At one point during my demo at Gamescom, Biomutant’s furry little protagonist started beating up the heart of one of its 5 big bosses from inside its chest cavity. As the little fella pummelled away, accompanied by Batman-esque ‘Pows!’, Biomutant solidified the delightful absurdity the team at Experiment 101 is going for.
The 20-odd minute demo of Biomutant was designed to show off its playful open world. Our raccoon-like protagonist began his journey in a radioactive wasteland; one of four different environments that he or she can start off in. Immediately, we spot a ‘fluff hulk’, an accurately-named monster being attacked by one of Biomutant’s six tribes for its furry wool and its ability to eat radioactive berries and poop them into coffee.Our furry guy attacks with three equipped weapons out of Biomutant’s half a million varieties, building up his combo meter as he does so. Combat evokes the Arkham series: chained free-flowing attacks build up your combo meter, and enemies signal their attacks in order to make countering easier. “It’s like a combo between Arkham, Devil May Cry, and Ratchet and Clank,” says Biomutant’s creative director Stefan Ljungqvist. “So it's all about free flow. You can interrupt things at any time.”The difference lies in Biomutant’s ‘super wushu’ ability, a limit break type attack frenzy that you can unleash once your combat meter hits maximum. In this instance, we unleash our super wushu with a slashing weapon, but each super wushu will look different depending on your equipped weapon. Once we’d defeated the fluff hulk we picked up a power glove called a clonk, which allowed us to grab enemies and bowl them into other enemies. Of course, it, too, has its own super wushu attack.With the variety of weapons available, combat in Biomutant is ever-evolving. There are more than half a million gun combos, and more for melee. On top of that, all these weapons are customizable - you can change the handle, the blade, and add modules. There are also kung fu moves and ancient relics passed down from tribe masters, like old shooting guns and throwing stars, which I’m promised will offer you even crazier moves.
As we move through an abandoned subway station - via a mucus bubble, which can also be used to suck in enemies and spit them out - we discover one of Biomutant’s main characters, Gizmo the Grease Monkey. Biomutant will eschew a linear story, Ljungqvist tells me, in favor of discovering these characters throughout the world. “These characters, they start giving you missions in a circular expanding pattern around their area. You don't have to meet all of them to complete the game, but it can be a really good thing because they usually build things for you that are kind of special.”Gizmo gives us access to a mech suit, which we use to traverse a low-oxygen area called The Dead Zone. The mech suit is powered by a bunch of critters called ‘squips,’ which can also be launched to distract enemies, such as the aforementioned big boss, a World Eater, which is chowing down on the root of BioMutant’s Tree of Life. These squips are also customizable, to have different effects on different enemy types. There’s a lot going on.
Our demo ends with our protagonist being swallowed by the World Eater, where he punches its heart after slipping down its throat. The World Eater puts up a fight - it uses a power pole as a weapon, which I’m told is contextual depending on its environment - but ultimately the heart-beating was too much. Our little furry guy is vomited up, victorious. You can choose not to fight The World Eater, and bring the earth closer to destruction - or fight all five and up your odds of saving it.
“So we have a completely open end of the game,” says Ljungqvist. It's about twenty-seven different layers that are put together to create your ending. So, if you want to, you can defeat one of these five and that will increase the chance of world survival by 20%, but you don't have to do that. You can make an active choice to not do it. Hence, make sure that the world is actually destroyed.”It’s an intriguing prospect in a game with a strong sense of self. There’s still a way to go until we’ll get our hands on Biomutant - it has a release window of Summer ‘19 - but it deserves to be on your radar.
“Good weird,” says Ljungqvist. “That’s our mantra.” Lucy O'Brien is Games & Entertainment Editor at IGN’s Sydney office. Follow her on Twitter.