The ancient Greeks were famous for introducing the West to democracy, togas, and pretty much civilization as we know it. But we often forget that they also gave us some of the most testosterone-fueled adventures ever written. Your teacher called them classics. But with more deaths, double-crosses and violent acts of vengeance per page than the entire script for The Sopranos, we have trouble grouping these epic tales with the likes of Chaucer and your boring professors.
Enter Rise of the Argonauts, a promising action/RPG loosely based on the myth of Jason and the Argonauts. As the King of Iolcus, Jason was living a life of luxury. He had wealth, power and a lifetime of happiness that he could look forward to enjoying with his lovely fiancee. But before you know it, Jason’s world comes crashing down around him. Soon, Jason becomes an outcast, his beautiful bride-to-be is murdered, and he finds himself on an epic quest to find the Golden Fleece so he can bring her back to life. Along the way, Jason will recruit and fight alongside the usual suspects like Hercules, Achilles and Atalanta.
Above: Jason may not be a Spartan. But with an arsenal of brutal finishing moves he can spill buckets of blood just like King Leonidas
It’s not the first game to turn to Greek classics for its premise, but developer, Liquid Entertainment wants Rise of the Argonauts to go down in history as the first “true action/RPG.” “[Rise of the Argonauts] is not going to be just an action game with some leveling mechanics thrown in or an RPG with some crappy real-time combat,” insists Liquid Entertainment’s Charley Price.
We highly doubt that Rise of the Argonauts will revolutionize the action/RPG genre, but the game is making some interesting changes to the norm. On the RPG front, Rise of the Argonauts will try to steer clear of the sorts of features and conventions that tend to dilute the role-playing experience. “We discarded a lot of the baggage that really bogs down RPGs. Things like reams and reams of statistics that abstract out your character into a bunch of numbers on a spreadsheet - those are all moments that take you out of the experience and remind you that under the hood, it’s really just a bunch of zeros and ones,” explains Price.
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