As the 14 March release date for Styx: Shards of Darkness sneaks closer, Cyanide have put out a ‘Making Of’ video talking about the sequel and its development. They note that their first game was a “rough diamond”, and that this second offering should be a more polished piece of stealth design.
That chimes pretty well with how I felt about the first game. It had a lot of lovely sneaking, informed by older titles like Thief: The Dark Project, but had its share of problems too; not least of which the ‘backtracking’ level structure that saw you returning to prior maps for the entire second half of the game.
Assuming the level design doesn’t repeat as much, and a few of the traversal options have been tightened up (something which may have been patched in the original already, actually), then Styx: Shards of Darkness could be pretty decent. Decide for yourself how it’s looking in the new video, below.
