Clash: Artifacts of Chaos – Official FAQ

Here is the collection of answers from the developers to general questions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can the full game be played in first person?

• No, you won’t be able to play the game entirely in first person. The combat is designed to use both perspectives under different circumstances. We’re still developing the mechanics and we’ll share more details in the future.

Co-op? Will There be Full Co-op like in Zeno Clash 2 or it’s just in the Dream Realms?

• The campaign is not full coop because of the way the game story is structured. It would be impossible to do it properly without sacrificing too much of the design.

The “dream realm” as you refer to, is where players get to play together and can customize more their character (a bit what like you would see in a Souls game). However I do want to stress that this part of the game is tied to the campaign and is part of the story (It is not like an extra mode or just a gimmick).

For those who will want to play with friends beating up creatures in coop, it will be possible, but Pseudo’s journey is connected to his relationship with the little bird boy. (Similar to how Kratos has a story with his son in God of War).

Is it a continuation of Zeno Clash story? Do I have to play the two previous games to understand the story?

• It’s a little too early to start giving away bits of the story. There’s definitely ties with the other games, but we won’t get in to any details for now. The story is self-contained, so someone that did not play ZC or ZC2 can also enjoy this game without being previously familiar with the world.

Is it a spinoff?

• More than a spinoff. It’s canon to the series. But it does not take off right after the events of the previous two stories, so it would have been misleading to call it ZC3.

Who is the composer?

• Our one and only Patricio Meneses who has produced every other game we’ve developed!

Who is the writer?

• Jonas Kyratzes. He also worked with us on Sol Seraph and The Eternal Cylinder.

PS5 controller support?

• We’ve yet to start working on console specific features, but I think we’ll try to use the PS5’s capabilities as much as we can.

Why it’s not called Zeno Clash: Artifacts of Chaos?

• When we were thinking of the title we wanted to make sure the game is inviting to newcomers (people who never played the previous two titles, and are unfamiliar with the world). But at the same time we wanted something that our community would naturally relate to. It’s not required to have played the other games to jump in to this one (though people that have played the past ones will probably recognize more stuff from the lore and some other things we won’t be discussing yet). We want to invite more people to experience the world of Zenozoik, and this seemed the right direction for the title.

The subtitle is obviously connected to the story, but for now all I can say is ‘wait and see’.

Will the game be available on GeForce Now?

• It’s super early in the development pipeline to see what kind of support we can give to the game on all the different platforms / features. For now the team is focused on producing the game. Moving forward we’ll see what we can do.

When Zeno Clash 3?

• Clash: AoC is the only game in this universe that we are developing atm. We have to finish this game before we plan what to do next.

If Clash AoC sells well, are there plans for the full ZC sequel?

• We never plan that far ahead our upcoming titles. All our efforts are on making this game as best as we can. Would we want to continue Ghat’s adventure in the future? That’s very hard to say now, but who knows… Many years ago we thought making another ZC game would be too difficult and now here we are.

Can we disable sketchyness of the visuals?

• The visual style is muuuuch more than a filter. The entire rendering of the game was the result of months of work and custom solutions for lighting / materials / etc. (We will definitely make a blog post about it in the future).

However we will likely add options to modify the visuals in different ways and the “sketchyness” will be possible to be toned down / altered. But we’re still early in the project, so our focus is more in other areas of development.

But just reiterating that this isn’t like a “normal” looking game with a filter that makes it look like that.

Not sure how I feel playing as a carrotman instead of Ghat or Rimat.

• I obviously can’t spoil anything yet and we have a long way to go, but I think people will click more with “carrot-man” (hahaha, I laughed at that) than they did with Ghat in the previous games. He is one of the best and most interesting characters that we’ve ever done. It is obviously hard to tell from the short reveal trailer, but give him a chance.

Would be cool if they used active ragdolls blending keyframes and physics, when we bash our opponents in the head lol.

