Structurally the game is a close student of the genre. I love when games do that, and Steelrising will be much the same since I’ve already loaded my Kindle up with some books on the French Revolution.
He, too, was a historical figure that was greatly embellished for the game, but his in-game adventures inspired me to learn more about the context, and I have since read multiple books about his real story, visited his memorial in Japan, and generally learned a lot. The end effect is that I walked away from the game wanting to learn more, much like the original Nioh introduced me to William Adams. At the same time, it’s unlikely that the allegory’s going to upset people that happen to subscribe to the other side (and I’m not even going to say which is which here as I wouldn’t want to dissuade you into thinking it was some kind of lecture), so that’s been handled with a deft touch by the developers without pretending that it isn’t a theme of the era. It is a moment of history that cannot be separated from the political environment, and certainly, the developers use the steampunk allegory to take a position of their own. It’s also worth remembering that the French Revolution was the event that gave birth to our concepts of “left” and “right” wing politics. You’re not going to get an education directly through Steelrising, however, being made by French natives as it is, the game has an atmospheric authenticity that captures the underlying fear and uncertainty that must have run rife through the nation at the time. As a fan of history in its totality, I am of course familiar with the major names from the period, from Marie Antionette to Robespierre, Napoleon to Marquis de Sade, as well as key moments like the Storming of the Bastille and Reign of Terror, but my understanding of the nuances of the time is inadequate. As the streets are ruled over by marching, hostile machines, the humans huddle away in their homes – Bloodborne-style – desperately hoping to avoid notice.Īs someone who isn’t nearly as familiar with the French Revolution as I should be, this setup and concept drew me in.
It’s a masterful recreation of a historically-authentic Paris, but it’s an alternative history one, and the automatons are incredibly effective at making the world seem sinisterly dehumanised. Once you start playing it you realise it very much works as a soulslike too. The catch is that the ally is actually an automaton, and so too are the enemies, because the world of Steelrising is a harrowing steampunk vision in which the conflict is being played out through machines.
On the eve of the French Revolution, Marie Antionette, grieving for the loss of her children and effectively imprisoned in a manor on the outskirts of the city, sends a trusted ally on a mission to find out what’s going on. The concept was right for a “GreedFall-like” too. I expected that Steelrising would continue to build on the work that Spiders had done in virtually every title previous. GreedFall made Spiders one of my favourite European developers. Then came GreedFall, a game that transcends the “Eurotrash” that people would generally attribute to Spiders to be a genuinely top-tier RPG. But, then, the team started to figure itself out, and The Technomancer was a vast improvement that stamped Spiders on the map as one to watch. Early efforts from the team, such as Of Orcs and Men, Mars: War Logs, and Bound By Flame, all had their merits, but were also let down in application by clumsy gameplay and budgetary limitations. Spiders started out as a scrappy little RPG developer with creative ambition in spades, but limited technical ability. Spiders might not have the team to create a thing of the scope of Elden Ring, but this is a massively impressive game nonetheless. I don’t know if I’d just missed that bit of news in the initial announcement (I then went out of my way to avoid learning anything about this game prior to when I started playing it), or if the developer and publisher had deliberately kept that on the down-low, but that’s what the game is, and that was just not what I expected. I did not expect that Steelrising would be a Soulslike.
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