Ubisoft’s Child of Light might be the next great RPG
Amidst a flurry of first person shooters, racing games, and yet another Assasin’s Creed, Ubisoft has managed to schedule a few really interesting titles for the coming year. If you haven’t been drawn in by the hacker action of Watch Dogs, it looks like the upcoming Child of Light might be the RPG you’ve been looking for in the next generation of games.
Ubisoft’s UbiArt project, which was originally created to show off how you can bring things that look hand drawn into video games, seems to have been given a new lease on life recently. The recently released Rayman Legends game was the first we’d heard about UbiArt in a long time, showing off colorful backgrounds and fun artwork that was well suited to the Rayman franchise. A recent trailer hints at a new game being developed at Ubisoft that will also be using this art style, only instead of the hand drawn look we’ve now got impressively beautiful watercolors. It’s an RPG called Child of Light, and so far it’s hard to find something not to like about the game.
Maybe it’s the hauntingly beautiful music combined with the dark but colorful watercolor scenes, or maybe it’s the fairy princess child in tattered clothes battling with massive swords and magic, but something about this trailer has us hooked. The design looks simple and elegant, and what little we saw of the combat and puzzle system looked great. The fairly-tale style storytelling is an interesting twist to this style of game, making it seem like you’re not really playing the character so much as experiencing what has already happened. It’s dark and mysterious and adorable, which all comes together into a really fun looking RPG.
If you head to the Child of Light website, you’ll find more of the same art. The site is a long horizontal page that you have to slowly experience by moving the glowing ball from point to point. As you go through the site, you learn a little more about the game. This has the potential to be the next great RPG, and it looks like Ubisoft will have it available on almost everything, so we’ll be keeping a close eye on this one.
