Edge of Eternity Preview

The demo of Edge of Eternity started with the teaser trailer, so let me start with the same:

The hands-on demo that started after the trailer had characters walking through the snow, searching for shelter. I controlled one of them. It was actually quite a walk until we reached that shelter, but the walk is apparently also used to have the characters tell something about themselves, which is what the two of them did. Daryon and Selene, as the two characters are called, are on a quest to find a cure for the Corrosion, a sickness that poisons the body, twists the limbs and changes people into horrible abominations, and a sickness that plagues their mother. Later in the game there will be three more characters available you can choose to play, but there can only be four characters controlled at the same time.

Combat is turn-based, When it starts, a hex grid becomes visible. In this grid you can move the character to a position where you want that character to be and decide on what action it needs to take, which is all quite standard. However what is different is that in some battles the environment can and will be used. In one of the fights I played, a monster received an extra buff from some crystals that were behind him. The game does however allow for more complex environmental influences, like a catapult, of which you can cut the rope to sling rocks on enemies. There were many more like these, I have been told. This use of environmental elements is something that the developers focus on quite a bit in the development of the game.

Both characters and weapons gain experience and can level up. Each of the weapons has a minimum and maximum level, so the weapon will become more powerful over time. The stats of both the character and the weapons will be increased automatically when you level up. But weapons can be enhanced also by means of crystals. This is accomplished by inserting a crystal in a slot. All weapons in the game will have slots for this. Inserting a crystal will open a skill tree that corresponds with that crystal and can be used when leveling up to gain more powerful skills from that skill tree, for that weapon.

Edge of Eternity is an open-world game, with a size of 256 square kilometers. The game will go to Early Access and at that stage the main quest will be about 20 hours. The side quests will add to that. For the final game the target is to have about 50 hours for the main quest and a similar amount for the side quests. The game is released by means of chapters. In Early Access the first chapter is released. The idea is to have a total of 12 chapters, where every two months or so, another chapter is to be released. Certain areas on the map will be locked when the chapters for those areas are not available yet. The story however, will be written in such a way that each chapter will have some sort of conclusion. That story will not be substantially influenced by your decisions in the game. There will be only minor deviations possible based on your decisions, especially in the side quests, but your decisions might change the game world. If, for example, a village is attacked and you don't help them, the village might be destroyed. This will mean that in your game that village no longer exists, but in another game that village might still exist because that player decided to help them. Events like these are conditional and are based on your actions in the world. This will occur only with side quests and not with the main story quests.
For those who want to explore every option, it will be rather difficult as the game uses safe points, which would make it very time consuming to do something like that.

In case you don't like something about the game, it is good to know that the game has a modkit, which will be made available during Early Access. It allows modders to change almost all of the game elements and also makes it possible to add new content.
The game can be played with controller or keyboard and mouse, where each have their own UI and you can switch continuously between the two, if you like.

Edge of Eternity is available in Early Access on the 29th of November.