Wccftech's first Gamescom 2024 appointment was with Yellow Brick Games, a Canadian studio getting ready to release its debut game, the fantasy action/adventure Eternal Strands. The developer was founded in late 2020 by Mike Laidlaw, formerly franchise director for Dragon Age at BioWare. After showing a new trailer at the Xbox Showcase, there's a brand new gameplay video out today.
More importantly, the embargo for Gamescom 2024 hands-on is now up. You can read our enthusiastic preview here; this article, on the other hand, is dedicated to our chat with Game Director Frederic St-Laurent, who confirmed the game's estimated length and talked about the physics emphasis designed into the title and much more.
Eternal Strands is slated to launch in early 2025 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X.
Can you introduce the main character?
Frederic St-Laurent: You play as Brynn, the point scout of a band of magic holders called Weavers. This is your base camp, where all the companions are located, the smith, the enchanter, and the lore keeper.
At this point of the story, you have just broken through the Enclave, a magical place that has been shut down for 50 years. You're the first one to get in since, and when you get in, everything is half-destroyed and you're trying to find what's going on here.
Your objective here is to defeat a big epic monster to collect some of the magical threads for you to just gear up and get more powerful.
You mentioned the big monster. Was Shadow of the Colossus a major inspiration for Eternal Strands?
Frederic St-Laurent: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We've all been a big fan of that. A mix of that, Dragon's Dogma, and, of course, Zelda has been another inspiration because of the vivid colors.
You also have an emphasis on physics, right?
Frederic St-Laurent: Yes, our character is driven by physics. All our climbing is with physical constraints. We have powers using telekinesis that make things move around. We fully simulate the heat and cold in every pocket of air, like every cell of air in the environment, every two meters is simulated with the temperature. If you heat up a rock, that becomes your powerball, basically, and if it falls into grass, then grass will ignite and so on.
This sounds very Zelda-like, too.
Frederic St-Laurent: It is, but we chatted with them as well, and we go just a little bit beyond because they have a good chemistry in terms of element to element, but they don't have the air being simulated per se.
The Nintendo Switch probably wasn't powerful enough to do that.
Frederic St-Laurent: Yeah, maybe, that's true. So, like I said, Brynn is the scout. She's the one going out while the other ones wait at the base camp. She's a kind of Warrior, so she can use the sword and shield. You can swap between the three weapons that you have, which also include the bow and the two-hander greatsword. Every weapon has a base attack and then an alternate attack. If you charge like this and you can hold, you can go through and cycle again to a more powerful attack.
Are there combos or stuff like that in Eternal Strands?
Frederic St-Laurent: There are combos, but our philosophy is more like... It's sword and magic, but magic is the most powerful, so the weapons are complementary. All the weapons have some magic as well. If you hold this one here, you can see that it creates these spikes of ice. If you go with this one, it has a telekinesis bubble that attracts stuff. You also have the fire spells. Be careful not to stand in the fire.
Frederic St-Laurent: Your own fire damages you as well?
Frederic St-Laurent: Oh yeah, it's fire. You get some resistance while you cast, but after that, fire is fire, and you can see that it's going to propagate and burn.
I see that the fire breath melts ice down.
Frederic St-Laurent: Yeah, exactly. Oh, I forgot this one. It's kind of a magic tube. You can put an object in there or launch yourself as well, or cast Molten Barrage in there. We emphasize synergies.
Is there crafting in Eternal Strands?
Frederic St-Laurent: We have made some of the crafting systemic, so it's not like you have a piece of armor and you need these ingredients. There are many types of fabrics, and the way it works is what you loot, every piece, like, let's say, the ones you just got, those are good for cold resistance and not so good at heat resistance.
As you input those into your recipe, it will output stats. Some armored pieces have a predefined step at the beginning, so okay, this one is going to be the one that is better against heat, and then you can boost it up or change it or make it more versatile, but that's really going through a more systematic approach. It changes the looks as well, like changing the color of the armor piece.
What's the structure of the world like? I mean, is it basically various zones that you go through?
Frederic St-Laurent: Yes, exactly. Eternal Strands is not an open world, but there are a number of big maps that you can walk around and explore, and they connect to each other.
We also have physics-based environmental challenges that reward you with some new recipes. In this case, you just unlocked the frost two-hander, which is the opposite version of the big sword of fire you had. You'll need to return to base camp to craft something, as you cannot craft on the field.
Everything is fully destructible, everything's going to start to burn. Another thing that I really like with the crafting and the loot is, let's say you burn a tree. Then the tree is going to drop something at the end, but you might get better wood out of it, because it's a charwood.
If you freeze an enemy so hard, it's going to brittle and destroy all the loot table related to metal. If you burn an enemy, then all the woven resources are going to burn as well, so as a player, you have control of the loot table directly playing with them.
