Everything Bandai Namco Has Revealed About Code Vein

Last week Bandai Nam­co, the pub­lish­ers of Dark Souls, teased a new game with the tagline “Pre­pare to Dine”.  This was recent­ly revealed to be Code Vein, an action RPG from the mak­ers of God Eater.  Sev­er­al key devel­op­ers from God Eater will be work­ing on the game includ­ing pro­duc­er Kei­ta Iizu­ka, direc­tor Hiroshi Yoshimu­ra, and team leader Yusuke Tomizawa.

Code Vein takes place in the near future where the world has under­gone a dis­as­ter known as “Thorns of Judg­ment”.  These thorns have pierced the Earth­’s crust and many man­made struc­tures, leav­ing ruin across the world. A closed off soci­ety known as “Vein” bare­ly man­aged to sur­vive this event. 

Those who live in Vein are “Revenants”, peo­ple who have giv­en up being human in exchange for pow­er and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sur­vive. Revenants have super­nat­ur­al pow­ers, but lose most of their mem­o­ries and bare­ly main­tain their human­i­ty. They now must suck up blood or risk los­ing their human­i­ty and becom­ing a mon­ster known as “Lost”. Because Revenants lived in a closed off world, count­less Lost wan­der the lands in search of blood. 

Play­ers will take on the role of a Revenant as they search for both blood and a truth hid­den deep with­in Vein. Of course play­ers will not go on this jour­ney alone. 

One of the game’s most promi­nent fea­tures will be the “Bud­dy Sys­tem”. In dun­geons play­ers will be able bring along a bud­dy. This is said to be an AI that can act inde­pen­dent­ly, but will need sup­port at times. Here is how Bandai Nam­co describes buddies:

“The bud­dies that you can take along increase as you progress through the sto­ry. Play­ers and bud­dies will share both fear and chills, and sup­port each oth­er to over­come dif­fi­cul­ties. When you final­ly man­age to reach that new area, they are sure to share in the dra­mat­ic excite­ment. Even in des­per­ate sit­u­a­tions, by tak­ing on chal­lenges with your reas­sur­ing bud­dy and over­com­ing dif­fi­cul­ties togeth­er, new dra­mas will unfold.”

Many of Code Vein’s oth­er game mechan­ics will tie back into blood. Revenants will use equip­ment known as “Blood Veils”.  This will nor­mal­ly take on the shape of cloth­ing, but will have “aspects of armor”. It will also have a mech­a­nism that acti­vates dur­ing blood suck­ing that allows the play­er to per­form spe­cial moves such as long range attacks with a scor­pi­on tail or pierc­ing attacks with a gaunt­let. Dur­ing blood suck­ing Blood Veils trans­form into face mask that pump blood into the player. 

Suck­ing blood will allow play­ers to man­i­fest spe­cial abil­i­ties known as Gifts. These Gifts grant var­i­ous bat­tle effects such as weak­en­ing ene­mies, pow­er­ing up the play­er or even direct attacks. Uti­liz­ing both Gifts and Blood Veils will be key when explor­ing and clear­ing dungeons. 

Weapons used by the play­er will include swords, bay­o­nets, spears, hal­berds, great swords and more. These weapons will be sep­a­rate from Blood Veils and allows for many com­bi­na­tions. For exam­ple a play­er can use a one-hand­ed sword for nor­mal close range attack and use a scor­pi­on tail for long range blood suck­ing attacks.

Code Vein’s envi­ron­ments will vary great­ly and so far four dif­fer­ent areas have been revealed. The city ruins are described as a major city ruined by the Thorns of Judg­ment and filled with blind spot that per­fect for sur­prise attacks. Huge sprawl­ing cave sys­tems make up much of the under­ground. These sys­tems are dark with the only light being holes in the Earth­’s crust. There are also oth­er under­ground struc­tures where peo­ple used to walk, but are now fill with Lost. Steep snowy moun­tains con­tain areas encased in ice. The nar­row and icy path­ways of the moun­tains will be slip­pery and where the play­er fights Lost will be important. 

Code Vein will launch on all “major home con­soles” in 2018. 

32 screen­shots were giv­en to the gen­er­al press how­ev­er Famit­su was giv­en 8 addi­tion­al screen­shots. All screen­shots can be seen below. A full trail­er is set for May of this year.

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