself all the time.
I won’t even start on the (partly unique) weapons collected in the course of the game. Like everything else that isn’t nailed down, they go into your bottomless inventory. Thanks to the lack of a weight or size limit, you will soon have a lot of junk in your inventory, which you can mark as scrap and sell to the dealer at the touch of a button. If you’re clever, you can save damaged weapons, for example, until you can assemble them into a healed version at the crafting table – this not only increases the attack value, but also the sales value.
In short, there’s a lot to do and almost all of it is a lot of fun. However, Elex 2 adds an extra dimension to this motivational spiral: your jetpack can now also be upgraded.
With a few exceptions, weapons are always damaged when you find them. The Blacksmithing skill allows you to assemble three of them into an intact version that is far more useful.
Free as a bird
The fact that Jax in Elex 2, with his rocket engine on his extended back, can now not only rise into the air, but also fly horizontally like Iron Man, caused a lot of excitement beforehand. After unlocking all the corresponding upgrades, I can say: this hype was justified, but possible worries about the effects of this innovation were not.
Perhaps the most courageous innovation in the history of the otherwise rather innovation-poor Piranha Bytes games fits seamlessly into the game concept and rather strengthens the so great pull of the German-style open world. This is due to several points:
- It takes you a while to afford the jetpack upgrades.
- Acts more as a short-term booster than a permanent transport option.
- You won’t miss a thing, even when flying over the game world at high altitude.
The technology behind Elex 2 allows the player to transition seamlessly from running, jumping or falling to jetpack mode and then casually gliding over the treetops. The frame rate is always fluid and thanks to high visibility you can see interesting places, enemies roaming on the ground or important conversation partners even from a great distance. The danger of unknowingly flying past objects is minimised – that was my biggest fear before playing Elex 2
The combination of flying and fighting also works surprisingly well, even if it’s like on rails. After an appropriate upgrade, Jax uses his jetpack like a spring at the touch of a button, which catapults him directly at the opponent. Each strike then automatically points you in the direction of the enemy, so flying opponents can be brought down from the sky even without a ranged weapon. Very pleasant, even if simple!
Good: Despite a total of 50 fuel tanks to be built, flying never replaces your own feet as the number one means of transport. But it does make it easier to explore the game world, shortens paths even inside buildings (for example, in a mine with eternally long tunnels) and contributes to that rare and coveted open-world feeling of “everything you can see can also be explored”, which can best be described with a slightly altered quote from Disney’s “The Lion King”:
Piranha Bytes: “This is our kingdom. Everything that touches the light. On 1 March 2022, the sun of our reign sets. And rises again with you, as the new ruler.”
Player: (Then it’s all mine?)
Piranha Bytes: (Yes, all of it.)
A map to colour in
The large and varied game world of Elex 2 is fully accessible from the start of the game. The enemy’s strength and the story try to guide you along certain paths, but basically it’s entirely up to you to decide where to go next.
It’s this great freedom that made me sink deep into Elex 2 again, devoid of any interest in time, hunger or bubble level. Once you start, it’s hard to put the game down, to let go of this open world. You want to explore it, master it, change it. And Elex 2 gives you the opportunity to do so.
One of Piranha Bytes’ best design decisions in this context: there are (almost) no symbols on the world map. Companions, teachers, traders and fast travel points are displayed by default, but apart from that you won’t find the typical question marks, treasure chests or quest markers – at least until you enter them yourself!
In Elex 2 you can make your own drawings on the map. These are only symbols, text input is not possible. But they are perfectly sufficient to mark interesting discoveries, to make a note of opponents who are still too strong for a later return, or to record the position of a chest that has so far managed to resist your advances with a lockpick.
In this way, the game doesn’t tell you where exciting places are or where powerful objects await discovery – instead, you play the role of explorer and gradually create an ever more precise map of the game world. An ingenious move, because this means that unexplored areas no longer seem like sectors to be worked through in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, but like exciting white spots on the map that you begin to fill like Alexander von Humboldt or James Cook.
This is supported by dialogue and mission descriptions that guide you to the desired location even without map markers (which can be activated if desired). All you have to do is listen carefully when the NPCs engage in their favourite pastime: chewing your ear off in conversation.
Labourers and abettors
All dialogue in Elex 2 is fully dubbed in German and there is a lot of it. The familiar voice actors who have already made an appearance in every Piranha Bytes game are of course back. However, probably due to the special circumstances in the Corona crisis with home offices and difficulties in recording, there are also some characters whose voices sound more like placeholders.
Apart from this flaw, the tone of the game corresponds to the expectations, which I will summarise here in a short term bingo: Ruhrpott humour, Piranha Bytes, rough, full pound on the mouth. You know the drill. Much of it is filler, but some of it leads to imaginative tasks and funny situations. For example, when you help the child investigators from Piranha Bytes’ version of “The Three ?” with a case that literally stinks to high heaven. And yes, there are children in a PB world for the first time.
