Quick Look: Child of Light

Actually, from watching a few minutes of this I was going to say it's like an overwrought artsy version of Stick of Truth.

this looks kind of boring

Nah, it doesn't have any of the direct interactivity during attacks/defense.

The writing really got to me too Brad. The recurring gag where Rubella doesn't rhyme falls flat because the language is bizarre and it seems almost impossible for the player to have internalized the bizarre logic the writing uses. At times it very much seems like maybe the original source material was machine translated and then autoslapped together with half-rhymes.

Looks pretty cool and since it takes place in Austria, I pretty much have to play it anyways.

You are a Sissi fan, huh?

Yeah, I loved that, whenever it came time to input an action, I felt like I had to take into account positioning, character's movement speed, and attack animation, so it wasn't always just about just stunlocking. Man I should play Grandia again...

This game just looks amazing visually. Not sold on the writing yet, but it looks fun enough. I'll buy it.

Bradley has a dirty, dirty mind.

For you guys and anyone else who might be concerned with the supposedly-poetic dialog, this game was made in a place where French is primarily spoken (Montreal). Are we sure that we're not just dealing with translation issues? I don't know what language this was originally written in and haven't really kept up with the game, so I might just be spouting bullshit, but it's worth checking out.

I was also an English major, but I haven't seen the whole QL yet.

The visuals are nice but it seems so deathly boring.

Random thoughts:

• Definitely like that this seems similar to Grandia's battle system (albeit slightly simpler since you aren't moving people in 3D space, accounting for animations, etc.). I even played through Grandia Xtreme (which is a pretty shitty dungeon crawler offshoot of the series) just because it's my favorite RPG battle system.
• Looks and sounds great!
• I could get down with the rhyming if it was better executed.
• Fine-tuning the difficulty of RPGs of this ilk in this day and age still seems to be finding its footing. Seems like you end up with either a too long, too grindy game or a dead simple game. Bravely Default might be onto something with its many difficulty customizations, or maybe the perfect RPG will be closer to South Park, where most of the battles are scripted as part of the story and random fights are almost non-existent.
• I will probably check this out soon.

This game looks amazing, but I don't think I'll ever buy it because fuck uPlay. At this point in my life I refuse to sign up for more stupid online shit. I have a fucking three-page long Google doc with user names and passwords for the shit I signed up for. No more.

I did buy the soundtrack off of Bandcamp because I certainly liked what I heard in this Quick Look. Thanks @akufen for the tip.

It's the font!

The game looks great, but I'll be waiting for a sale. Too many other ones to play right now and I'm afraid this might not capture me as it as others.

We RPS now.

Perhaps the rhyming would have worked better if it was only used for a few characters or if only used during a specific sequence of events.

That's definitely my first impression. They emulated Grandia's battle system, took a bunch of stuff away, and then didn't add anything back.

I might eventually play Child of Light as a time waster, but if I would rather replay Grandia than bother with a reduced version.

Anyone know if I buy this for my ps3 and then eventually get my ps4 will I have it on there without having to rebuy it again?

One look at this combat and I think "tacked on to an art game"

Previous Ubisoft games, such as the Rayman series have been separate purchases for the different platforms, I'd imagine that being the case here too.

This game looks beautiful and boring.

I've only just unlocked the map, but so far I'm having fun, the combat is simple enough but using iniculus in battle is interactive enough for it to stay fun. Also play on hard.

Love the music so much, the arts pretty great but I'm not a huge fan of the character models sometimes, and maybe I'm not paying enough attention to the writing... But it works well enough to get its point across, so yeah. I would certainly recommend it.

The game looks pretty fun. This I will play once my backlog is done.

@believer258: The writer is a native English speaker. According to Wikipedia he even has a degree in English from Yale. So I don't think there are any translation issues. I think the problem is that it is tough to understand poetic dialogue like that when it is not spoken out loud. I think this game really would have benefited from some good British actors voicing those lines.

Re: The rhyme schemes. They do use a ton of slant rhyme, though not very much of it that is convincing. As someone else said, the real issue is that there is no consistent rhythm or meter, though I'm sure it would have been a challenge for most people to write the whole game in iambic pentameter or something.

The game itself is fantastic, though, so I got over it quickly.

Or, as I wrote elsewhere:

The verse, it's true, is fairly poor/

They should have sought a poet or/

A book to teach them rhyme and meter/

That would have made this sweet game sweeter!/

I kind of like her sister.

I'm about to made a mod replacing all of the written text with alternatives that actually rhyme.

I'll call it Child of Light: Mild Rewrite.

@kerse: This is a cross-buy title, so you will absolutely be able to do this.

I approve of this endeavor,

But inquiring minds must know,

With an ear for aural pleasure,

In what cadence would it flow?

This just reminds me of a lot of really passive aggressive retranslation projects for old jrpgs.

Am I the only one not digging this watercolor design? I didn't find it all that appealing.

I'm happy Ubisoft is willing to try out different things though... hopefully there's one or two more games being made now that uses this engine.

Every time I see the character flying I'm just wishing they were walking around. I just feel no enjoyment out of freely flying around in games like this. There's nothing to relate to, and it doesn't actually make you feel like you're flying. Just seems bland. The game does look absolutely beautiful aside from that, though.

@ 23.00 you can faintly hear as both of Brad's pinkies start to extend away from the controller.

Loving the game so far but really wish that there wasn't such a huge focus on flight.

Haven't watched the whole Quick Look, but does Brad change to the Hard difficulty? I've heard it has significant differences. You can switch any time.

There is also Valiant Hearts.

@assinass: yup, this looks much cooler in my opinion .

Interrupting isn't a chance thing. You interrupt an enemy by attacking it while they are in the red cast bar.

@lashe: Awesome, thanks.

woah woah woah, hold up hold up hold up.

...

actually I have nothing to say, except that that's cool.

This game looks and feels amazing.

Aurora = Sleeping Beauty

The reason why the rhyme in the jester girl's dialogue is off is because she can't rhyme. She keeps messing up the last word of her lines, so the other characters have to correct her.

While the graphic design looks great, the game itself is way too childish.

Obviously. Which is an interesting coincidence with Disney's motion picture Maleficent coming to theaters soon.

Yeah, I only play mature games for mature games like myself. You know, like Narc.

Battle system reminds me a lot of the Grandia games. Same sort of timeline, and the ability to interrupt if you hit them while they're in the "casting" section.

This doesn't look nearly as good as the other Ancel Engine games.

Word