HomeFeaturesDread Delusion
Who needs a Morrowind remake when you can explore the beautiful nightmare of Dread Delusion?Praise Paeguth
Praise Paeguth
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / DreadXP
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / DreadXP
I booted upDread Delusionand fell 30 feet to my death. This throwback first-person RPG is hazardous, and not only due to the dreamlike islands floating in the sky. My leg-snappin' plummet may be down to early access changes, causing the ground to be updated from right under my feet. Far from being a nuisance, meta-jank like this only endears me further to Dread Delusion. It is anRPGfrom the other side of some attic mirror, an Elder Scrolls from a parallel 2002. It has, somehow, slipped into our reality and is seeingits full release today. There are gods you can thank for this, but we dare not speak their names.
Dread Delusion 1.0 Release Date TrailerWatch on YouTube
Dread Delusion 1.0 Release Date Trailer
Everything about Dread Delusion leans into the trappings of the era it loves. The slopes are a little too steep, the textures a little too blown-up, or haphazardly applied. Enemies approach you like stiff marionettes, eager for blood but unable to expand their minds beyond petty swipes. Low fidelity slashing noises whiff through the hot pink air as they attempt to hurt you. You may feel like you have played this game before, but not quite. Look again at that creature. Whatthe hellare they?
At the start of this story you are a prisoner, another tribute to Elder Scrolls. You are to be released, provided you hunt down and apprehend a notorious rebel known as Vela Callose. (You have a “one in three-hundred-and-sixty-four chance” of surviving this deed, your machine prison warden informs you). After an unsuccessful first encounter with the bandit, you are freed to go exploring, into an ambitiously dense world of skeletons, forgotten deities, and gigantic threshers rolling across the landscape on tank treads.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / DreadXP
And exploring is the main verb here. There are mushroom-filled valleys, secluded castle keeps, big towns full of shops, manors, docks, skeevy taverns. What’s most impressive is that all of these places are populated with peasants, tradesfolk, inquisitors, cultists, cutthroats… It’s rare to find an NPC who doesn’t have some small tidbit to say: a fear of the Union’s soldiers, a complaint about the Clockwork King’s madness. Early on you may find a gang of cartographers who rope you into helping them make a reliable map of these Oneric Isles. Another crowd of skulduggerers want help activating magical contraptions that allow travel across vast distances. You know what to do.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / DreadXP
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / DreadXP
It is a must-play for fantasy RPG fans who value colour, ambition, freedom, and a certain amount of jank. There’s an infamous moment inMorrowind(one ofour reader’s favourite RPGsof all time) wherea screeching elf falls from the skyand donks himself to death on the road ahead of you. When you inspect his body, you find a curious parchment, titled “Scroll of Icarian Flight”. Curious players will use to scroll and find themselves leaping thousands of feet into the air. Dread Delusion is a loving tribute to that same sensation of reckless discovery, that same giddy feeling as you fall, laughing, to your death.
