The console release of the game follows the PC version having left Early Access back in February. For context, Wrath: Aeon of Ruin originally hit PC as an Early Access title all the way back in November 2019.

Wrath: Aeon of Ruin‘s 1.0 release from February brought with it a host of new content over its original Early Access release, including new weapons, enemies, as well as a full story that players can experience.

Players in Wrath: Aeon of Ruin are put in the shoes of the Outlander. As the player follows the guidance of the Shepherd of Wayward Souls, they will be thrown into a host of different levels where they take on monsters, and ultimately face off against the Guardians of the Old World.

Wrath: Aeon of Ruin is unabashedly influenced by classic shooter Quake, and was developed using much of the same technology as the seminal shooter by id Software. For more details, check out our review.

Where titles in the genre have been a hotbed for innovation and experimentation (like Witchfire taking a page out of extraction shooters), Wrath: Aeon of Ruin follows a similar path in melding ideas from other modern genres with its old-school shooter foundations. Along with Quake, the most direct point of comparison for Wrath: Aeon of Ruin comes from FromSoftware’s Dark Souls franchise.

"Several of the game’s levels also pay quite a bit of homage to its inspirations"

Before we get to talking about gameplay, it’s important to talk about just how well Wrath: Aeon of Ruin nails its visuals. Quite clearly inspired by horror shooter games like the original Quake, Wrath: Aeon of Ruin features a heavy emphasis on dark cavernous levels with sharp contrast offered up by environmental lighting. For example, some of the upper levels of the map will have gigantic glowing crystals in its walls offering up much of the lighting in the stage, and the sewers will similarly feature bio-luminescence for its moody atmosphere. This combination of lo-fi visuals along with more modern visual techniques leads to a game where the atmosphere is spot on.

Several of the game’s levels also pay quite a bit of homage to its inspirations by effortlessly mimicking their visual designs while at the same time building on them. A big example of this is some of the game’s early levels walking a fine line between old-school medieval dark fantasy aesthetics, and some of its later levels feeling like they would be right at home as levels you would play through in Quake 2. Of course, Wrath: Aeon of Ruin doesn’t simply copy the styles of these older titles; it builds on them by making use of modern techniques that make impressive use of lighting, as well as more modern hardware and software allowing for enemy numbers that just wouldn’t have been possible back in the day. The fact that all of this was achieved while the game uses the modified Quake engine makes things even more impressive.

"The main weapons in the game aren’t exactly the most groundbreaking weapons out there"

When it comes to the core gameplay, the most unique aspect of Wrath: Aeon of Ruin is its save system. Seemingly inspired by Dark Souls, the save system needs you to either use up an item you find in limited quantities—the Soul Tethers—or find specific save spots that also heal you up, acting like the Souls franchise’s bonfires. This save system does quite a bit of heavy lifting when it comes to raising the stakes of just about any fight you might get into, since you’ll find yourself constantly wondering whether it’s a good idea to use one of your precious Soul Tethers. All of this is further compounded by the combat encounters in Wrath: Aeon of Ruin being surprisingly lethal.

While the enemies in Wrath: Aeon of Ruin don’t tend to be particularly smart, you won’t be seeing them use flanking tactic. For example, they do manage to pack quite a punch, and this includes even earlier enemies like the bog standard zombie can trap you into a corner and whittle your health down at alarming speeds. The game also has a tendency to throw an immense number of enemies at you, ratcheting up the tension quite considerably. Thankfully, the arsenal in Wrath: Aeon of Ruin is definitely up to the challenge of letting you fight your way through hordes of monsters.

While the main weapons in the game aren’t exactly the most groundbreaking weapons out there, most of them tend to follow the basic shooter formula of offering up a melee weapon, and then slowly escalating the firepower with a shotgun, the Fang Spitter (assault rifle), the Retcher (grenade launcher), and the Slag Cannon (rocket launcher). There are some takes on classic Quake weaponry in the game as well, like the Crystallizer, which essentially acts as a laser beam-styled weapon, and the Lance, which is basically this game’s take on the railgun. The most interesting weapon in the whole game, the Mace, essentially lets you absorb enemy souls that can then be used to power up future attacks. Nonee of the weapons feel particularly unique but on the other hand, they still fill out your arsenal quite well, giving you a wide range of options for any combat scenario you might encounter.

The uniqueness in offensive and defensive capabilities in Wrath: Aeon of Ruin come from the plethora of artifacts you’ll find throughout the game’s levels. These artifacts are essentially consumables that give you a unique offensive or defensive ability for a short time. These abilities range from simple things, like letting you get health off enemies you attack, or a stationary shield that lets you catch your breath in the midst of an epic firefight, to more interesting abilities which basically turns enemies against each other.

