Runemaster Hands-on: Choose Your Path Wisely
Runemaster is a fascinating game. Built around Norse mythology, it doesn’t look like it offers much new, but with a huge breath of choices for each quest, Runemaster will easily find a place in the ever-filling market of tactical fantasy RPGs.
It starts in the same way as many others, with you picking a race and class and setting out on your adventure. Along the way you’ll meet and recruit various groups to your cause, which you’re able to control during combat. And like many other free roaming games, there will be dozens of hapless individuals desperate for your help.
I got to meet one such encounter for myself this year at Gamescom, and was amazed by the different ways such a seemingly inconsequential quest could end. I arrived in a small town, plagued by a drunken fool. Being the good and honourable human I am, I chose to try and mend the poor man’s heart.
He had apparently lost his beloved, and was desperate to bring her back. Hesitantly, I offered my assistance, and followed his directions to her resting place. Once there, he said that to raise his beloved from the land of the dead was to sing, because nothing says wake up like a barbarian waling ‘All Along the Watchtower’ at the foot of your bed (that’s the song I picked in my head at least).
This is where the options opened up, but the consequences remained hidden to the player. If I had wanted to, I could have not sung, or sung loudly and proudly. But being acutely aware that my real life singing voice is something akin to dying cat, I chose to the dialogue option: “I’ll sing but you better never tell a living soul about it”.
And thus, his beloved rose from her grave, terrifying the drunken man to the point he fainted. It felt very linear, but as it turns out, I was merely lucky. Had I chosen the “I’ll gladly sing” option, the girlfriend would have remained dead, but a slew of ghosts would rise to kill me out of jealously for my beautiful dying cat voice. The final option I didn’t chose, singing and making my weapon sing too, would have brought back the undead nasties as well as the girlfriend herself.
Like I said, I was lucky. With the living half of this unconventional romance unconscious it was left to me to speak to the girlfriend. She wanted to repeat a message and tell the boy to let her go.
But when given the chance to tell her other half, I could have lied and got a reward for my efforts. As a man of honour, I didn’t lie, but was still rewarded for my time. A lot of games have branching dialogue that claim to have major impact of the game, but very few convinced me as much as Runemaster did in the Gamescom demo. No matter what you chose in Mass Effect or The Walking Dead, however good they are, you are still tied to a very similar path.
Add this diversity to the fact that the game uses procedurally generated maps and quests, includes six different races, three classes and six of the nine different worlds of Norse mythology (Midgård, Jotunheim, Muspelheim, Helheim, Alfheim & Svartalfheim), and you’re looking at the potential of very different playthroughs. There are some limitations of course, especially as the main characters physical customisation seemed very limited, not even letting you chose your gender. But overall, Runemaster looks like it will offer a lot of player choice when it comes to the gameplay itself.
Even combat will play out differently, with multiple victory and defeat conditions for each battle, ranging from a certain character dying, to a specific piece of ground being taken.
In development by Paradox Development Studio (you may know them for strategy classics like Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron and Crusader Kings) and coming out on both PC & PS4, Runemaster could become a surprise hit when it releases later this year.
Your gender may be tied to your class, but don’t expect to play the same game twice with Runemaster.