Oh, and those quests? They’re generated by the world too, and the Covenants’ successes and failures feed back into them. A monstrous hero arises in the wasteland. There’s a quest to kill him. If no one does, he may gather a band of monsters to him. And then he leads to an uprising, leading to more baddies in the area. If left untouched for long enough, they’re going to storm the village. NPCs can be captured and kidnapped - generating more quests and... well, it’s Diablo meets STALKER - and that’s a STALKER that’s far more alive than GSC’s world ended up being. If you win, you can generate a whole new world for your tougher party to have a crack at.

Depths has three main problems. Firstly, some odd difficulty spikes, presumably coming from how unpredictable the world is. Secondly, being an action-RPG gold-collector, it’s a trifle repetitive. And finally, it would have been nice to have multiplayer. All these are eminently forgivable - especially the last, when the game manages more life than most humans can manage. If Hellgate left you with deep wounds of despair, this is the healing potion for you.

May 5, 2008