Channeling some serious Superhot and Max Payne bullet time vibes, Greylock Studio’s lifted the lid on the upcoming first-person shooter, Severed Steel, today via a feature on the PlayStation Blog.
Severed Steel is an FPS that features a distinctly acrobatic play style, destructible environments, and one uncommon mechanic – no reloading. As Greylock Studio’s Matt Larrabee explains, the no-reload mechanic plays into the studio’s desire to subvert traditional shooter mechanics and aligned perfectly with a one-armed protagonist – one arm, no reloading.
Removing such a core facet of the FPS genre forced Greylock Studio to explore alternative ways to source ammo, chiefly through nimble agility, snatching weapons from enemies, and picking them up mid-fight. Frenetic shooting is interspersed with time-slowed acrobatic stunts through the claustrophobic corridors and levels of a towering skyscraper packed to rafters with bad guys. At the player’s disposal is an arsenal of nimble moves from wall running and flipping to diving and sliding packaged into what looks to be irresistibly fun stunt chaining. During these, all enemy fire misses Steel to encourage players to tap into the Severed Steel expansive movement system.
Severed Steel’s One-Armed Protagonist
Named Steel, the protagonist lost her arm through an accident involving a behemoth corporation. As these things go, the corp opts to abandon her rather than lend a helping hand. The game charts Steel’s efforts to liberate others wronged by the EdenSys corp and deliver some sweet justice of her own in the process. Larabee hints that Steel acquires arm cannon later in the game, which bodes well for punching holes in floors and opening shortcuts in Severed Steel‘s fully destructible voxel environments.
As it stands, publisher Digerati has penciled Severed Steel in for release in the Summer 2021 window on PlayStation 4. We also spotted a Steam listing suggesting a PC release is in the works, although the page notes the release date as TBA.