PC Gamer - UK (2022-01)

Sacred Fire

EARLY ACCESS PREVIEW

Set vaguely in ancient Scotland, the plot

(asit is now)sees you trying to warnyour

village about a Roman incursion. Youthen

make for the hills, either for a rescue

mission, or while blowing it off. It took me

about two hoursto reach the end of act 1

on my first playthrough (there arethree

acts planned for the finished game),

by which point I’d been presented

with roughlytwenty gazillion choices.

The village bully tries to rob you.

What do you do?If it comes to

violence, how do you handle it – step by

step. There are a ton of micro decisions to

resolve during each event: a mixture of

dialogue, introspection, action sequences,

and combat.

Essentially,Sacred Fireis a visual

novel, but whereyour every choice is

accompanied by a bevy of stats, which are

pleasingly illustrated onscreen with swish

typographical effects. Youneed to

manage your angerand fear,which can

both reduce the percentagechance of

many choices. But you can increase the

odds by spending MP(Motivation Points).

Faileddecisions can usually be

reattempted acouple of times,

undermining them somewhat, but I

suppose theRNG could get annoying if

that weren’t the case.

HEAD GAMES

Each event is treated like a battle, whether

it’sa literal fightagainsta group of

Romans, or a heated exchange with the

village healer. You respond by picking your

actions and words carefully,but also by

taking a moment to assess the situation,

reflectingon your history with and

thoughts on the people around you. It’sa

fairly in-depth system, tooin-depth

sometimes, turning what could be simple

conversations into drawn-out

psychological evaluations.

I shaped my firstcharacter intoan

idealistic and community-focused villager,

and my second into a loner still haunted

by her traumatic youth. The protagonist’s

background is fixed, but you can change

how they feel about it, reducing trauma

points as they deal withit, orinflicting guilt

points onthe brother who you feel didn’t

have yourback. While thestory is linear

and seemsto reachthe same conclusions

regardlessof whatyou do, it will divert

slightly depending on your choices –for

example, whether you take the time

to search for a missing girl.

On my second playthrough, I

decided not to save Raven, which

simply skipped a huge chunk of act 1.

She appeared briefly by my side in a later

scene – as if I had saved her – so there’s

work to do pruningthe story branches.

I need to mention the artwork, as it’s

fascinatingly strange, comprised of static

3D modelssat atop environmental

backgrounds. There’s a great level of

detail tothe faces, butno expression, even

during fightscenes.It’sas if a bunch of

mannequins have beendressed up to

perform a play.Knock a character down in

combat, andtheir static artwork will

merely be tiltedsideways.It’sone of the

funniest things I’ve seenin a game in ages.

Ultimately, the character models

weren’t toodistractingand undermining

when I got stuck into the in-depth

character development, whichis the best

part of the Early Access build as it stands.

The story isn’t anything to shout about

yet, butI enjoyed the nuts and bolts ofthe

statistical decision-making. Hopefully,my

choices will pay off in the rest of thestory.

Tom Sykes

W

hat’s Geralt’s mindset when he’s cutting

a group of bandits down to size? What

does Shepard really think about the

Normandy crew? These are not

questions I’ve thought to ponder, but Sacred Fire

makes them its raison d’être, opening the hero’s

skull to have a good rummage inside their brain.

Your worst enemy is your own

mind in this psychological RPG

SACRED FIRE

THE PLOT SEES YOU TRYING

TO WARN YOUR VILLAGE

ABOUT A ROMAN INCURSION

EXPET TO PAY

£ 15

DEVELOPER

Poetic

PUBLISHER

Iceberg Interactive

LINK

sacredfiregame.com

NEED TO KNOW

PLAYED

IT

Etain’s mysterious

backstoryis left

tantalisingly unfinished.