Without being signed up to work on a big franchise, or having successfully developed one of its own over the course of 20 toilsome years, it can be tough for a studio to launch a new 3D open world RPG in a landscape dominated by Witchers, Mass Effects, Fallouts and Elder Scrolls. Piranha Bytes know this better than most, having birthed the revered Gothic series, only to see its legacy undermined by ongoing tangles over rights. It's not been plain sailing for the studio's subsequent Risen trilogy either, as a decade-long tsunami of icon-drenched Ubi-likes has rather altered perceptions as to what an open world RPG can and should be.
This time, in a bid to reassert its singular vision and stand out from its contemporaries, Piranha Bytes has brought together elements of science-fiction and fantasy and focused them within a fractious post-apocalyptic wasteland that, it's clearly hoped, will attract RPG fans of all the aforementioned franchises and beyond. There are three factions to align yourself with: one, the Outlaws are your standard issue wasteland scavengers. Next are the tech-obsessed Clerics, a bunch of nascent Space Marine-types with less impressive armour, but with a familiar socially conservative worldview. Finally there are the Berzerkers, a group of eco-warriors that look like they've deserted the Night's Watch having found a way to convert technological energy into fantasy mana, on the sole basis, it seems, that anything supernatural has to be more environmentally friendly than science. Quite.
Driving the motivations of the factions is the eponymous Elex, a substance that infuses the land like an alien fallout, having been brought to the planet by a comet strike that wiped out most of the population. Conveniently, Elex is coveted by all; by the Outlaws as a narcotic and a source of profit, by the Clerics as the primary source of their technology and by the Berserkers who just want rid of the stuff, or, rather, convert it to an energy they can use. Meanwhile, the Alb, the game's tech-infused master race, are more or less steeped in Elex, seeing it as a means to fast track their evolution and lord it over everyone else.
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