The stealth genre got a new addition earlier this month in Ereban: Shadow Legacy, which follows the story of Ayana, a lone assassin who is known as the last of the Erebans. She embarks on a mission to save the universe from Helios and find the truth about her people's disappearance. Ereban: Shadow Legacy players can complete the journey lethally by eliminating enemies with Ayana's Shadow Powers or non-lethally by staying hidden and lurking in the shadows.
In a recent interview with The Best War Games, creative director Alex Márquez said that how players choose to play the game reflects the legacy they help Ayana leave behind. Either method works in a stealth game, but to different effects obviously. This freedom in approach reflects the studio's core goal with Ereban: Shadow Legacy - to be a love letter to the stealth games they grew up with.
What Your Playstyle In Ereban: Shadow Legacy Says About You
The idea of Ereban: Shadow Legacy came to the indie studio while they were still university students. They wanted to develop a stealth game because they have played the genre since they were kids and felt that, nowadays, there aren't many releases. During a brainstorming session, Alex Alonso, a member of the studio, sketched a column with its shadow cast on a wall and a character using the shadow to climb it, essentially becoming one with the shadows. In stealth games, players are encouraged to hide and not be seen, and this concept was an obvious fit. After five years and "lots of effort," Ereban was born.
Márquez said he always ends up playing stealth games non-lethally because he feels bad for killing the characters when he has the option not to. He used Dishonored as an example—one of his favorites in the genre—and noted that this strategy leaves him feeling like he didn't experience the whole game because there are mechanics he never got to use. In Ereban: Shadow Legacy, there's a hack to this. Players will encounter SYMULANTS and Helios workers as enemies. SYMs are just robots, so players won't have to feel guilty for killing them, whereas the workers are just humans who are paid a salary from a mega-corporation. If players do kill a worker, Ayana absorbs their "pneumas" and gains more shadow power to stay in Shadow Merge longer.
By doing this, we raise a question: are you a pragmatic person who, in order to defeat their enemy, will kill anyone that stands in your way, to become more powerful and eliminate threats? Or do you prefer to struggle more if that means you won’t murder innocent people?
As the last of the Ereban, that’s essentially what Ayana (and therefore the players) has to decide, and the legacy she will define at the end of the adventure.
Ereban's Love Letter To The Stealth Genre
Aside from Márquez's love for Dishonored, he also mentioned his admiration for Aragami, which is a clear influence on Ereban as Aragami is a shadow spirit who teleports among shadows and sneaks around to attack enemies. There are a lot of elements in stealth video games that make them appealing, Márquez said: the exhilaration of entering forbidden territory, how players have to outthink their enemies, the need to strategize and execute plans, and then the improvisation that follows when things don't work out. The combination of these elements is "chef's kiss" and a reason the studio wants to give back to the genre.
As huge fans of stealth games, all we wanted with this game is to give back something to this genre, which sadly is a bit abandoned right now, by adding a new entry to the collection with our own twist and a lot of love. It’s the type of game we enjoy as players within the team: singleplayer, straight to the point, not too long, no microtransactions, etc. In short, it’s our love letter to stealth games. As long as people enjoy merging with the shadows with Ayana during her adventure, I’ll be more than happy.
Ereban: Shadow Legacy is out now on PC.