• We’re actually using Unreal Engine’s physical animation system in this game to enhance combat. This wasn’t showcased in the trailer, but physics are playing a big role in our new systems. We’ll show more about this in future updates.

Will the maps be like Zeno Clash 1 in size or like (the Cylinder) in size?

• About the maps sizes, not Zeno Clash 1 and not Eternal Cylinder either. Zeno Clash 1 was completely linear and very small in scale. In this one exploration is important and it is not linear. The Eternal Cylinder is randomly generated worlds that can extend infinitely, so it’s also not analogous. The world has a fixed size.

Is world design similar to how it was in ZC 2?

• No. Clash’s world design is inspired by the Souls games, but everything is visually interconnected. (You don’t teleport in between areas). The world design is a major improvement over the previous games. Exploration and discovery will be much more interesting. The game has much more verticality in level design too.

Is combat inspired by Souls games?

• Combat is new (not ZC1 or ZC2) but brings things back from the previous games. We’re still not prepared to go in-depth with people about the combat (it is still in pre-alpha). But it is shaping up very nicely.

Zeno Clash 1 launched just a couple of months after Demon Souls, and our game did share some ideas with it – so it is kind of natural that we have taken notice of the popularity of From Software titles. We will share more about the similarities at a later time too, but I would say Bloodborne is the From Software game which has captured the most our attention.

Mac/Linux?

• No plans for now.

Why are there humans in Zenozoik?

• Here’s what Carlos had to say back on the old forums:

“The existence of humans among chimeras in Zenozoik is due to the fact that in early times when the chimeras were exiled, groups of people moved into Zenozoik for unremembered reasons. Whether they were against the exile, or if they were there to aid the chimeras, or if they were there to oppress them… it is unknown. Some humans were just left behind, trapped in exile, and also forgot their origins.”

So this dice rolling to determine rules concept. This in theory means every time you play through the game, its different due to the way it works right? Plus this “in Pseudo’s dream” challenge mode makes me wonder if the dice game concept works there too.

• Yes, this would change battles in new and interesting ways, giving the game more variety. The Dice game should work in the dream world too – but we are still early in development, so we will probably refine and test out the mechanic as the game matures.

Level editor?

• No, I don’t see this as a good match for this title, but thanks for asking about it anyways 🙂

DLSS?

• I think we already have DLSS enabled in our current builds, so I assume the answer should be yes, but it is still early to confirm.

VR?

• No plans at the moment. But… who knows…

Any chance of enchanced versions of ZC 1 and 2?

• There are no plans to work on previous titles at this moment.

Port Zeno Clash 1 and 2 to new platforms?

• There are no plans to port Zeno Clash 1 and 2 to any new platforms. the team is completely dedicated to the production of this new game.

Zeno Clash 1 and 2 backwards compatibility for Xbox?

• Featuring Zeno Clash 1 & 2 on the backwards compatibility program has more to do with Microsoft and Atlus than us.

How many characters and dialogues are in the game BTW? I assume its not that much (far less than in RPG games) but more than a few, right?

• Jonas has been working with the Studio since several years now. He’s been collaborating with Edmundo on all the writing for the story, so he is a major contributor to the project.

The game is very story-focused, and it’s not comparable to an RPG, but there’s a lot more characters than those that showed up in the trailer. Most of the characters from the world play an important part. I can’t say how many there are (no spoilers), but the story has a lot of unique developments and twists. Anyone looking for some great narrative, character development, and uniqueness, should really enjoy the journey.

So it seems the game is mainly action adventure, right? You explore the world consisting of several maps with intricate interconnected paths.

Aside from hand-to-hand combat and (probably) mace (club) combat are there also blades to fight with? Because it seems that main hero has also some blade with him.

Aside from combat there some light puzzles in the world? Or light platforming? And few friendly NPCs to talk to?

• Yes, this is action-adventure for the most part. The world is seamlessly interconnected with intricate paths, that spread over several different themes.

We have several weapons, but in the fiction of our world, any weapons that have blades or pointy things (like swords or spikes), are outlawed, because even if the strongest prevail, killing is generally disapproved.

