Witchfire gameplay is more Destiny than Painkiller
It's been a while since we laid eyes on Witchfire gameplay, and this new footage reveals a completely different game.
You'd be forgiven for not immediately remembering Witchfire, the Gothic shooter by Polish indie dev The Astronauts. The game was unveiled two years ago at The Game Awards and gave off strong Painkiller vibes.
Over the past couple of years, The Astronauts has been sharing brief snippets of gameplay here and there, but this week's reveal may be the most surprising yet. As always with Witchfire, this video is just above 30-seconds long.
You'll immediately notice an early version of the UI is in place for the first time, but crucially, we're looking at a big change to presentation.
Witchfire now appears to be some sort of Destiny-light loot shooter, with more colourful visuals, numbers flying out of enemies when you shoot them, and pools of loot that pop out of them when they're defeated. It actually appears to be similar to Remnant: From the Ashes in a couple of ways, itself a take on that style of shooters.
Needless to say, this apparent shift has generated plenty of negative comments on YouTube and elsewhere. Going back and reading blog posts the developer wrote this year, it's clear the team's vision is to create a Dark Souls-inspired shooter with some elements that are clearly borrowed from Destiny.
This direction is not one many expected, myself included, but that shouldn't take away from the quality of the work on display. Which, as always, appears superb.