PAX East 2018 – Omensight emerges as Best in Show

A hit in the making...

Are you a fan of Action games? Do you enjoy solving a mystery which will either doom or save the world? Do games where it is not just your choices which matter but the way you do things that matters? Do you enjoy RPGs which are story driven? If you answered yes to these questions, then Omensight is a game you need to keep an eye out for.

While at PAX East I had the opportunity to play the demo and find out more about the game from Malik Boukhira, Co-Founder of Spearhead Games. The player character in Omensight is the Harbinger who is sort of like a demi-god who normally exists outside of the world and time, but who has been sent to avert the destruction of the world by changing the events of one day. You see, there was a powerful priestess who had been holding back a world destroyer and thereby protecting everyone. That is she was doing this until someone killed her. Solving this mystery and changing the related events is your task as the Harbinger.

Every “level” iin-gametakes place over the course of one day, at the end of which the world destroyed and the day is reset. Each day you must choose not only who you want to investigate but also who you want to take with you. The variation in these choices affects what information is learned and what options you have when you confront the person you were investigating that day. One interesting tidbit here is all the companions whom you can have accompany you also have their own agendas and will be doing their own thing even if you don’t take them with you. For example, if you don’t take one specific companion with you, that companion shows-up when you reach the person you are investigating.

During the demo, I was investigating Emperor Indrik and I had brought Ratika with me on this mission. Ratika is an interesting character who functions sort of like a bard. Because of certain information which had previously been obtained Ratika was convinced it was Emperor Indrik who killed the Priestess so for her this mission was less about going to find out more than it was about confronting the Emperor. Which brings up an important point here, all the characters only know what they know and can only give information from their own perspective. In a search for truth, this can complicate things even if the character isn’t trying to mislead you. Incidentally, at the end of the level, I made a choice Ratika didn’t like so she tried to kill me, in other words sometimes the choices you make have immediate consequences.

Moving around the level was intuitive with a few small puzzles, but nothing complicated. There was some light platforming which needed to be done but nothing particularly hard. That said my trouble with jumping once again reared its head and I managed to die in a few spectacular ways because it turns out double-jump couldn’t save me from everything. Another interesting thing I noticed was there is no loot at all. Since the Harbinger is a demi-god I suppose loot isn’t something she’d be interested in but it’s surprising for a game like this to have no loot. All character progression is from levelling up and unlocking new skills.

Combat was a lot of fun and seemed to follow typical action combat mechanics (light attack, heavy attack, dodge, etc). In addition to these basics, there were a couple of other skills unlocked as well. The one I liked the most was a skill which enabled me to essentially blink between enemies who are spread around the area. One of the reasons I really liked this skill was because it reminded me of fighting as Ciri at the end of Witcher 3 or as a sword-wielding Revenant in Guild Wars 2. Overall combat felt like it flowed well and the only “combat” issue I had was accidentally dodging off a platform.

Omensight was a game I went into PAX East knowing nothing about but for me, it is the best game I saw while there this week. There’s no release date yet but they plan to launch it on Steam and on the PS4 in Spring/Summer 2018, so it’s not long off now.

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