I would say that puzzles in the world are not really a thing, but our new mechanic; ‘the Ritual’, is an important part of the experience, which features a board-like trial where players must take strategic choices. We’ll dive deeper into this mechanic in a future update.

Light platforming and friendly NPCs; yes.

Does this Ritual takes place before every combat? Or only some encounters?

• The ritual can only be used against “intelligent” creatures (not animals for example), and it’s up to you if you use it or not, though some NPCs will force it upon you (but only on certain occasions). The Ritual will also have as few optional “layers” of complexity. This way players who are invested in it can spend more time developing strategies, and those who want to bypass it can take a much quicker route. More info coming eventually. 🙂

Does this mean no more guns? Also no killing…. that felt like a big part of last 2 games, something tells me this game takes place before ZC1 and ZC2?

• This game does not feature guns. Though we do have ‘projectile attacks’ that work in other ways.

Killing is not something that occurs frequently in our world, just like in the previous games. That’s correct.

And I can’t say anything about the timeline at this point No spoilers!

Looks great, so hyped for this game. I just hope you keep some of the larger, more open level design too. Some of the map designs in Zeno Clash 2 (The Pink Tower, Rath-Bird Fields, etc.) were awe-inspiring.

• Those levels were awe-inspiring but more because of the vistas than the actual exploration. The Rath-Bird Fields was just too empty, and the Pink Tower’s playable terrain (the area that could be navigated through) was not all that big.

Clash has plenty areas with huge vistas, and most of them are not simple decorative backdrops – you can get to most areas you can see at a distance. Not all of course, but there are parts of the game that will be pretty impressive in this regard. We’re actually having to work a lot on optimization because we don’t have loading of levels – the player navigates through the whole game with no loading screens – and that is a first for the series.

Is this going to be a $60 game?

• We’re not ready to reveal pricing, but you shouldn’t expect a triple-A price tag (that’s too much). But it’s still a full fledged standalone game, just in case.

I had a dream last night about the options menu in Clash: Artifacts of Chaos. In the dream, there was a toggle checkbox that lets you turn off the comic book outlines around everything. I felt relief when I saw it.

• We will allow people to tweak the settings of the new render style, but the game is being developed entirely on the basis of this post-process, so there wouldn’t be a “fallback” option to feature. This is just the aesthetic direction that we chose (which was originally intended for Zeno Clash 2) and is based off 80’s fantasy illustrations which are a big drive of the source material.

Is this one on Source Engine too? What engine are you using for the game?

• This one is built on Unreal Engine 4. We stopped using Source after Zeno Clash was released maaaaany years ago. Good memories. Miss the hammer editor.

Will Fathermother be mentioned at all in this game?

• The events of this game do not run in parallel with those that occurred in Zeno Clash, so we won’t necessarily meet the same characters. The story that plays out introduces brand new characters to the series.

No ranged guns at all?

• There are projectile attacks and projectile counter mechanics, but this game does not feature the ranged weapons from Zeno Clash.

Character customization

The protagonist appears to be somewhat patchwork, is there a purpose?

• I’m not sure what you mean by ‘patchwork’. Maybe it’s my english.

So about customization: Yes and no. Pseudo is like Kratos in GoW: he can put on all types of armors and garments which will make him look different and they serve different purposes. You can also find accessories for the boy (little own companion). But on the other end you have your online avatar (the way Pseudo sees himself in his dreams). This online character can be customized much more, where entire body parts can be replaced with different “piece sets” that you find during your adventure. So whenever you encounter a character in multiplayer it’s likely he will look different to you.

I wonder what will happen if players wont customize their avatars. It will be real psycho nightmare with hundreds of Pseudos walking around and talking to you!

• The body parts have stats associated, so it wouldn’t make much sense to keep running around in what we call internally ‘armor zero’ (unless you want more of a challenge). But yeah, it would be curious to run in to other characters that look like you!