Do you have an emphasis on traversal as well?
Frederic St-Laurent: Lightweight. You can climb anything you want. Also, if you want to manually cling on something, it's the Y button.
I guess you can climb big monsters.
Frederic St-Laurent: Yeah, and they will try to shake you off, so a bit like in Shadow of the Colossus, you need to hold on to not get shaken off.
Do you have difficulty settings in the game?
Frederic St-Laurent: Yes, but it's a light change. It only increases Brynn's health points. If you put it on easy, we'll just add you more health. We're indie, so we haven't changed spawns or enemy behaviors.
Do you have a release window?
Frederic St-Laurent: Early 2025. We're also going to look at everything else coming out in that time frame. By the way, the basic loop in Eternal Strands is nuanced by the fact that you have quests. In this demo, we don't emphasize it, but you're going to bond with the companions, so they're going to ask you to do something for them, and there's dialogues. The game is fully voiced over in French and English.
That's maybe where Mike Laidlaw's influence is more felt.
Frederic St-Laurent: Exactly. Whereas I'm more about all the systems and crafting and loot, Mike's background is of course more about bringing out the lore, so we balance each other.
But it's not like Dragon Age, where you can make choices, right?
Frederic St-Laurent: No, no, the focus is still more on action adventure. The stories play a fair part in it, though. You have some dialogue choices, but they won't change the story's outcome.
Okay, so it's just to learn more lore or more info.
Frederic St-Laurent: Yeah, and also, it's going to influence your relationship with your companions.
Do you have an estimate on the length?
Frederic St-Laurent: It's between 25 to 35 hours.
So, is there some side content?
Frederic St-Laurent: Yes. In the past playthrough I did, I took my time and everything, but I ended up with 40 hours doing every quest in the game. I expect players are going to go a little bit faster than that, but still, just the main bath is 25 hours.
Did you settle already on the price point?
Frederic St-Laurent: To be confirmed. It's not set yet.
Who is the publisher of Eternal Strands?
Frederic St-Laurent: We're self-publishing.
You're based in Canada, correct?
Frederic St-Laurent: Yes, Quebec province. We're in Quebec city, but we have a satellite studio in Montreal as well.
How big is the studio right now?
Frederic St-Laurent: We're 70.
Do you consider yourself AA-plus?
Frederic St-Laurent: I would say we're an independent studio. That's what I would say. After that, it is not a one-man game because we're still 70, but we're not trying to be AAA in any sense.
I saw there is also item rarity in the game, right?
Frederic St-Laurent: Exactly right. By the way, when you die, your companion can retrieve some of the crafting resources you had gathered, but not everything. You can select.
What was it like to develop in Unreal Engine 5?
Frederic St-Laurent: It's been great. There are so many resources. The Chaos Engine for the physics was fairly new, so we've been lucky to have good contacts with them and I must say, I'm kind of happy that they're being impressed with what we've been doing with their fairly new Chaos Engine.
That's the one thing they've been improving, right? But not many games have used it so far.
Frederic St-Laurent: Yes, exactly. So they probably like adding more serious test cases.
Also, there doesn't seem to be any shader stuttering. Many UE games lately stutter a lot, especially on PC, but this seems to be running pretty well.
Frederic St-Laurent: Thank you.
Do you have a talent tree sort of thing?
Frederic St-Laurent: No, it's really gear-focused rather than having any RPG-like skill trees. You gather the magic powers by defeating these big monsters and you loot stuff and you gear up. As simple as that.
How did you ensure that boss fights would be varied? When you have a game mostly focused on big monsters, maybe the issue is how you make them different from one another, right?
Frederic St-Laurent: Yeah, exactly. We try to come up with different archetypes. This one is more of a Mage type, so he won't move a lot. If you stay far, it will hurt you more than if coming close. It has fewer things to do when you come up close versus another one that we would have where they would charge you constantly, and then you're trying to stay away instead.
We're trying to come up with verbs of action, let's say, come closer, avoid the mouth. This is how we come up with the rest of their abilities.
Can you do the same thing over and over? Like, freeze him over and over. Because in some games, they build up resistances, and you have to switch things up a bit.
Frederic St-Laurent: No, we haven't felt the need to do that.
Do the enemies change with the varying time of day?
Frederic St-Laurent: Not for the night. However, because the Enclave is kind of a magical place in disarray, sometimes it can get like drought, super intense heat, and sometimes, for instance, cold. And yes, the enemy will change. You'll get more cold related enemies rather than the normal ones.
This seems like a game that YouTubers can use to make really cool shorts.
Frederic St-Laurent: Oh yes, yeah, I'm craving for this. By the way, you can upgrade each power in the full game.
That was a really cool demo.
Frederic St-Laurent: Thank you very much.
Thank you for your time.
