From Horizon: Forbidden West to Elven Assassin
Archery is a popular pastime in survival sims, open-world action games, large-scale RPGs, and action-adventure games. In some games, this is part of the entourage - what is medieval fantasy without a bow? In others, it allows you to change the style of passing from aggressive to stealthy. Thirdly, it is an additional challenge to the gamer, simulating the difficulty of aiming and pulling the bowstring.
We recall several projects in which bows as weapons are not just a tribute to the setting and not a load that lies idle in the inventory for most of the passage, but one of the main tools of the hero.
Horizon: Forbidden West
The most recent and obvious example is a game whose surroundings are largely inspired by the life of North American Indians in the days long before colonization. Including the need to hunt large animals for food and survival. Both parts of Horizon often make you fight with huge robots, each of which has its own vulnerabilities, armor, and valuable cargo. In the former, you need to shoot shells with a special type of damage - for example, acid. The second is to shoot down with a reinforced tip to open access to important knots. And modules carrying useful ingredients can self-destruct after the explosion - they also need to be accurately knocked down to the ground while the beast robot is still functioning.
Action Guerrilla Games offers an extensive arsenal of hunting traps, bombs, and even heavy crossbows, allows you to fight in close combat - but it is the bow in Horizon that remains the most understandable and versatile weapon. Much of the upgrade is wrapped around the bow, focusing on improving accuracy, draw speed, or increasing concentration-time, where time for Aloy "slows down" and allows you to more accurately aim at a small moving target.
There are many arrowheads in the game, and the bows themselves are divided into different types, differing in speed of fire, damage, and range. In Forbidden West, a separate development branch and a set of special skills have been allocated for each species, which will allow you to choose your own style of play - despite the fact that the basis of the combat system and hunting will still remain tied to a bow and arrow.
The Last of Us: Part II
The gloomy post-apocalypse of one of the main PlayStation exclusives stands out not only for the lack of ammo that is typical for such settings but for the excellent hearing of the local infected. In an environment where forces are not equal, and firearms are in short supply, stealth and silent kills are becoming a priority choice for many players.
The bow is the main weapon in both parts of The Last of Us. Leveling the right skills and upgrading your weapons will make them a deadly tool to effectively disable your enemies. An accurate headshot won't make too much noise and will not allow you to determine where Ellie is hiding.
The “impact” characteristic of Naughty Dog hits gives sharpness to the stealthy passage - a balance of response to pressing buttons and animations that reliably convey the physics of a shot and a hit. In The Last of Us: Part II, this element is brought almost to perfection and perfectly “immerses” the player into the atmosphere, gameplay, and specifically, into the process of archery.
Close in genre and significance of the bow in the passage is the latest Tomb Raider trilogy at the moment. However, the implementation of the shooting itself and the lower requirements for stealth make the game Crystal Dynamics, not such a striking example.
Thief
The thief Garrett, the protagonist of the Thief series, knows all about sneaking into forbidden areas and silently removing obstacles. In all parts of the cycle, his main weapon is a compact compound bow. To restart 2014 - alas, unsuccessful - the developers even ordered a working bow prototype from real gunsmiths=0-, on the basis of which they created a functional game model.
In Thief, the bow is not so much a military weapon as a versatile tool - Garret solves many problems with the help of different types of arrows. Conventional tips remotely activate various switches. Candles and torches are extinguished by a water arrow. Gas projectiles stun groups of enemies, while moss-filled arrows muffle sounds on the surface they hit. With the help of a bow, you can throw a rope with a hook to the required height.
Some of Thief's developments related to control and shooting physics later migrated to Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. In the immersive simulator Arkane Studios, there are about a dozen bows and a separate skill that is responsible for owning these weapons.
Far Cry Primal
The bow in Far Cry is the key to quietly eliminating opponents when clearing bandit camps and the hunter's main weapon. Wild animals are a source of skins needed to improve equipment, including the bows themselves, among which the ultimate weapons of stealth assassins appear in the later stages of the game.
