An aggressive football twist forms the groundwork of Supergiant’s most unusual game to date. Here are our first impressions of Pyre!
I wasn’t even aware that Supergiant Games had announced their next title after 2014’s masterful Transistor, so you can imagine my surprise when I stumbled on their booth during Friday’s press hour and saw the word Pyre displayed proudly before me. I immediately abandoned any remaining plans I had for the hour and hopped right on line. Knowing Supergiant’s reputation for amazing storytelling experiences, I knew it would be difficult to get anywhere near these controllers for the rest of the weekend if I didn’t try it now. It turns out that ended up being a pretty good decision, because Pyre was certainly a bright, fiery beacon of PAX East 2016.
As the Pyre demo kicked into high gear, I saw right away that Supergiant had greatly stepped up their already excellent design skills, with absolutely stunning visuals that are made more immersive than ever, thanks to a tactile cursor system that lets you hover over various scenes and further explore strange items or locations (from snooping around the hub-like caravan, to choosing your next travel destination amidst a night sky of glittering constellations). The story matches the cryptic and enigmatic visuals with its sweeping premise and bold narratives that are sure to please any fan of Bastion’s smooth-talking swagger. I’m still not entirely sure what the whole thing is about, but I’m eager to learn more from my exiled companions and the magic book to which our destinies seem to be linked.
The overworld is stitched together with branching dialogue choices and side quests, which give you the option of gathering resources at night to fuel your next day’s journey, or educating your companions in order to refine their performance in future battles. These battles are where the heart of Pyre’s gameplay takes place, and while I can’t say I expected how they would ultimately play out, once I got the hang of them, I was completely hooked. It actually feels like an interesting and unexpected progression from what we saw in Transistor, and after experiencing it for myself, it makes a logical sort of sense against the broader Supergiant landscape.
This is essentially how these encounters work: You control a team of three exiles on a small playing field, who vary in size and speed. These exiles will be facing off against a team of opponents, and each side has a burning pyre that they have to protect. A glowing orb will appear in the center of the field, and the goal is to grab the orb and dive with it into your opponent’s pyre, thus gradually diminishing their flame. If that sounds a little bit like football or handball, that’s because it oddly is. But the gameplay becomes so much more than that.
Only one exile can hold onto the orb at a time, which makes them vulnerable to enemy attacks. Close-ranged attacks can be performed by simply running into the orb-holder with your exile’s surrounding aura, or you can also launch ranged attacks at any defender if you line up your shot just right. Lastly, you can pass the orb back and forth between your teammates, but you can only be in control of one at any given time. This ultimately translates to a fast-paced strategic exercise as you try to weigh the advantages of offense versus defense, and understand how the exiles’ respectives sizes influence their ability to dash and score at the opposing pyre.
The battles I played in the demo are frantic and fun, and the power to upgrade each of your exiles in turn leads to a promising amount of depth that is sure to evolve the way that future encounters play out. In fact, Pyre may be the most robust and polished Supergiant release to date, a grand fusion of what they’ve learned from their previous games, and I can’t wait to start peeling back the layers of its mysterious story while building up my penchant for extinguishing flames. However, it looks like we’re in for a bit of a wait before that can happen. Pyre is currently slated for release in 2017 on PS4 and PC.
Joe Jasko is a staff writer who pretends he’s the narrator from Bastion on occasion.
