Ryse: Son of Rome was one of the many Xbox One exclusive games shown at E3 this year, and promises gamers the chance to fight in epic battles set in the time of the Roman Empire. While some gamers thought that the game's combat consisted mainly of Quick Time Events, design director PJ Estevez explained to Gamereactor that the combat is much more complicated than that:
"We have this concept we call mashing to mastery. The idea is that anyone can play it and they can mash the buttons and fight, but if you get the right timing you're able to actually master it. Master the reaction you get out of the AI. You worked on the AI, you get them to this executable state and you execute them and we're like: "Why does it have to stop there?" "Why do I have to stop and watch this movie play out?". Because we've all played games that have executions and like 30 minutes into them you're like "Really, I smash this guys head, then I stab then I kick him." So we're like, well, let's continue the flow, let's make it open up a window and let's give guys who want to spend time learning it more of a reward bonus."
Estevez also explained that, while the player is fighting these one on one battles with enemies, there will also be large portions of the games that play out with a more tactical feel as the player leads troops through battles:
"In normal third person action game you have mostly lone wolf stuff, and so with Ryse you will have some lone wolf stuff, but it's actually about being with your brothers, right, about being part of the legion. You kind of become this battlefield general over the course of the game. You can kind of extrapolate what a guy needs to go through to eventually become a general."
Ryse does not have a release date as of yet for the Xbox One.