8.5
One to Watch – Mistborn: Birthright
This week it was announced that Little Orbit will be collaborating with author Brandon Sanderson to bring the game Mistborn: Birthright to us in the Autumn of 2013.
As of fan of Brandon Sanderson I first noticed this announcement through his Twitter account. For the uninitiated, Sanderson is a renowned author who delves into the world of fantasy literature. He’s most well-known for his Mistborn Trilogy (now 4 books) and for taking over the mantle from Robert Jordan in completing the epic Wheel of Time series of books.
However this isn’t Sanderson’s first foray into video games; he helped work on the story behind Infinity Blade II and writing the novella Infinity Blade: Awakening.
The Mistborn series is based in a dark, ash-covered, gothic world with a seemingly immortal enemy. Mistborn: Birthright promises to land gamers into the hands of a ‘young nobleman’ who has to master the craft of Allomancy in order to defeat the ‘forces at work’ hell-bent on destroying his family.
What the hell is Allomancy I hear you cry – Allomancy is Sanderson’s genius magic and effectively, up and coming combat system. Allomancers ingest various metals and ‘burn’ them to enhance physical and mental abilities. Someone who is able to burn only one metal is called a ‘Misting’, those who can burn more than one metal can burn them all and are called ‘Mistborn’. A few examples of the powers we can hope to wield in this up-and-coming RPG are burning Tin; which enhances the 5 senses making for good scouts. Burning Pewter greatly enhances your physical abilities, and a metal that I would love to see burned is Atium. This allows you to see a few seconds into the future, a huge advantage when fighting allowing you to adapt and change your attacks. The possibility of harnessing this unique magic/combat system in an action-RPG is mouth-watering. Sanderson’s fantasy novels are nothing short of spectacular so it’s a given that the characters, story and dialogue will be gripping and swallow us into the world like many of his fans are with his books.
With the huge success of the recently adapted Game of Thrones novels, written by George R.R. Martin, into an HBO drama masterclass (and soon to be RPG), Mistborn: Birthright may just be one of the forerunners in novel adaptations, the success of which is yet to be known. Personally the game should appeal to any RPG fan, the most successful are the ones with the vast environments, epic story-telling and unforgettable characters.
The game is set to be developed by Game Machine Studios who have previously only worked on casual and mobile games – not a fully fledged RPG. Yet Sanderson has said himself that he wouldn’t have committed to contributing to the game were he not fully confident in the developer’s ambitions and abilities to do the Mistorn series proud.
Having read all of Sanderson’s work to date and being a big fan of the Mistborn series prior to this announcement, Autumn 2013 cannot come soon enough.
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