The crowning glory of Wrath: Aeon of Ruin is quite easily its level design. Made by developers that have experience in creating maps and mods for the original Quake, the level design in Wrath: Aeon of Ruin is where some of its most interesting ideas lie. Eschewing realistic and naturalistic level design, Wrath: Aeon of Ruin instead harkens back to shooters of old where the levels and zones didn’t need to make any sense when it comes to geography, instead focusing purely on providing players with challenging encounters and fun exploration. The game’s levels also make incredible use of vertical space, and will see you constantly hopping around from snow-covered ruins to complex underwater sewer systems filled with demons.

"The level design in Wrath: Aeon of Ruin is where some of its most interesting ideas lie."

The game also expects you to be hopping in and out of levels as you explore them, tapping into some of the ideas of the seminal Demon’s Souls. You’ll often find yourself locked out of a certain place, needing instead to go back to the hub world and explore a different level until you find the right key. While this has the potential to get overwhelming and complicated, the tight focus of the game’s various levels often ensured that I never really had the time to stop and contemplate what exactly I’m doing. I was too busy trying to kill things and stay alive, after all.

Wrath: Aeon of Ruin also keeps up with boomer shooter tradition by not really offering much in the way of a story. All you do is go around killing things, rinse and repeat. You’re not going to get any deep character-focused introspection here, and you won’t really care. You’ll be too busy taking down monsters, throwing potions, dying a lot, and going back for more.

Wrath: Aeon of Ruin wears its inspirations on its sleeves. Its use of old software technology to do incredible things is especially impressive, and the pedigree of the game’s level designers is constantly at full display. The game also has a well-rounded arsenal of weapons that, while far from unique, never feel dull to use. All of this is wrapped up in a boomer shooter that manages to look surprisingly unique in this day and age by tapping into classical art styles with its own flair.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Wrath: Aeon of Ruin is available on PC, and as a full title, it now features a host of new content over its early access period, including 3 new weapons, 4 new enemies, and other new content, including a fully implemented story that players can experience.

Players are put into the shoes of the Outlander in The World World. Following the guidance of the Shepherd of Wayward Souls, players are then thrust into a host of different levels where they must destroy monsters, and eventually face the remaining Guardians of the Old World.

A big influence on Wrath: Aeon of Ruin is classic shooter Quake. Built using much of the same technology as the seminal id Software shooter, Wrath: Aeon of Ruin puts its own spin on the boomer shooter formula by also making use of modern visual and gameplay techniques to enhance its presentation.

"Wrath was conceived in late 2013, and there was no Ion Maiden, Dusk, or Amid Eevil, or even DOOM 2016 then – just the classics like DOOM, Quake, Blood, Duke Nukem, etc. I love those games and wanted to see one like that in the 21st century. These games are always described as being “90s”, but to me they’re timeless."

Wrath: Aeon of Ruin is touting an FPS that’s been made in the vein of the likes of DOOM and Duke Nukem– what is it about those classic shooters that drew you to making a game that harkened back to them?

There are a number of reasons, but I think the main ones are that those games themselves have a certain magic and purity that I was seeing less and less of in other games at the time. Wrath was conceived in late 2013, and there was no Ion Maiden, Dusk, or Amid Eevil, or even DOOM 2016 then – just the classics like DOOM, Quake, Blood, Duke Nukem, etc. I love those games and wanted to see one like that in the 21st century. These games are always described as being “90s”, but to me they’re timeless.

Lore and narrative seem to be quite important in Wrath: Aeon of Ruin– is that an accurate assertion? How much work would you say you’ve put in on those particular elements?

Lore and narrative is very important, but maybe not in the way you would think. At its core, Wrath is not a story-driven game; it’s combat and exploration-driven. This is not to say the story is just a “throwaway” with little attention paid to it, quite the opposite, really. The goal is to convey a narrative that is interesting and compelling, but in the most succinct way possible. The last thing we want to do is burden the player with a bunch of lengthy exposition.

There is some explicit exposition, but we tell much of the story through the environment and various readables therein with things like manuscripts, engravings, murals, etc. We want the world to feel massive, rich, dense and mysterious. Tolkien was a master at deftly creating vast worlds simply by referencing a past event, place or thing, almost in passing. Though brief, mentioning these things captivates the mind, which then fills in the gaps of information to create a world that is far more interesting and personal than something that could be created by paragraphs upon paragraphs of authored text.

Can you speak to us a bit about the artifacts and how they function in terms of gameplay?

