New and interesting details have been released by Sumo Digital to Hood: Outlaws & Legends, first shown during State of Play and The Game Awards of last year. Andrew Williams, project director, presented the game mechanics in detail a IGN America, of which very little has been understood from the various trailers released so far.
Hood: Outlaws & Legends is a multiplayer title set in dark medieval England, home of the famous character from Robin Hood. What we should go do in the game, explains Andrew Williams, is basically this: steal the key to a vault, take the treasure inside it, and run away from the map with the loot on his shoulder. Nothing new so far, it's all very simple, except for the fact that we should not face only an artificial intelligence but also against other players to create problems in the game. It is in fact more of a race to see who manages to steal the treasure first, always having to pay attention to the guards managed by the AI. The game is therefore more competitive than cooperative.
The game will be divided into three phases, as Williams explains: “The first goal is to steal the key to open the treasure vault, but it's not just around. He's on the belt of the Sheriff of Nottingham. So you have to sneak up and pickpocket the Sheriff, without him turning around and kicking you. " The first stage is therefore an attempt at pickpocketing. It will take teamwork to be able to even be able to get close to the sheriff, due to the environmental obstacles between him and you. “There are doors where you have to quietly pick the locks, or break them loudly, which could attract the guards. You will have a rope arrow that you can shoot from the ramparts, which will give you a silent entry point. During the spawn, what usually happens is that you will mark the routes that you think are most advantageous for your team. "
For phase two, once we have the key, we move on to having to find the safe where the treasure we will have to steal is located, and to do so a clue will be given once the key is found. “We'll say you have the key to the church, between the different buildings, but it doesn't explicitly tell you where the vault is. It therefore becomes a challenge to enter the building and find the safe containing the treasure. " Furthermore, the other players, or our enemy team within the game, will be notified when we put our hand to the key, but nothing more will be said. It will probably be your moving around the map and making noise the clue for the second team, therefore left without a key.
Once you have reached the third phase of the game, you will reach the building where there is the treasure to be stolen and which must be found. There will be several guards posted inside, Williams says. "So you can expect more resistance on the treasure vault door, on the contrary, there will be significantly less in the dining room or in the kitchens in a castle." Once the loot is obtained, it will need to be taken to an extraction point, and that's when the "action a la Robert De Niro in Heat" factor comes into play, says the director. The AI, once aware of the stolen goods, will give the general alarm and close the game map. Williams then explains:
At that point all hell breaks loose. The guards will send the knights to the extraction point. The sheriff knows his loot has been stolen and starts marching towards it. So in the extraction area you have to face the knights, the oncoming guards and the sheriff, who is a one-shot killing machine. It will grab you and crush your skull.
This will therefore be the perfect opportunity to turn the tide for the rival team, and this is where the real difficulty of the game will begin, in a flurry of AI-managed opponents and other players. However, remember that the goal is only to steal the treasure, so one of the two teams can decide to recover it and just escape. There will be several tactics to deal with, and that's the beauty of it.
The guys at Sumo Digital therefore seem to have made a commitment to make the title as fun and action-packed as possible for the players involved. We look forward to being able to put our hand to it and experience the experience described in detail by its development team.
