Yesterday, Confessors appeared at the Xbox Games Showcase 2024 with a brand new trailer that revealed more of the game’s compelling story and gave us more insight into one of your four companions, Giatta. If you want to see more after that, we have a surprise for you: In a special episode of the official Xbox podcast Confessors Game Director Carrie Patel sat down with hosts Malik Prince and Tina Amini to dive deeper into the gameplay players can expect from the upcoming fantasy action RPG.
We saw a much more of the game – coming to Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and Cloud later this year (and arriving on Game Pass on day one) – reveals more of the Emerald Stair region, showing us two possible approaches to the same quest, the game’s Party Camp, upgrade systems, an optional 3rd-person point of view and more. You can watch the full episode below or read on to find out all the important new details.
Patel began by introducing the Emerald Stair region – which you reach fairly early in the game – and showed the region at night. ConfessorsThe dynamic day-night cycle significantly alters the atmosphere of each of the game’s fantastical biomes, and Emerald Stair is particularly spectacular after sunset—the nearby city of Fior is home to an enclave of animancers who study the science of souls, including the Dreamscourge plague that plagues the game’s Living Lands setting (read more about that here), and whose arcane equipment lights up the sky with a deep purple glow.
Speaking of Animancers, the gameplay we saw showed the player on a mission to help them – but before we got there, we met one of the game’s future companions, Yatzli. Patel describes Yatzli as “a little flash with a lot of personality,” pointing out that she can get “a little daring,” and we very quickly see her dialogue immediately take on a flirtatious tone. This also shows Obsidian’s trademark engaging dialogue and choices – certain attributes or character backgrounds you choose unlock new options that add more personality or can even change the outcomes of your conversations.
Yatzli sends us off to collect an ungodly vase – an artifact of the humans she is investigating – and the player is thrown into combat. Even with a mix of spells, ranged attacks, and melee attacks, we were struggling to defeat even smaller enemies at this point – and this is where we saw the game’s Party Camp feature.
“It’s both your narrative hub and your upgrade hub,” Patel said. “It’s where you get to know your companions better, you get to learn their backstories and get to know them better as individuals – you also get to hear them getting to know each other through their conversations at camp, which is always super fun to listen to.”
“One thing we really wanted to create with Party Camp,” Patel continued, “was that sense of adventure and discovery together through this great wilderness and all these different landscapes, and Party Camp is this quiet place where you can all huddle together and have a moment of calm together, and the pace and tone of everything is much slower and calmer.” As you travel through the game, you’ll hear your companions talking about their lives, sharing views on what you’ve done together, and maybe even coming into conflict when it comes to the choices to make.
But it also serves a very important mechanical function: “This is also where we can upgrade our equipment. So we have our Party Stash where we can store a lot of extra equipment, we have our upgrade screens […] We will take some of our older equipment that we picked up in the previous region and upgrade it so that we are better equipped to fight the enemies here.”
With the new upgrades, the player was able to defeat his enemies much better – which was also supported by Obsidian’s decision to represent the effectiveness of attacks visually and acoustically: “We want to make sure that players get clear feedback about when their equipment is effective and when they may need to return to camp. It looks different, feels different and sounds different when you play with the appropriate equipment.”
We want to make sure players get clear feedback on when their gear is effective and when they may need to return to camp.
Carrie Patel
We also took a closer look at the game’s skill and ability upgrade system. “You can upgrade your skills and abilities anywhere as you level up throughout the game,” Patel said. “At certain level-up milestones, we can upgrade our attributes. […] and at each level-up milestone we can choose a new skill.”
This quickly bears fruit, as we see the Fan of Flames ability unlocked and used to turn a previously blocked path into ash. But it wasn’t the only option:
“We wanted to try to give players as many different abilities as possible that they can use in combat, but also in exploration,” Patel explained. “So there’s almost always more than one way through a given barrier. You have weapons, your own abilities, spells, weapon enchantments, and sometimes even your companions who can help you get through the barriers with their environmental abilities.”
This willingness to problem-solve is nowhere more evident than in the other quest we saw in the demo. After finding the vase for Yatzli – a key part of unlocking her as a permanent companion – we saw the player set out to find an Adragan Heart for the Animancers. This mystical object is held by the Delemgan, a territorial species that frowns upon adventurers traversing their lands.
At first, we saw the player go head-on, fighting through multiple Delemgan and using every combat ability at their disposal to reach their queen – who immediately attacks the player for killing so many of her followers. That player would have to finish her off in a boss fight to win the heart. But here we saw some of the player’s typical Obsidian choices.
The demo reloaded and we saw the player use the in-game currency to completely re-spec their character – adding several Ranger skills that allow them to take a stealthy approach. Using the Shadowing Beyond ability – which makes them invisible as long as their essence (the game’s mana) is intact and without them coming into conflict with enemies – they took several passes to reach the Delemgan Queen without fighting. In doing so, they found her in a much better mood, gave them the heart and let them go in peace.
It is a symbol of how open Confessors will be subject to interpretation and how your choices allow you to take different paths to get what you need. Skills in particular are completely open to how you want to use them:
“You can really mix and match them,” Patel said. “If you want to be a pure wizard, you can use this entire skill tree. If you want to mix and match – create a battle mage or someone who can be a little stealthy at certain moments and a little more aggressive at others – you have a lot of freedom to do that.”
If you want to be a pure wizard, you can use the entire skill tree. If you want to combine, you have a lot of freedom in that regard.”
This openness also extends to your cosmetic choices. We have a look at the optional 3rd Person Mode – Players can choose to play in 1st Or 3rd Person perspectives – and your choices are clearly displayed there too. Your character is godlike – someone who has been touched by one of the gods who live in the world of Eora – and it shows, literally.
Part of character creation is deciding how your godlike status manifests itself. The player character in the demo has a lichen-like growth on their face or head, but that is part of the character creation process. “With Confessors You can choose exactly what that manifestation looks like,” Patel said. “You’ll have some that are much bigger and more dramatic, and you’ll also have some that are much more subtle. But either way, you have a connection to one of the gods.”
The characters in the world will also react to your appearance: “Some people find this very cool, others find it very creepy. Different cultures and individuals have different ways of dealing with godlike beings, so you’ll get a range of reactions.”
But the main secret is that unlike most godlike beings, you do not know which God has shaped you. This is a point in the story that Patel did not want to address further – we just have to find out together if Confessors is coming this year.
