What can't you make better with a cool bike?
Code Vein 2 was revealed this weekend at Summer Game Fest, and it’s building quite a bit on the action RPG from 2019. There’s time travel and a whole arsenal of abilities that can wreak havoc on your foes. Yet I can’t stop thinking about one thing: its motorcycle.
Taking place in two eras, Code Vein 2 follows two characters on a quest to save the world from ruin. In the present, the “Luna Rapacis” has changed the entire world, and “Revenants” have become “Horrors.” Everything is falling to pieces, and the only thing that can stop the destruction is one unlikely duo: the player character, who is a Revenant Hunter, and Lou, the Revenant that saves their life by offering them half of her heart.
I’ve got very little experience with the original Code Vein, which was widely described as “anime Souls” around its release in 2019, so going into a hands-off presentation for Code Vein 2 was a little bit daunting. There are a lot of proper nouns and terminology to navigate, but the crux of it is a time-traveling journey to save the world from ruin.
Thankfully, you’ve got some good tools for doing so. Alongside the help you’ll get from Lou, both in combat and out-of-combat as your time travel conduit, the Revenant Hunter can also access special powers through various means. A Jail, for example, stores a Revenant’s heart on your back and lets you unleash powerful abilities, like summoning massive bat wings.
“Formae” is the official nomenclature for the supernatural powers of Revenants that can also be accessed through Jails. The bat wings, a “Bequeathed Formae,” are like an ultimate skill, but there are also more standard Formae that can slide into combo strings, inflict status effects, or allow you to change up the range of combat.
There are dungeons, boss fights, and plenty of exploration to do between the two time periods. Bandai Namco teased the potential of getting stuck somewhere in a dungeon in the present and needing to go back to the past to open up a new pathway. For those Zelda: Oracle of Ages fans out there, I’m sure that’s an exciting prospect. In the space between though, in this giant world, what do you do? Well, you ride a motorcycle.
We were briefly shown the golden motorcycle the protagonist drives, which can transport him and Lou around what looks like a surprisingly large open field area. I’m carefully avoiding the phrase “open world” here, but the scale and distance reminds me more of Elden Ring’s massive zones than any cramped hallways or corridors.
To wit, having a motorcycle to zip you around town is pretty handy. And while we’ve had the like of Torrent in Elden Ring, this feels more akin to the motorcycle from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It’s a stylish, elegantly simple solution for getting around a big world. It helped that Bandai Namco had an actual motorcycle there to show off, which emphasized how sick the game’s motorcycle design is. Maybe they’ll include it in the $50,000 deluxe edition (game sold separately).
The bike made me wonder whether this is the new solution, moving forward, for navigating the increasingly spacious worlds so many big budget games have. Whether by horse, glider, or motorcycle, it’s clear developers are tinkering with the ways in which we navigate these massive spaces.
As for Code Vein 2, the rest of it looks like more action and style across the board. I enjoy the time travel mechanic quite a bit. Gameplay implications, like opening up new avenues of access through the past, are one thing; but the aesthetic differences, in seeing specific past characters and the world before its ruin in the present, also seemed like an effective carrot to encourage exploration.
Because it was a hands-off presentation, I can’t say how Code Vein 2 will actually feel when I have a controller in my hands. The most optimistic guess would be that it’s at least as competent an action game as the first Code Vein, but I am curious to see how all the Formae flow from one into another. All of this has to be extrapolation at the moment , but the sequel at least looks like a strong upgrade in many departments, with Formae adding some cinematic sleekness to the action.
This is, essentially, Code Vein 1, but faster and more stylish, while still retaining some Soulslike roots in careful, methodical combat. The Formae seem like a novel concept that could make Code Vein 2 stand out, but without playing it and feeling just how the combos flow together in my hands, it’s hard to tell whether it will land.
A Soulslike is made or broken by its combat, so there are still quite a few questions left unanswered. But aesthetically, and er, vehicularly, it’s got my attention.
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