There are so many action-adventure games out there that I admittedly have some trouble telling them all apart. It’s a hallmark of the video game industry that when somebody creates something widely popular a plethora of copycats will soon follow, usually worse in quality or originality. Imagine my surprise as I play Eternal Strands and find myself consistenly impressed by the ways in which Yellow Brick Games has put their own twist on a woefully inundated genre. To do so for the studio’s debut game just goes to show that it isn’t high-profile studios that make great games, rather it’s the people in them who do. Considering that, it’s little wonder I fell so quickly in love with Eternal Strands. Its director, Mike Laidlaw, also worked on cult-classics such as Jade Empire, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age: Origins.
Eternal Strands starts out with you, Brynn, in the midst of your first expedition with your new weaver band. Weavers in this world wield enchanted mantles that draw magic from the air to power spells. They once called the magical utopia known as the Enclave home, but a catacylsymic event known as the Surge some forty or so years back overloaded their vast network of enchantments and magical constructs. This coincided with the creation of a magical veil around the Enclave itself, which your weaver band now hopes to investigate from a newly-discovered safe haven in the veil’s shadow that otherwise teems with unstable clouds of raw magic. Events transpire which lead your new band beyond the veil, as the first to cross over in decades, you must work together to survive and uncover the mysteries of the past.
The main gameplay loop of Eternal Strands takes place in the form of expeditions, in which you explore a series of different, increasingly hostile locales throughout the Enclave. Wooded outskirts, frigid swamps, and shattered cities await. There’s a pleasant degree of verticality to each area, which you can climb around in so long as you have the stamina. You’ll be guided by your weaver band via the Scry, a pre-surge artifact that lets them observe you remotely, speak to you, and pull you to safety in fatal situations. Eternal Strands also uses this to explain away why you can’t just walk out of each area, since leaving the range of the Scry causes your team to pull you back in range. No ludonarrative dissonance here, no sir.
The expedition areas themselves aren’t overwhelmingly large, but they are decently sized and densely packed. More importantly, they’re visually interesting and fun to explore even on repeat visits. Acquiring new spells for your mantle will open up new pathways and allow you to traverse previously difficult-to-reach areas with ease. It was certainly a game-changer once I unlocked the ensaring blast ability. It allows you to create a kinetic bubble that you can detonate at will to launch whatever is inside, including yourself, a great distance depending on where they are relative to the center of the bubble. I may have overshot my targets a few times, but my shattered ankles were worth the thrill of it.
Each discovered area introduces a new colossal foe, and upon subsequent visits these foes will rotate through each area at random as time passes. My first encounter of this sort sent me reeling back to my time playing Shadow of the Colossus, and I found myself climbing my gargantuan foe before anyone had even suggested as much to me. What I wasn’t expecting, however, was for my foe to pluck me from its body and crush me in its fist. Well played, Yellow Brick Games, for I always wondered why the colossi in Shadow of the Colossus never did as much. Indeed, each of these epic encounters met me with some sort of surprise, whether watching a drake set itself ablaze to force me off it or being unceremoniously rocketed into the nearest ravine by a well-placed kinetic blast.
Besides the epic encounters you can face, the weather of each area also changes over time. You could have a clear morning with no effects, a frigid night where ice spells are more effective, or an afternoon where the magical miasma is so thick your magic regeneration is increased (and deadly clouds of magic blanket the area). A degree of planning is helpful here, aided by Eternal Strands’ robust crafting system. Similar to Monster Hunter, you can find and craft gear using resources harvested from the creatures you hunt. Where Eternal Strands improves upon the formula, however, is that you can craft your weapons and armor using a variety of resources that impact its final stats, and you can reforge them at any time at no additonal cost while refunding your already-invested materials. Some gear does have innate bonus stats, such as magic regeneration or frost resistance, but you can build upon those innate features however you like.
Beyond the gameplay, I was impressed by Eternal Strands’ deft storytelling. You uncover various documents that shed light on what happened in the environments you explore, which you can then take to your band’s loremaster for summary and further explanation. Indeed, various members of the band will chime in if they have something to say about a particular topic. It feels like most games have relegated such lore to in-game menus, disconnected from the game itself, whereas Eternal Strands has managed to weave the lore into the world in a way that feels organic. After all, why wouldn’t your loremaster want to talk your ear off about this kind of thing?
Speaking of the lore, there’s a lot of it. Eternal Strands throws unfamiliar terms at you constantly, but in a way that allows you to extrapolate their meaning if you’ve been paying attention or doing your research. Sure, you could easily skip through all of the fully-voiced dialogue, but you’d be losing out if you did. One of Eternal Strands’ major themes is the exploration of the unfamiliar, and while you certainly do a lot of that as Brynn, so too as the player are you exploring this new world and seeing how its various nations have responded to the sudden collapse of the Enclave. It builds immersion and provides context, and that heightens the sense of adventure for me.
Going back to camp to hear what everyone has to say about my latest exploits or to lend an ear to whatever struggles people were going through was probably one of my favorite parts of Eternal Strands. I’m not just saying that because every single line of dialogue is fully voiced (although that is a big plus), but each character actually feels like a person with real motivations and reacts accordingly based on the dialogue you choose. Their quests and conversations interact often and characters will even reference things you’ve said to others in the past. While your choices don’t have much, if any, impact on the overall story, your dialogue choices do influence Brynn’s personality and her relationships among the weaver band. And yes, there are romance options if you play your cards right.
Truthfully, I have nothing bad to say about Eternal Strands. I suppose I could say that I wanted more of it, but at the same time many games made in recent years suffer from unecessary bloat just to pad play-time. That doesn’t happen here, though. I never felt burnt-out or annoyed that I had to backtrack, only excited! I imagine some people might complain that the graphics are too cartoon-like, but I find that a pinch of good art direction is worth more than a pound of photorealism. Many of the locales I explored and the foes I faced in my time with Eternal Strands left me awe-struck from both their design and presentation. Indeed, presentation is something Eternal Strands is quite good at, from the sweeping camera angles introducing each new area to the hand-animated cutscenes at pivotal story moments.
For those seeking an adventure that challenges, surprises, and immerses in equal measure, Eternal Strands is nothing short of a triumph. Action-adventure games are probably my least favorite genre, and yet Eternal Strands has become one of my favorite games of all time. It’s a reminder that in the right hands, even overly familiar genres can feel fresh and exciting once more. It’s a strong debut for Yellow Brick Games, and here’s hoping this is just the first of many golden threads woven in their tapestry of achievements.
Austin played Eternal Strands on Xbox Series X with a review code.
