jetv435 wrote:I have a bundle of questions I'm concerned about that occurred to me, mostly about how combat gameplay, puzzles, and replayability tie in with one another. With puzzles, and if appropriate, fights, will there always be a few different ways and routes/methods of doing them that help boost replayability, or is this minimal and many of those factors lie in difficulties, achievements, and other little things. What I mean on playing Dead Cell differently each time is, with the system of visiting one place or another by choice and finding something different in one place that would have been different from a situation had you continued down this path initially. Another thing is, is for any puzzles you do integrate, firstly, will there be a variety of all of the puzzles included, secondly, will there be several or few puzzles, and thirdly, with both prior mentioned cases, how many ways can a particular puzzle be bypassed or solved, if it is that kind of puzzle? With combat, what are the variations between a fight with someone when first beginning Dead Cell, versus fighting that same person after you and he/she have fought others and gained more inventory and "experience"? Another thing about combat is, how free are we when entering a fight with someone, as in, how many options do we have in each fight?
Those are some good questions.
Since the beginning of this I've been doing my best to make sure that it can be played a variety of ways. While you don't have access to all areas of Dead Cell from the get go, you do have a choice of who you fight and in what order. You also get a choice on weapon acquisition (to an extent) and how much or how little inventory you wish to collect.
In regards to the other characters in Dead Cell, some of them are available to fight immediately. The idea here is that everyone is "migrating," and if you say, choose
not to fight a particular character first when the opportunity presents itself, they may not be there when you get back (and might reappear later, rearmed, in a different area). But then again, every character is a special case. Some characters stick to a particular area no matter what you do or when you choose to fight them, but change accordingly due to the time it took you to fight them. In one particular case, a character is always moving around and can attack you without warning, depending on how you play. I can't say how many combat options you have with all the characters, but I will say that almost all of them have at least two different sightings (one for when you're weaker and one for when you're stronger). Some have more. In one case, a particular cell character is strong no matter
when you choose to fight him, and fighting him sooner (if it is your choice to do so) will be very difficult if you don't have the proper qualifications (not strong enough), but by defeating this character earlier, if you're able to, you will gain access to a very powerful weapon to help you deal with the others. It's also important to mention that
not every character is trying to kill you the moment you start Dead Cell. It's possible to encounter a character that will attack you the same way no matter what you have (using one kind of weapon I mean), but other attributes will change depending on when you fight him.
Typically, characters "migrate" depending on these factors;
*If you visit an area before you're
technically supposed to
*If you find a better weapon before encountering an early appearing character first
*If you fight one character before another
The puzzles are hard to explain because many of them deal with the business of opening paths. But there are some that are secondary to the killing objective, and you have a choice in whether you want to pursue them or not (the reward for doing so of course is significant inventory gain). There is a whole sub basement section that can be explored outside of the area where all the characters lay in wait for you, and this area consists completely of locked gates and complex puzzles. Exploring the region may be crucial in finding unique gear (some of which is invaluable, expanding your physical abilities) or finding weapons you would only find otherwise by having to kill a particular character first. You can also use the sub basement to ascend to areas of the main map you might not be able to access with the current weapons you have (as all locks interact with certain weapons only, and the primary way of obtaining them is by engaging other characters).
In a twist, difficulty will not change very much of any of this, actually. The inventory filter will be the most significant change, since different difficulties might boast a completely opposite inventory location (but not weapons). Also, all the characters are difficulty filtered, and notable changes might be that if you follow the same path on easy that you do on hard, the character you come face to face with will have a different weapon and sport a shield. I'm trying to filter this further by alternating appearance locations by difficulty, but the system is very complex as it is already.
For all the reasons, I think replayability for Dead Cell can be potentially better than many SPs attempted for Unreal (if testing goes well, that is). That, plus an Achievements system....I think the only negative thing going with Dead Cell atm is that its size is still relatively small compared to some SP games out there, although it is no longer technically a single map experience. But the fact that the actual playing space to be explored is relatively limited to one main map and several sub levels might make it so dedicated players can experience most of the different paths that can be seen with only a handful of replays. I'm hoping the Achievements system can help here, since you get graded on how many of them you're able to unlock.
Also, I want to work in a custom maps section on the menu where mappers can orchestrate their own Dead Cells using the included editor.