Following the recent inadvertent Steam leak, French publisher NACON (which recently filed for insolvency) and Polish developer Teyon (known for the Terminator and RoboCop games) have unveiled Hunter: The Reckoning - Deathwish during yesterday's Xbox Partner Preview showcase.
As part of the announcement package, the Xbox Wire blog also published an exclusive interview with Game Director Piotr Łatocha, revealing several key elements of the game. First of all, it won't have anything to do with the hack-and-slash games developed by High Voltage Software over twenty years ago. It is instead a single player semi-open world action roleplaying game played in first person view.
Teyon has looked closely at the tabletop RPG, basing it on the 5th edition that launched in October 2022. The major difference is that in previous editions of the game, playable characters were "Imbued", ordinary people mysteriously chosen by supernatural entities called the Messengers and granted genuine powers. In Hunter: The Reckoning 5th edition, players are now fully mundane humans, people who stumbled across the supernatural and decided to fight back with nothing but determination, resourcefulness, and whatever weapons they can acquire. The same is true in this videogame adaptation.
Compared to RoboCop: Rogue City, this will be a slower paced game with a greater focus on investigation and key RPG features like a branching story, companion bonding, and even some romance options. Players will be able to influence the personal stories of the companions and, therefore, how they end up when the story concludes. There's a full character creator that lets you create a character both aesthetically and functionally, assigning skills and attributes (18 and 6, respectively).
Perhaps most exciting is that players will be able to behave very differently in Hunter: The Reckoning - Deathwish, potentially leading to "very, very bad" endings. Furthermore, Teyon will give players the freedom to approach quests however they want:
We basically wanted to support three main archetypes, I would say, so we can always go by force, by stealth, or by your mind. So, the basic example in a lot of quests, you can go by force, beating everyone—we have options for brawling, melee, shooting, and using different weapons. You can also sneak through, or you can find a different solution. If you’re a smart or charismatic character, you can talk your way in. And it’s all fluid. So, for example, if you just pass the first guard with a charisma skill check, that doesn’t stop you from using any other approach. If you want to stealth in, but you’ll get caught, it’s not mission failed – it’s like the game changes to an action setup.
Say you need to get into a company that was closed because there was a crime scene inside. You can use your athletic skills to jump over the fence, or you can hack the keypad to open the door, or you can find some clues, and someone will tell you the pin code, or you can find it in a note. Deus Ex was an inspiration for this approach, alongside, of course, the original Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, as well as Baldur’s Gate 3.
Those three games are classics. Hopefully, Hunter: The Reckoning - Deathwish will be worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence, though we won't know for sure until it releases in Summer 2027 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S and X.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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