Bows show themselves very well in Far Cry 3 and in the fourth part, the events of which unfold in exotic and not too developed regions densely populated with various games. But in Far Cry Primal there are no firearms at all - the events unfold in the Stone Age. And the best means for battles at medium and long distances is the bow.
Of course, one can only dream of complex optics or modern block systems in Primal. But simple bows, which can be made from trees growing everywhere and the lives of animals grazing nearby, will go with Takar - and the player - the whole game.
Crysis 3
By the release of the third part of Crysis, the combination of different paths and the use of alternatives to noisy firearms became a kind of trend. In the same 2013, the already mentioned Tomb Raider appeared, in Splinter Cell Blacklist different styles of passing brought different rewards, and at the end of 2012 Far Cry 3 was released with its hunting for wild boars with a bow.
Crytek also followed the trend, sent the Prophet, the protagonist of Crysis 3, into the new post-apocalyptic jungle - and gave out a bow. I even put it on the cover, emphasizing the possibility of stealth passing most of the game. The bow really works well when paired with the Nanosuit's invisibility feature, while a frontal attack with a rifle at the ready is often doomed to failure. Still, the aliens are also not a bastard, and the high-tech armor of the protagonist is not a hindrance to them.
Alas, secret passage at some point begins to tire, and battles with bosses still require firearms and heavy weapons. So Crysis 3 is definitely not a full-fledged archer simulator, but this device is quite capable of refreshing the gameplay against the background of the first and second parts.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Czech game designer Daniel Vavra sought to turn Kingdom Come Deliverance into more than just a believable adventure in a historical setting, he swung at a role-playing life simulator in the late Middle Ages. And if a player starts his journey in the role of a simple blacksmith, by the end he will master not only the ability to deftly swing a sword but also archery - both on the battlefield and on the hunt. A medieval warrior also needs something to eat - game will fit perfectly on a campaign.
The creators of Kingdom Come did not intend to make the task easier for the players - if the protagonist has to suffer, aim without any marks before his eyes and figure out the trajectory on his own, then the player will not receive any crosshairs of the sight and distance scale. Both the hero and the gamer will learn in parallel - by trial and error, developing the appropriate skill.
In this game, it is important to choose the right combination of bow and arrows. The range, accuracy, and damage will depend on the type of weapon and materials. War projectiles with a reinforced tip will not fly better if they are fired from a peasant's homemade. And vice versa - hunting arrows are almost useless on the battlefield against men at arms, even if you shoot from the best bow.
Elven Assassin
The development of VR continues, even if they don’t make too much noise in the information field about new products, and projects like Half-Life Alyx are in no hurry to come out annually. New games are coming along with improved headsets, and VR goggles are one of the best ways to feel like an archer. Without leaving home and without the risk of making holes in living people or their property.
One of the highly acclaimed VR archery sims came out on Steam Early Access back in 2016 and is called Elven Assassin. The player takes on the role of an elf defending a city or a castle from attacks by orcs, trolls, dragons, and other fabulous evil spirits. Over the course of twelve missions, you will have to run on rooftops, hide in alleys, bypass enemy units from the flanks on city streets and destroy enemies one by one.
To fight more effectively, you can team up with up to four players. If you have enough friends with VR headsets, of course, otherwise you will have to sign up for sessions in communities dedicated to games in virtual reality.
But if it's not so much the feeling of archery that matters to you, but the opportunity to get into the shoes of the character mentioned in the title, then you can pay attention to various video games dedicated to the heroes of the Marvel comics universe. For example, on the controversial 2017 Avengers, where one of the additions is dedicated to Hawkeye. Or games in the LEGO Marvel Super Heroes series. Older gamers in the early 90s could come across Captain America and the Avengers, which came out in several versions on Sega MegaDrive, SNES, and NES - and therefore on the popular Russian-Chinese Dendy.
If you love archery in video games and know other, forgotten by us and no less worthy projects dedicated to this topic, share examples in the comments.
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