Until You Fall

Schell Games scrapped systems like weapon durability, being able to loot enemies, holsters, and weapon throwing; they felt the mechanics slowed down the core gameplay. The game refocused on empowering the player, with a developer stating "Something we knew early on was that, when our combat was in full swing, the player would feel incredibly heroic. The combination of wide swings and blocking choreography encourages the player to stand up straighter, completely losing any sense of VR-shyness we saw in some of our early playtests. So…why not lean into that feeling of power?" Schell Games redesigned the mechanics in order to support this focus around empowerment, with features that didn't support the idea being cut, and mechanics like dashing and weapon summoning becoming essential to combat. Discussing how to make the combat more bombastic, the team stated "Because wider/bigger swings deal more damage in our game, we needed to encourage players to take larger swings... Playing this on a tethered headset is fun, but the freedom of the wireless Oculus Quest is just unreal and adds so much.