Occasionally, you unlock certain conversation options with your hero’s attributes, and more often than not, there are different ways to complete a mission. What’s especially nice is that you see the consequences of your behaviour, for example when the underpaid farmers hang around the tavern in protest or a friend sets off for the mine with new adit workers after you have previously distributed leaflets advertising the job. The world of Elex 2 is not static, but changing, at least on a small scale.
Jax meets some old acquaintances, especially in the ranks of companions: In my time with the preview version, I already gathered six different NPCs around me, of which at most one accompanies the hero in battle at the same time. Equipment and abilities of the companions cannot be adjusted in Elex 2 either, but they automatically become stronger and prove to be a practical help in battle, despite rather mediocre artificial intelligence.
Nice: Your companions approach you from time to time with their own tasks, which are usually particularly tricky. However, the majority of these are combat missions. In addition, the companions don’t grow on you as much as in Mass Effect, at least not yet.
On the other hand, there is another parallel to Bioware’s science fiction role-playing game: Your answers in dialogues influence an (invisible) morale bar, which evaluates your words and deeds on the basis of so-called “destruction”. This presumably has an impact on the final sequence; in the predecessor, the “cold” value followed the same principle. In the end, however, this mechanic does not go beyond informing you whether Jax is behaving like a bastard or following the good old “I’m the shining hero who forgoes rewards and helps the weak” mantra. So far, I have not been able to notice any major effects on the course of the game. But that is also due to the structure of the role-playing game.
Perfectly tailored to veterans
Piranha Bytes, meanwhile, knows exactly how their fans play the Essen-based studio’s games. Elex 2 is more strongly geared towards these preferences than any of its (quasi-)predecessors. Instead of the usual three factions, this time there are five clubs you can join. Most of them make admission to the club conditional on your first becoming a mole by committing yourself to another group under false pretences.
The developers have ingeniously accommodated their players, who have long since made it a tradition to check out all the other factions before deciding on a faction – you could miss out on something (namely quests and experience points)! Elex 2 now encourages you to keep several irons in the fire for as long as possible before deciding between Berserkers, Outlaws, Clerics, Albs and Morkons.
And the developers are fulfilling another wish of their fans: In Elex 2, for the first time in a PB game, it is possible to complete the story without choosing a faction. As a so-called outcast, you can live quite freely thanks to the so-called 6th faction, which you build up yourself in the course of the game. While the home camp in Elex was still rather underdeveloped, this time the so-called Bastion is at the centre of the story.
Little by little you recruit allies for the bastion, and between chapters the layout of the fortress, which initially lies in ruins, changes. Whether there will even be a mission at the end in which you have to defend the walls against the Skyand aliens cannot be determined at this point. If so, the staging will probably suffer from the same problems as the rest of the game.
Let’s not beat around the bush: Elex 2 looks like and visually can’t compete with so-called triple-A games. This is evident in the strangely plastic faces on the edge of Uncanny Valley, the hip animations – and especially the staging. At one point early in the game, the transition from in-game environment to rendered cutscene is so clumsy that you can’t help but wonder if part of the video is missing. Elsewhere, Elex 2 resorts to the black fade to save animating a door. None of this is dramatic, but a trained eye may be disturbed by the rather brittle presentation. Especially as the rest of the visuals only make up for it to a limited extent.
No eye candy
Elex 2 has dynamic light sources, chic sunrises and sunsets, wonderfully dense forests and idyllic rippling rivers. But in detail the splendour lags behind current technical standards: grasses are not pushed aside by Jax’s steps, cloud shadows are missing. Those who had hoped that the additional development time would be accompanied by significant improvements in the graphics must prepare themselves for disappointment.
On the other hand, there is good news from the bug front: The playable alpha version, on which this article is based, already ran surprisingly stable. There were occasional crashes during the opening of battles and at one point in the game we reliably fell through the map – but that’s nothing that should set alarm bells ringing a full three months before release. On the contrary, Elex 2 already feels very finished and just needs a little fine-tuning. Because ever since the toilet paper thing, we’ve known that everything feels better without a rough surface. Even a role play.
The greatest compliment I can pay to Elex 2? That it knows its target audience very well. Developer Piranha Bytes took almost five years this time to analyse exactly what players liked about the predecessor and how to meet their needs even better. This starts with the factions – there are more, they are not quite as grumpy as in part 1 and the game can also be finished without a guild requirement. It continues with the jetpack – the controls slip better and the later free flying is a stroke of genius. And it stops with the open-world design – it seems a corner more polished to me with fewer frustrating dead ends (thanks in part to the revamped combat system). It’s been a long time since I had so much fun just exploring a world I didn’t know as in Elex 2. But I also belong to the target group, I’ve always liked Piranha Bytes’ games. If you don’t have that kind of background and are (quite understandably) bothered by the general hakeliness and graphics (the faces!), you won’t be happy with Elex 2 either. But who cares if the fans are happy?
