The masochists who play Elden Ring and other Soulslike video games know to expect seemingly insurmountable threats in an overwhelming world of crumbling castles and poisonous swamps. They cherish the demands of managing stamina, executing precise dodges and parries, and taking extreme caution with even the most basic of enemies.
Valor Mortis, which was released this week for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, follows that successful formula. But it also takes a risk — one that questions the very definition of a Soulslike — by unfolding from the first-person perspective.
Radosław Ratusznik, the game’s director, said part of the reason that the studio, One More Level, deviated from the genre’s established over-the-shoulder viewpoint was to distinguish Valor Mortis from the sea of Soulslikes. The first-person perspective also creates better immersion, he said, while giving the player much less information with which to prepare.
In a genre that celebrates challenges, that disorientation could be seen as refreshing.
“When somebody swings a saber, when you parry the attack at the last moment, or when the enemy is suddenly jumping on you, all this feels more impactful in first person,” Ratusznik said.
Game developers have been trying to replicate the secret sauce that Hidetaka Miyazaki and FromSoftware created in 2009 with Demon’s Souls. But what precisely makes a game a Soulslike can be hard to pin down.
Is it the punishing difficulty? Is it the currency — souls, runes, gloom, vigor — that is used to level up your character and can be lost when you die? What about the weighty combat that forces players to manage their stamina and choose their attacks carefully or suffer the consequences of poor judgment? Is it the opaque story dribbled out in cryptic dialogue and item descriptions?
The definition is hazy, especially because Soulslike elements have begun to make their way into more traditional third-person action games. There sometimes is a knee-jerk impulse to put the label on any third-person action game.
Ratusznik has his own interpretation: “When you feel like that, you feel uncomfortable in this world, I think that’s defining the genre nowadays.”
There are ways to become powerful enough in Valor Mortis, he said, for players to “break the game” by exploiting systems to their advantage. “But in general,” he said, “especially for the newcomers, everything should feel a bit hostile.”
Third person makes this kind of unforgiving combat more manageable. The player can see their character, the world around them, their own weapon and the weapons of their enemies. But in first person, as in real life, the field of view is far more limited. Sometimes enemy weapons in motion can leave the player’s field of view entirely.
To compensate, the team at One More Level carefully tuned enemy animations, audio cues and the parry system.
The studio’s previous game, Ghostrunner, was also in first person and had gameplay that married hack-and-slash combat with platforming. Many of those same elements are found in Valor Mortis, which has far more modest equipment than games like Dark Souls or Elden Ring have.
There are just a handful of weapons, including a few supernatural powers, period-accurate swords and not-so-period-accurate firearms, which Ratusznik said were added to increase the fun factor. Within the game, the guns and supernatural powers are explained as part of a technological boom resulting from Napoleon’s use of a substance called Nephtoglobin, which also seems to be central to why everything has gone horribly wrong.
And everything does appear both horrible and wrong.
The game is set in Europe in 1820, just after Napoleon won the Battle of Waterloo. The protagonist, William, a British officer who enlisted in Napoleon’s army, wakes up on a muddy battlefield littered with corpses. Before William’s eyes even open, he hears Napoleon, who is voiced by the actor Vincent Cassel: “Get up soldier, scrub the bloody muck from your eyes.”
Shortly after William rises, he is attacked by humans who used to be his fellow soldiers. They have been twisted into horrifying monstrosities, many with distended, reddish growths on their bodies. Even the dogs, a common Soulslike enemy that can be enraging because of their viciousness and agility, are humans who have been bent and warped at the bones. The horror elements contribute, along with the novel first-person perspective, to making players uncomfortable.
Valor Mortis also does not adhere strictly to the Soulslike formula in its narrative, which Ratusznik says is presented more traditionally through cut scenes and side quests. Not all is handed to the player on a platter, but Ratusznik promised that it was not a game for which players would “need to read the Wikipedia.”
Ratusznik said the goal with Valor Mortis was to use the genre’s familiar elements while delivering new experiences for players.
“I think it’s very exciting that the Soulslike genre still is evolving,” Ratusznik said. “And I think what kills the genre is basically the stagnation.”
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