The Ascent is an upcoming game from Neon Giant, a newly established studio that has been working on this for three years now, and it is finally ready to have players experience gameplay. This is not the first project that the founders of Neon Giant worked on, however, and that's because they played a role in the development and production of Bulletstorm, over 10 years ago now. The Ascent is a unique game that is not afraid to show its own identity despite all the possible comparisons that can be made with games like Diablo, Shadowrun, Path of Exile, Star Wars, and Cyberpunk, even.
The fact that The Ascent strives to be its own game is a good thing, and it shows in creative director Arcade Berg's determination to have a high-quality product ready for launch, despite Neon Giant being a relatively small team with more of an indie budget. This game is not like many other looter shooters or ARPGs, and that is due to how it breaks free from certain paradigms of similar titles. The Ascent is innovative, and it is going to be first and foremost a brand-new experience even for those gamers who are passionate about the aforementioned genres. In an interview with Game Rant, Berg discussed this approach at length.
How The Ascent Is Different From Other ARPGs And Looter Shooters
There are several things that set The Ascent apart from other games. Despite being action-oriented, there is plenty of room for players to immerse themselves into the story, the setting, and to explore, too. The Ascent is designed to be a title that offers a lot to any player, regardless of what they are more into in terms of content, and it achieves this thanks to its Codex entries, compelling storytelling, alien races with unique voices, sizes, and behaviors, and much more. Exploring the world of The Ascent feels rewarding, as there are several hidden chests with gear or simply new perspectives to look at things from, and that's just in the very first hour of play or two. As Berg explained,
[...] items are made by specific manufacturers that exist in the world. Maybe you’ll find a factory of that manufacturer somewhere in the world, and if you want a specific thing you could read our wiki page and say “Oh, that one I can find there, it’s dropped by that enemy.”
This approach allows The Ascent to not just be a typical looter shooter, with a sense of progression based on the gear found throughout the game, but it does exactly what it says on the tin: ascending progression. Players accustomed to finding weapons or armor pieces divided into rarity tiers like in other ARPGs will be surprised by how this is not present at all in The Ascent, which does not follow the pattern of, say, white to orange colors to create items varying from normal to legendary. Instead, this game has its own system, and it blends nicely and smoothly into the world that Neon Giant created.
How Progression In The Ascent Works For Weapons, Armor Pieces, Abilities, And More
Weapons in The Ascent are found at their base level, meaning that even high-end content will result in drops that may not be exactly overpowered from the get-go. Instead, weapons can be upgraded gradually once more components and materials are found throughout the game, be it missions, chests, rewards, specific enemies, or something else. This system is also used for augmentations, for example, which are basically special skills to improve over time in The Ascent, rather than having them drop within a certain rarity bracket.
So, all weapons, for example, are found at their base level. There is nothing random with the weapon. [...] You will start finding components while playing, and they are used to upgrade the level of the weapons to make sure that they scale with you as you start encountering more and more difficult enemies.
This means that virtually any piece of gear in the game can become extremely potent if the players want it to, regardless of the stats it had when it dropped. Such a game-changing feature is great to have simply because it provides players with a long-lost sense of agency that actually matters, making them in charge of what their gear will look like and why specific pieces can still be good in the endgame despite dropping early on. Overall, The Ascent's next-gen experience looks very promising, and the way it brings small revolutions to the table is at very least refreshing.
The Ascent is coming to PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on July 29.