This latest gameplay trailer reveals how its violent mech-within-a-mech gameplay works, dropping traditional cover systems for agility and an arsenal of high-powered weaponry.
In Beyond Flesh and Blood you play as conscripted engineer Ethan Cunningham. Ethan is one of the remaining members of the human race, hidden away on an orbital space station full of survivors that fled the surface of Earth. The Earth, itself, has become a severely inhospitable place.
"Ethan Cunningham is an engineer from the United Global Remnant: the very last survivors of humanity.""The year is 2281 and military grade VR is the only way back to Earth, 80 years after a Global War for resources forced decent society to the edge of Earth's atmosphere. Space is safe but rumours of aliens, terrorists and a meteorite strike finally conscript Ethan away from the UGR Astralis orbital colony.""He must pilot a series of increasingly advanced Tactical Frames alongside the UGR. They are used to hack the security, identify enemies, and destroy all hostile scavenger forces. But Ethan's first real task is to survive dystopia and go Beyond Flesh and Blood. "
I've played early builds of Beyond Flesh and Blood, both on my Surface Pro 3 and on a Xbox One at last year's EGX convention, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. If you'd like to know more about the game, I interviewed lead developer Lee Blacklock last summer, right here on Windows Central.
Beyond Flesh and Blood is the brainchild of Pixel Bomb Games, a British indie outfit which recently hired former Crystal Dynamics (Tomb Raider, Legacy of Kain) lead John Kavanagh as its managing director. While Beyond Flesh and Blood will arrive on Xbox as part of the ID@Xbox program, it boasts gameplay and visuals a little beyond what you might expect of an indie title. Despite the connotations, the studio has been unashamed in publicizing its indie heritage, and John Kavanagh recently gave an interview with MCV to explain where Pixelbomb will stake their claim in the industry:
"Beyond Flesh and Blood is an indie game, so we're not beholden to any publisher, but our budget is way beyond what most indie games would be. We're in the middle. We're very lucky in that respect. We're trying to capture that middle ground in the digital space between pure indie – bedroom coders – and teams of 250. We have about 25 people on this game."
Beyond Flesh and Blood is among the first titles to benefit from a tax relief scheme as part of a wider campaign by the UK government to promote the video game industry — which recently saw the mayor of London recreated in Minecraft. Hopefully the tax measures will help more UK studios get their games up to Beyond Flesh and Blood's level.
Beyond Flesh and Blood will hit Xbox One, PS4, PC (with VR support) in Q2, 2016.
