Iron Galaxy and Maximum Games' new action adventure game Extinction is definitely one of the more interesting titles I saw at E3 2017 this year. It features players taking on giant ogres called the "Ravenii" as a soldier named Avil. Acil is the last of the Sentinels, a group of warriors who were supposed to protect the world from the ogres, but failed. Players are very involved with the process of taking each ogre down, targeting specific limbs to impede the Ravenii before striking them down -- a bit akin to a less-Japanese Attack on Titan.

This year at E3, I got the chance to see a hands-off presentation for Extinction where the developers fought a couple of the Ravenii and walked those attending through the basics of the game. Everything I saw looked very promising; all of the battles with the ogres are very involved and on a large scale, unlike anything I have really seen in a game before.

[pullquote]Everything I saw looked extremely promising, as all of the battles with the ogres are very involved and on a large scale, unlike anything I have really seen in a game before.  [/pullquote]

The level shown off started with Avil in the middle of a large city that is under siege by the Ravenii. The developers went on to show the game's dynamic movement, as players can dash, jump, float in midair for a bit and run on and scale walls, giving players tons of options for places to go when taking on the giant ogres. Some rooftops are even bouncy, giving Avil a little bit of an extra boost in the air.

Avil also wields a whip that he can use as a grappling hook to latch on to buildings. If the player holds the button that allows them to use the whip, they can slow down time, giving players a longer period to determine what to do next. The developer playing then went to save a couple of civilians that were being attack by monsters.

Iron Galaxy has tons of experience crafting fighting games, so they used some of the skill to make Extinction's basic combat both exhilarating and fast paced. Players can use a variety of different regular and charged attacks when fighting their enemies, but combat is structured to make button mashing ineffective. Attacks have to be timed right to get the most out of each blow.

The developers had no problem killing the creatures and saving the civilians. After moving around the city a bit, the first ogre was spotted, so the developer playing rushed over to fight it. While the ogres can come in many different shapes and sizes, the one they were fighting was pretty basic, but (nonetheless) large and intimidating.  On their way over there, the ogre destroyed a wall, demonstrating the fact that all of Extinction's environments are destructible. The lack of noticeable debris was disappointing, but it is still a welcome feature that can have large effects on the course of a battle.

[pullquote]Iron Galaxy has tons of experience with crafting fighting games, so they used some of the skill to make Extinction's basic combat very exhilarating and fast paced. [/pullquote]

The ogre had armor around its arms, legs, and neck. The developers targeted the leg armor first, a feat he accomplished by slowing down time, aiming Avil so he could target the armor, launching himself towards it and knocking it off the ogre. After getting rid of the armor, the bare leg was targeted, and Avil was able to chop it off without much interference. After that, the ogre's other leg and one of its arms were chopped off in similar form. While the developer playing was planning on going for the head next, he had spent taken too long since chopping the ogre's leg off, so it regenerated.

After dismembering its leg again, they finally went for the head. As the limbs had been chopped out, the previous body-parts disintegrated and were absorbed into the sword, powering it up. When it was powered up enough, Avil scaled the ogre's back and chopped its head off. In the distance, another ogre was spotted, so the devs headed towards that one.

They reached it, but unfortunately it was wearing golden armor, which meant that certain buckles on the armor also had to be destroyed in order to eventually expose each limb. Obviously, the developers knew what they were doing and were still able to make quick work of this more powerful ogre. This completed the level, where many different things like the number of Ravenii slain and number of civilians saved were counted.

Afterwards, the developers mentioned multiple things that will be in the final game, like a Skill Tree for Avil, a story-driven Campaign, Extinction mode, which sees the player try to defend a city for as long as possible from a constant swarm of Ravenii, Daily Challenges, which gives players a new objective to accomplish each day in-game, and Custom Battles where players can construct any scenario they'd like to see.

[pullquote]Everything I have seen so far for Extinction looks extremely promising.[/pullquote]

Everything I have seen so far for Extinction looks extremely promising. There are always high stakes in each encounter, as Avil has to protect each city and its civilians, and the battles with ogres are on a much more massive and involved scale than in most other games. The game has a ton of potential, so I can't wait to see where Iron Galaxy and Maximum Games take it before it launches on PC, PS4, and Xbox One next year. If you want to learn even more about Extinction, you can check out our interview with Derek Neal, the game's Executive Producer.