New RPG to offer medieval freedom

Ukrainian developer Rostok-Games has announced it is developing a role-playing game with the working title Beltion: Beyond Ritual. The game will be exclusive to the PC, but no release date has yet been specified.

Beltion: Beyond Ritual will be set in a world that combines elements of traditional fantasy with some historical ideas taken from medieval Europe, and players will see the action from the third-person viewpoint.

Rostok has described the game as "nonlinear," meaning that players have a degree of freedom to complete quests in an order of their choosing, and the opportunity to partake in plenty of side activities, as well.

The game's protagonist is a necromancer-priest whose aim is to find the lost formula of a forgotten ritual to rid himself of a curse. During the course of the game, which the developer says will take around 60 hours to complete, the player will be able to visit a variety of locations across the Beltion continent, including cities, forests, mountains, caves, and mazes.

There will be nearly 40 different types of weapons in the game and a combat system that combines melee and ranged fighting with the use of magic spells, creature summons, and stealth abilities, such as the setting of traps. However, diplomacy will sometimes achieve more with some characters than combat, and players will be able to communicate with the world's inhabitants, as well as trade with some of them.

More information on the game can be found on the Rostok-Games Web site.