The Artifacts are a strategic complement to the players offensive arsenal. They’re essentially an improved version of the consumable item systems found in games like Duke Nukem 3D, Heretic, and Hexen. We wanted consumable items that are easier to access, more clear in their function and more integrated into gameplay. For example, rather than a consumable medkit (not to be confused with regular health pickups) that gives you a fixed number of hit points, he have the “Life Siphon”, which gives you health for each enemy you kill while it’s active.

We have some risk/reward items like the “Cruel Aegis”, which sets your health to 10, but gives you momentary invincibility in return. This can come in handy in the right situation. Other Artifacts such as the “Trinket of Respite” slows the world around you, “Betrayer’s Shroud” grants invisibility, and “Drowner’s Apparatus” allows you to breathe underwater. We currently have 10 artifacts, each with its own purpose.

"We want the world to feel massive, rich, dense and mysterious. Tolkien was a master at deftly creating vast worlds simply by referencing a past event, place or thing, almost in passing. Though brief, mentioning these things captivates the mind, which then fills in the gaps of information to create a world that is far more interesting and personal than something that could be created by paragraphs upon paragraphs of authored text."

Can you talk about the weapons and the variety they exhibit?

We have a number of things we want to achieve with the weapons, such as making each one useful throughout the length of the game, more effective in various encounters, and visually interesting. In many classic shooters, the melee is used to kill the first two or three enemies then is never used again. The melee in Wrath, the Ruination Blade, is a more effective weapon in terms of damage, but is also a mobility tool that only becomes more and more important as the game progresses. In order to make each weapon more capable in a given encounter, we gave all weapons an alternate fire.

The shotgun, for example, has a primary fire that you would expect, but the secondary fire, a blast of ricocheting shrapnel, might be a better choice in some situations. The weapons we’ve shown so far are a variation of the classic suite of guns, but we try to give each one a little visual tweak to make things more interesting. Our machine gun, the Fang Spitter, doesn’t fire rounds, but the fangs of fallen enemies. The Retcher, our version of the grenade launcher, lobs cysts of noxious fluid rather than grenades.

Wrath: Aeon of Ruin is promising interconnected and layered level design- is it full on metroidvania, or instead something that has elements of that?

Wrath isn’t full-on metroidvania, but leans heavily on some core elements, namely exploration and discovery of diverse, interesting and interconnected worlds. The “gear gaming” aspect, that is the upgrading of your skills or gear to access previously unreachable places or challenges, is a bit different because the player doesn’t have a skill tree or upgradable gear.

You can go back to other words to access places you couldn’t previously, but this is a bit more rare and is achieved with artifacts, weapons, flipped switches and the like. This is something we’re being careful with. For example, Hexen is a good game, but it had a lot of of confusing backtracking that became rather tedious. We’re going for quality over quantity in this regard.

As an extension to the previous question, why did you decide to focus on having interconnected level design, seeing as that isn’t something we see too often in first person shooters?

It’s just more interesting and rewarding when done correctly. There was a period of time where we abandoned this plan and opted for a linear set of levels, but the more open, non-linear approach works so well with the theme, scale and mechanics of the game that we ended up going back to it.

It seems you’re focused on fostering a strong modding community around Wrath when it launches- how important do you think something like that is for your game- or any game?

I think it’s immensely important, and not just for Wrath, but any game that can pull it off. Imagine having access to free, endless content for your favorite game… that’s a huge plus. Many modern games, like DOOM 2016, aren’t really able to have such a strong modding foundation because the tech, in addition to being closed source, just requires so much more time and experience to use.

Older tech has the advantage of being more accessible, allowing more people to just be creative and make cool stuff. The DOOM, Quake, and Duke Nukem communities are still very much active and produce tons of top-tier content regularly. Without these communities Wrath wouldn’t exist. One of the things I’m most looking forward to is all the cool stuff that will spawn from the Wrath modding scene.

"Wrath isn’t full-on metroidvania, but leans heavily on some core elements, namely exploration and discovery of diverse, interesting and interconnected worlds."

Why did you decide to go with the idea of having the ability to save being consumable a consumable resource?

In my view, a traditional save system is somewhat flawed. Saving is a powerful mechanic that has a deep effect on the game itself. Strangely, the player doesn’t interact with this mechanic the same way they would others. It is often the case, that in order to save, you must leave the game, even for a moment, to access a save menu. You are pulling your mind out of the game world and into an interface for a piece of software, which you then use to influence the world you were just in.

This disconnect between the action and the effect, along with save-scumming, is what the Soul Tether and Shrine system remedies; saving is now tied into the game both mechanically and thematically. Soul Tethers still allow for player agency and saving whenever needed, but make it more difficult to abuse in addition to adding an element of strategy. Shrines, which are static checkpoints that must be deliberately activated by the player, offer a save fallback as well as an intermediate goal when exploring the world.

