We got the chance to sit down with Motiga at GamesCom this year, the developers of the new action MOBA Shooter Gigantic where players duke it out in a third person five versus five battle across a huge map fighting for point control and trying to take out the enormous enemy boss mob. This was the first time we’d actually gotten the chance to try out the game and then got to take a moment with VP of Product Development James Phinney to ask him some question about the title. Stepping into the Gigantic area it was a swarm of developers all gearing up for the morning, ready to give us a presentation and then sit down and play against and alongside us in our 5 v 5 try out with a couple of other press guys.

We were able to choose whichever character we wanted from the rather extensive list, not knowing too much about the game we had a gloss over their basic abilities, very similar to a MOBA with QER attacks (W was reserved for the WASD movement) and opted for the cute and cuddly Uncle Sven, a battle alchemist that throws potions around to injure, hinder, support and heal. The game definitely plays more like a traditional shooter, with our main sub-objectives being to capture some points early on that we could summon creatures to that gave the group buffs (that the enemy would have to fight to destroy). We had to keep a close eye on the minimap to spot enemies and keep up with the team and see where they were fighting, what with us being more support focused and all, however the main goal was to build up enough momentum to create a vulnerable moment on the enemy boss, during this time we could attack their heart and try to strike a wound on them.

Each boss has three wounds in total and at different stages through the game the bosses start moving towards the center of the map to have a big showdown where everyone is right next to each other fighting it out to try and make the enemy boss vulnerable and get a killing blow. In all honesty we were pretty confused with how the exact mechanics behind making the boss vulnerable worked, it was extremely fast paced and we were concentrating on what was happening in the game so much that it was hard to retain what one of the dev guys next to us was saying, albeit at the end of the battle he did inform us that it normally takes two or three games to fully understand how everything works in practice. The combat is definitely fun and we actually preferred the look and play of the game after actually testing it ourselves than we had when we originally saw the trailers and videos, and overall it’s quite immersive with the rich and detailed graphics.

As far as MOBA elements go we’d say the only real MOBA element was the in battle skill levelling, every so often we’d earn skill points that we got to spend to upgrade one of our skills in two different ways, from making them more powerful, giving them added utility, or at times changing how the skill worked altogether. It was an element we liked as, unlike normal shooters, it meant there was some real customization to the characters, each time you went to spend a Skill point you had branched levelling for each skill to take that skill in a particular direction depending on your preferred playstyle or to better work with your team composition. Phinney told us that the system wasn’t always so in depth and it was one of the systems that the community had really helped change through Alpha and Beta testing, the original system being considerably more basic and with the suggestions and support of the testers the final design (albeit one that is always being added to) is much richer. It was definitely hard to keep track of which direction to upgrade skills, in the heat of battle and not knowing how our choices would come into play we simply clicked whatever sounded interesting at the time.

The map itself was a huge open desert canyon offering a lot of different platforms, cover and enclosed cave areas, there were pretty much no areas where it was flat and open and so made for much more strategic play. The map is currently one of three that have been finished, though only two are in the current testing phase with the third being tested internally and by a Core group of pro gamer teams that have been brought in to test things out and give their feedback on the endgame play, though when the Closed Beta going live on August 20th there will be one initial map to play and the others made available over time. As far as maps going the team are looking to keep pushing them out as often as possible, opting for more maps and environments as opposed to changing the core gameplay and adding alternative modes; so much so that over the course of the development Phinney told us that they’ve made and scrapped over a dozen maps that just didn’t work, but they’ve also got a lot that have had some further development and are in the queue for when they are ready to start putting out another.

There’s no word on open beta or release this early in, but the game will definitely be free to play and primarily focus on selling cosmetic based items and skins, a few of which we should be seeing soon, however there’s not much else to tell and no word on whether we’ll see a free hero rotation system in the game. If you want to check out the game then closed beta signups are now available and, as far as we’re concerned, it’s definitely worth checking out.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2015 at 11:23 am and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.