D&D: Ashes Of The Fallen – Realms Beyond, A New Video Game Brings D&D 3.5 Edition Back
Five years into 5th Edition, and D&D 3.5 is going strong in Ashes of the Fallen: Realms Beyond, a new game full of old school charm and dungeon crawling.
It is the year of our lord two thousand and nineteen and D&D 3.5 Edition’s ruleset is still, still being used to fuel games. It is a testament to the strength and enduring playability of the original rules branded d20, the ones that kicked off a whole new wave of gaming with the release of the Open Gaming License, which we mention because without the OGL, Ceres Games might not be bringing you Realms Beyond: Ashes of the Fallen.
Seriously, this game is straight out of the pages of the 3.5 SRD, right down to the very feats you’ll be using. When was the last time you thought about Power Attack? Or Improved Critical (Unarmed), or Whirlwind Attack? All these classic feats are back, baybee, right down to the prerequisites.
Realms Beyond: Ashes of the Fallen was a Kickstarter success back in 2018, and now, as 2019 comes to a close and 2020 gets ready to dawn, the game is under development and progress is speeding along on this game that hearkens back to the D&D computer games of yore. Inspired by the SSI games, and things like Icewind Dale or Neverwinter Nights, Realms Beyond: Ashes of the Fallen adapts the 3.5 OGL system rules into a robust game full of tactical combat and branching narratives.
But you don’t have to take our word for it. Come and take a look at how the game handles character creation, from developers Ceres Games.
The most important part of any RPG is its character creation. Many of us have spent hours trying to create different character builds in Fallout, or assembling that perfect party of six in Icewind Dale or the old Gold Box titles. Realms Beyond is going to offer you a complex character creation tool that gives you all the classic choices you would expect – ability scores, classes, skills, feats – and some unique ideas of our own that allow you to further define your characters and their role in the world.
Advertisement
There is so much about this that seems so familiar. The granular benefits, the numbers that scale well into the double digits, and a vague sense that you might have built your character wrong, given how they’re performing now. Although players can hopefully build one good character out of a party of six or so.
You’ll go through all the same familiar steps to create a character, but the developers have added in a few interesting twists to put their own spin on it. You’ll pick options like your character’s region of the world, or what their knowledge with customs and politics is. There are a bunch of backgrounds as well, these offer you different way to customize your game experience.
Here’s an overview of everything you can expect from the game:
Realms Beyond is a classically inspired fantasy role-playing game with turn-based combat and a party system that allows you to control up to six characters at any one time. Whether you yearn for an open world to explore at your own pace, tactical combat that allows you to plan your moves carefully, or want to lose yourself in the rich fabric of our world, trying to survive and make your mark, Realms Beyond offers endless choices, lands to travel, monster-infested dungeons and a host of storylines to follow. Adapting and responding to the player’s interactions with the world, you will find a depth and richness for your adventures that combines the very best of traditional gameplay with modern-day technologies. The result is a game world that comes alive, brimming with undiscovered stories, content, mysteries and challenges.
- Turn-based tactical combat on a hex grid, featuring many favorite spells, feats and abilities based on rules described in the (3.5e) Revised System Reference Document (SRD) covered by the Open Game License v1.0a (OGL) by Wizards of the Coast, Inc
- Custom-built, isometric graphic engine that combines zoomable 2D and 3D technology to bring to the screen a never-before-seen amount of detail
- A bustling open world, spanning entire continents, replete with believable NPCs, complex cultures, factions, societies and a fascinating history
- Create a party of up to six characters, with customizable appearance, ranging from 7 different races and 9 different classes
- More than one hundred spells, each with unique, stunning visual effects
- Thousands of individual items to use and interact with
- An epic storyline, massive quests, uncounted missions, hordes of monsters and a world that is steeped in lore and mystery
- Create your own adventures, campaigns or even entire worlds using the UrWelt RPG Engine framework
Learn more about Realms Beyond
Realms Beyond is due out in 2020, so keep an eye out folks, and as always, happy adventuring!
