Dontnod is probably best known for its dramatic story-driven fare—games like Life is Strange and Lost Records: Bloom & Rage—but they took a sensational left turn with Jusant, a placid climbing game which we scored quite highly. If you liked that game, it looks like it's gotten a photoreal, star-faring makeover with the studio's newest game: Aphelion.
Aphelion's reveal trailer, which popped up at today's Xbox showcase, shows off a lot of snazzy parkour sequences; precarious maneuvering over ice bridges, sliding down a crumbling mountainside, and so on. Assuming the utter absence of combat is no mistake, this looks like the sort of hyper-detailed, big budget treat that more realistic platforming rarely sees.
Where Jusant channels the likes of Journey and Abzu for a meditative experience, Aphelion reminds me more of the exploration set pieces in Uncharted or Square Enix's Tomb Raider reboot. It looks weighty, tense, and like one wrong step could see you plummeting to your death.
That photoreal art style is a far cry from the studio's usual fare too, but the game still seems to revolve around its a character-driven story. Two astronauts crash land on a planet and have to get back to each other, and the end of the trailer implies they might stumble on some aliens in the process. I assume the European Space Agency logo at the end of the trailer announcing a collaboration with Dontnod has more to do with the planetary exploration side of things and not the spooky aliens.
Frankly, I'm pretty taken with the prospect. I always liked the puzzles and exploration in the Tomb Raider reboot more than the combat or RPG aspect, so a game that trims the fat and delivers the goods could be a sleeper hit in the making.
Aphelion's Steam page doesn't seem to be live just yet, but you can find more details on Dontnod's website.
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