Wanawho?

Wanadoo impressed us with several titles at E3, but my favorite was Inquisition, which is a game set in Medieval France during the plague years, and played like a combination of Metal Gear Solid and standard third person action/adventure games such as Tomb Raider. At 60% complete, there are still plenty of issues to work through, but playing this one hands-on, I can say that it does a lot more for original gaming than many higher profile titles. The sweet stuff is in the details, including dogs feasting on dead bodies left by the plague and gaseous clouds of disease that can hurt your character. You play as a kind of Sandman-looking thief, which is pretty cool right off the bat. It wasn't quite clear how the game develops in terms of the number of levels, the balance between puzzles and action, or the different environments you'll explore, but Inquisition plays like a Dark Age Metal Gear. Guards patrol the dying streets of Paris, and you have to avoid them by watching the sight lines they have and employing various sneaking moves. Your attacks are fairly limited, in keeping with the focus on stealth and your position in life, but the special moves the character is capable of and the amount of challenges you'll take on to progress in the game help make this a stand-out offering from French developer Wanadoo.

The version I played was on PS2 and looking fairly good already, but there'll be reams of optimization between now and when the game comes out later this year or early next year. Since Wanadoo seems to have relationships with publishers as well as publishing their own games, it's hard to say what the prospects are for this one to hit a U.S. market if it only goes out through Wanadoo. Definitely keep your eyes open for this; it's a breath of fresh air to see new ideas like this in a genre that badly needs some re-tooling. How many more tombs, cities, and warehouses can we stand to explore, after all? Drawing on some historical source material gives Inquisition a unique look and feel, and this could turn out to be a really interesting final product.