NOTE: Enable subtitles for the video (obviously) in case you don’t speak French.

Focus interactive have been quietly uploading various design videos for their upcoming Stealth-RPG “Styx: Master of Shadows” for a while now, and in the recently released video seen above, they’ve finally made it to the core of the “Of Orcs and Men” spin-off, the gameplay.

In the video, the developers make it clear that they intend to return to the basics of stealth gameplay, having been fans of the style long before their start of this title. Given how they stress that they want a severe punishment for being discovered, I’m willing to bet they grew up playing a lot of the original two Thief games.

The game doesn’t forget that you’re playing a goblin either, since you are very susceptible to melee attacks and fighting the heavily armed knights that block your progress isn’t a good tactic for getting out of a jam. Of course, being a Goblin has one big upside: Your agility allows you to find alternative paths through levels that may not be the conventional routes you’d expect. Good news for rooftop crawling aficionados like myself.

Cyanide studios needs a good mainstream hit too, since many of their games (Both Game of Thrones titles and Of Orcs and Men, especially) have met with rather lukewarm responses from even the usually forgiving European CRPG’er community. They may have that hit in Styx though, when it launches on October 7th.