Dead Mage’s upcoming game follows a wandering ronin through a world shaped by loss, suspicion, and difficult choices.
Dead Mage’s new title, Tale of Ronin, has existed for years, and it has only recently become obvious what type of RPG it is intended to be.
Tale of Ronin is stated to be “the story of Akira, a former Toyotomi samurai who lived through the fall of Osaka and currently travels throughout early Edo Japan as a ronin with one last task left by his late lord” delivering a death poem to the monk Takuan.
With a relatively straightforward premise, it provides a solid framework for a road story concerning loss, allegiance, and what remains of a warrior after the wars have ended.
Developer Dead Mage is not attempting to present a romanticized version of samurai life. The world is cold. The Tokugawa rule has altered Japan; the ronin are viewed suspiciously, towns lock their gates, and previous allegiances are mostly irrelevant.
Akira moves through a world full of peasants, monks, soldiers and other masterless fighters and each interaction with these characters seems designed to test how much of a sense of honor, pragmatism, anger/bitterness or restraint you want to convey, focusing on an RPG centered on storytelling and grounded in interactions between players/characters.
The combat system features a simultaneous turn-based combat focusing on posture, strategy/tactics, and katana techniques. The ronin has a Mind resource that is dependent upon their psychological state and this resource affects both their ability to perform during battles and their mental discipline.
The role-playing structure for Tale of Ronin consists of 15 abilities distributed across five categories (some affecting combat, some related to survival, etc.) that allow for active/passive checks in dialogue. When fighting, a player will also have to determine whether the ronin has enough mental acuity to even engage effectively.
One of the key features of the game is the Intention System. It determines which conversation options are available to the ronin depending on what he is actively pursuing. For example, if the player wants to find another wandering ronin to join them, they may select an “Intent to Hire Ronin”.
There were other examples given by the developers, including asking for food, purchasing food, stealing, searching for basic employment, or challenging other samurai to duels. We can expect dialogue changes based on desire/appetite/need/pride/desperation.
Quests are generated via multiple access points allowing for job postings/officials/local gossip/shifting impediments created from within the environment itself.
An example was escorting a farmer & tax cargo to a castle. This singular job could spawn through various avenues, such as combat/delays/route selection/favors/consequences, that would affect other areas within the surrounding environment. Providing mercy could gain allies and open new possibilities, while providing brutality could generate vendettas and close off certain story branches.
Presentation in Tale of Ronin is through hand-painted sumi-e visuals inspired by traditional ink art, with audio design that uses restrained environmental sound/music influenced by Japanese artistic traditions to recreate Edo Japan.
Dead Mage released a playable version of Tale of Ronin to the public through Steam on April 14th and stated it will remain accessible until May 5th. At the time of writing, developer refers to the current build as an early demo-style experience intended to display the core aspects of their vision, warts and all. The game should arrive sometime on PC and console platforms as well.
