New open-world game fusing soulslikes with Stalker’s apocalypse might one-up Elden Ring’s dungeons

www.pcgamesn.com

I first got to play Hell is Us at Gamescom last year and was immediately drawn into its blend of Stalker's wartorn, apocalyptic European aesthetics and Death Stranding style sci-fi.

While Elden Ring is unquestionably one of the best open-world games in recent years, Fromsoftware makes some concessions to help players along. Rogue Factor wants you to take the lead in Hell is Us, keeping hand holding to an absolute minimum and offering you just a simple record of how the information you've collected so far ties together. While the overworld is naturally more open-ended, however, its dungeons promise to offer more classic-style challenges, putting your skills with soulslikes and your ability to think to the test across weaving networks akin to those seen in Elden Ring's tombs or Bloodborne's chalices.

"We didn't design these dungeons as mere set pieces," creative director Jonathan Jacques-Belletête explains, "we built them like old-school videogame challenges: tight, crafted, deliberate. Every corner, every obstacle, every encounter is there for a reason."

"When it clicks, that's when you will feel it - that little rush," Jacques-Belletête whispers. "Not because the game told you what to do, but because you figured it out on your own. That's what we're after." Of course, you'll also have plenty of enemies to deal with. "Some of the fights you will face might stick with you; not because they are brutally hard, that's not the kind of game we're making, but because they hit differently. They happen at the right moment, at the right place, and they carry weight in your journey."

I was under the impression that Hell Is Us is not really a soulslike though, is it? Barely heard anything of the game tbh

6 comments

I played the next fest demo, it has some potential, but character movement was super floaty, and combat felt okay at best. The main puzzles in the demo were also braindead ones, like skyrim first dungeon level of puzzle. However, I really liked the idea of their journal and investigation system, and the dialogues were good as well. I'm not sure this game warrants this much hyping.
- That's fair. Heard next to nothing about the game - just heard that it's a soulslike, in theory at least. Guess we'll have to see what it's like once it's released
This author really shits on Elden Ring in a way that suggests they don't know anything about it other than "popular". Maybe it's LLM generated?
If you want an apocalyptic soulslike shooter we've already got Remnant.
- Wait, what specifically? Might have missed something
  
  Eh looking at it again maybe that's a harsh reaction from skimming. Mostly I was thinking of the lines about ER "making concessions to help the player along", "no mere setpiece" (implying what they're comparing to is), and implying ER bosses are memorable just because they're hard.
  It kinda feels like the comparison is shoehorned in to catch eyes. Unless the focus is on the similarity of "open world but with tightly tailored parts"
The way they describe how their dungeons would be "different" from Elden Ring's sounds exactly like how Elden Ring's dungeons already are.
While the overworld is naturally more open-ended, however, its dungeons promise to offer more classic-style challenges, putting your skills with soulslikes and your ability to think to the test across weaving networks akin to those seen in Elden Ring's tombs or Bloodborne's chalices.
If they were merely comparing to Bloodborne's randomly generated chalice dungeons I could see there being a difference. But Elden Ring doesn't use that. Hell, even Nightreign doesn't do that and it's meant to be random.