Revisited this gameplay teaser and have been poring over it. Here are some more observations and speculations plus some GIFs at half speed:
- All enemies shown so far are taller than the Player Character (henceforth PC).
- These enemies have a blue essence (of Gaia?) and they are enveloped in it right before dying, likely as a visual cue to press a button to absorb their essence if you so choose.
- The PC's powers are of a red essence and can be safely presumed to be that of the Oversoul.
- The four circular indents on the backpack probably indicate meters that can be filled.
- The sword that the PC wields is summoned from the power of the Oversoul contained in the backpack; there is no sheathe.
- The PC wields the sword in his right hand and any Oversoul 'thread' actions are performed with his left hand: ie. grappling, essence absorption, swinging the boss weapon. So far, the sword is not present whenever these left hand actions are engaged.
- The PC has light attacks, heavy attacks and I presume, dual auxiliary attacks: the satellite swords.
- Light attack string has at least 4 hits as shown here, 5th hit is a heavy attack:Notice that it's the exact same attack string in the launcher > aerial combo and that the fourth hit, the backhand swing, does some good knockback. You can also see the first 3 hits of the attack string elsewhere in the teaser, like when he's fighting the bugs and the boss.
- Heavy attacks tend to involve swinging the sword with both hands from start to finish. Presumably the biggest indicators are the gratuitous amount of hitstop and screenshaking involved. This appears to be a sequence of dashing light > light > heavy > heavy:and here's a sequence of heavy > light > light > light > heavy with lots of aux interspersed:
- Should be expected but in the last GIF you can see the lock-on shift from the first enemy to the second after it died, with the PC orientating himself accordingly.
- Oddly enough, the launcher feels like a heavy attack with its hitstop but is performed with one hand. The 3rd attack in his string is a rising slash using both hands.
What excites me, is the possibility that PlatinumGames is giving players 3-4 attack buttons; initially I'd assumed the aux attacks were merely heavy attacks. Light and heavy attacks function similarly to Ninja Gaiden but it's the addition of the aux weapons that intrigue me.
One obvious comparison would be DMCV's Devil Sword Dante, except Dante only has one attack button while the devil swords are controlled by the "Style Action" button, which can be thought of as a heavy attack button (while in Swordmaster style).
Instead, I think Babylon's Fall might be something like The Darkness II: where you have two extra actions bound to the shoulder buttons. I'm guessing they might have a control scheme like this:
Face buttons: Light attack, heavy attack, jump (not confirmed but I think it's a safe assumption), context-sensitive interaction button.
Shoulder buttons: Left aux, right aux, lock-on, dodge.
My speculation on the dual aux is based on the timing variations that the satellite swords exhibit in the teaser. Sometimes it's left then right, right then left and in the aerial version vs the boss it was simultaneous.
It's possible that the timing of both aux weapon strikes are simply randomized + context-sensitive, but I think it makes sense to have each satellite sword be an individual aux weapon...which can be customized and changed individually (okay, I just want to believe, lol).