GDC 2012 Final Article: Sevencore
By Darren Henderson (DizzyPW), OnRPG Editor-in-Chief
Whew after a full week + of trying to write about all the amazing things I saw at GDC 2012, I’ve finally reached the end of the line. gPotato has one hell of a unique game prepping for launch in 2012 called Sevencore. Now describing Sevencore is difficulty as I have a hard time comparing it to any titles I’ve played before. They mentioned it being a type of Steampunk setting during the demo but this isn’t an entirely different beast entirely. Take city A for example. You enter the town and it feels like a 19th century European industrial center with 7 story apartment buildings, factories, and large city squares. But then the police ride by on stegosauruses as people on the backs of dragons fly inches over your head. You wonder outside of town only to see a massive Starcraft Terran carrier fly by transporting new arrivals from the other continent. Turns out the continent across the pond is filled with future technologies, battle bots, and everything you’d expect in a Star Trek flick. You try coming up with a label for this type of setting because I give up.
The Pets
It’s impossible to understand the core of Sevencore without understanding the intricate pet system. Pets serve as mounts, as offensive infantry, and as support characters, and not all pets are exclusively one or the other. For instance you could ride a dragon and, upon dismounting, the dragon will begin shooting fire at your foes on its own accord. I’ll have to double check but I believe they mentioned the game currently has 40 pets, each with their own character sheet with detailed stats befitting an actual player character. Pets grow overtime as they train alongside you, further unlocking their potential and even new skills.
As I mentioned before the pets are classified as movement, offensive, or support. Let’s break this down. Movement pets can be classified as mechanical or organic. Organic pets will actually automatically assist you in battle while mechanical movement pets are more along the line of your typical mounts. Furthermore there are sea, land, and air specialized mounts. Not that they are exclusive as land mounts can often doggy paddle and air mounts can sometimes walk around on land. However, for maximum efficiency you will want to ride a pet that is specialized for the environment you intend to face.
Speaking of which, Sevencore has no dedicated healing class. This is where the importance of support pets comes in. You can train them to heal, buff, and do all kinds of useful skills to keep your party in the action. In a sense it gives you a feeling of playing two classes as you can become an expert of your primary class as well as raise a pet specialized in a particular type of combat to complement you. Coordinating with your allies to bring a well balanced mix of pets is vital to victory, as is knowing what you will be facing ahead of time. For instance one pet may have the ability to cloak your party, while another pet may reveal all cloaked persons, and the two skills cancel each other out.
Classes and Customization
When building your character for the first time you will get the choice of the Sion, Bruters, and Nuuk. The Sion are your typical humanoid race while the Bruters are large beefy mountain looking people and the Nuuk look like a particularly rough cut group of elves. There is also a fourth race in the works but it wasn’t ready at the demo, though gPotato claims it will be by launch.
The classes currently in the game are warrior, gunner, magician, and assassin each filling the major MMO roles of tank, ranged physical, ranged magical, and rogue dps. After choosing all this you enter an incredibly fun and detailed body customizer, with sliders for every little thing you could want. We’re talking you have control of shoulder blades, waist length, thigh height, head size, and more. It’s pretty extreme, and you can even double the height of a normal NPC, particularly if you’re playing a Bruter.
As I mentioned earlier there is no healing class and so each member of the party is expected to take care of themselves. The stress of this system is somewhere alleviated by allowing players to set sliders below their HP and MP bar that allows your character to automatically pot with a designated pot when either bar reaches below a certain %.
At launch they are expecting a maximum character level of 100, but are ambitiously chasing after a goal of level 200 once the content has been created and tested. On your way to the top you will acquire a series of common skills and weapon specific skills. While everyone learns common skills, the weapon skills you choose to acquire are entirely up to you. However each class can wield two weapons so be prepared to carry one of each weapon if you intend to follow a hybrid build.
Two other random systems I’ll throw in a mention for are the Turn-System and the XP skill. The XP skill is pretty self explanatory. You build a bar while gaining experience and then can unleash a super charged attack to burn out the bar in one epic blow. Unlike most XP skills seen in other games though, these require a bit of skill to properly use, so it’s best to save it for that ideal moment when you’ve got a huge group of mobs gathered together. The Turn-System is a way to reward player activity. Players gain 1 point per hour up to a maximum of 12 points. You can wager these points in a slot machine that gives players random items and sometimes even cash shop goodies.
Crafting Professions will of course also be included in the game. Though I don’t have much detail on the system, I know the game will feature weapon makers, armor makers, consumables (aka potions) makers, and material crafters, as well as collecting masteries for each of the three types of material you can gather.
The World and the War
The world of Sevencore is currently massive, with likely 2 continents available at launch and 5 huge zones to explore filled with over 1500 quests and a few daily quests. After joining/creating a guild, one of your primary goals will be to gain control of one of these 5 zones. Being in control of a zone gives you power over taxation as well as the ability to put forth a candidate for the presidential vote. After 3 days of voting, the winner of the presidential vote will exercise control over all the territories, or so I inferred.
In terms of organized PvP competition, you can expect 20v20 guild matches to wet your appetite. Or if you are more of a lone wolf kind of player, you can wager items and cash on 1 on 1 duels with rivals. If open world combat is more of your forte then you can declare another faction as your official rival, allowing you to pk them anytime in the open world with no penalty associated.