Do you have any plans laid out for post-launch support for the game?

Absolutely! Besides full Steam Workshop support for Mods and Maps (which we highly encourage), we also have a range of post-launch content planned for the game. Stay tuned for more news soon!

What resolution and frame rate does the game run on the Switch in handheld and docked mode?

Right now, we’re running at an average 60fps, which we intend to stick to. Both docked and in handheld mode.

Will the game will feature Xbox One X and PS4 Pro-specific enhancements? What can players expect if they are playing the game on the enhanced systems? Is 4K/60fps on the cards?

The game is already running blazing fast, and we do intend on supporting native 4k, 60fps on both Xbox One X and PS4 Pro.

From a development perspective, how do you find the Xbox One X to be and how do you compare it with the PS4 Pro?

From a development perspective, PS4 is a bit more comfortable to work with, due to its development environment. However, the Xbox One X is much more powerful. For Wrath, this allows us to have a realistic aim for native 4k, 60fps for both consoles.

"The game is already running blazing fast, and we do intend on supporting native 4k, 60fps on both Xbox One X and PS4 Pro."

How is the game running on the original Xbox One and PS4, frame rate and resolution wise?

Currently, blazing fast. As mentioned previously, we aim for 60fps, native 1080p on both platforms.

Next gen is coming sooner or later. From a development perspective, what is your biggest expectation from PS5 and Xbox Scarlett?

With each generation of platforms, the development environment has come closer to PC standards, which benefits all developers. We expect the next generation of consoles to be easier to develop for, alongside a much needed overall boost in performance. The current generation is already fast, but GPU, Memory and CPU technology have come a long way since the current generation of consoles was introduced, which will hopefully give us a lot of new opportunities with the next generation.

What is your take on Sony’s reluctant policy on cross-play with Xbox and Nintendo?

We support the idea of everyone being able to play together, cross platform, and were very disappointed when Sony decided to be the only platform without cross-play functionality. Luckily they have recently changed their policy in regards to cross-play, which makes us hopeful for a better collaboration between all 3 major platforms.

What is your take on the ongoing drama of loot boxes and microtransactions?

We’ve always taken a stance against loot boxes and micro transactions. Both go directly against everything we stand for in terms of games. Our main focus has always been about great games, first and foremost. We really dislike the current trend of splitting games into 10 different purchase options, micro transactions, DLC, loot boxes etc. It’s predatory behaviour against the consumers, who ultimately end up being the losers.

Do you have any plans to launch on Stadia?

We have no Stadia launch plans at this moment.

"We support the idea of everyone being able to play together, cross platform, and were very disappointed when Sony decided to be the only platform without cross-play functionality. Luckily they have recently changed their policy in regards to cross-play, which makes us hopeful for a better collaboration between all 3 major platforms."

Do you think Google’s Stadia has a future specially given the infrastructural issues?

It’s hard to say. At this moment, no. In order for any platform to exist and become successful, the basic requirements for it to operate flawlessly has to be available at every household. With current consoles, electric power and a TV is the only requirement for you to get the flawless experience. Until every household has a gigabit fiber connection by default (expect that to take at least 20+ years from now), a network/internet based gaming solution won’t be a success. The alternative (a regular console), is simply a better and faster solution for the average consumer.

What are your thoughts on Stadia’s specs?

We don’t see Stadia being relevant at this point, so we have no thoughts on the specs.

Do you expect PS5 and next Xbox to be as powerful as Stadia in terms of specs?

Yes, by far.

Google’s ambitions with their streaming service Stadia are admirable, but there are many who’ve been quite skeptical of whether it has the tools to achieve what Google aspires for. Some think that it might be better off appealing to the mass market than if it were to try and encroach on the console market’s territory, while others, like Microsoft – who will be its direct competitors with their own xCloud – feel Stadia will lack the content to drive the kind of engagement Google will want to see.

Frederik Schreiber, vice president of 3D Realms – who’re currently working on retro old school first person shooter Wrath: Aeon of Ruin – falls in the camp of skeptics as well. We recently interviewed the developer about their upcoming shooter, and eventually got to talking about Stadia. As per Schreiber, 3D Realms have no plans to launch their title on Stadia at the moment- when asked about whether he feels Stadia will prove to be a success, or if things such as infrastructural issues will hold it back, Schreiber said that we’re a long, long ways off from being at a stage where the industry can successfully offer streaming-only options as viable and widespread gaming options.

“It’s hard to say,” Schreiber told GamingBolt when asked about whether Stadia will be able to overcome any infrastructural issues. “At this moment, no. In order for any platform to exist and become successful, the basic requirements for it to operate flawlessly has to be available at every household.”

“With current consoles, electric power and a TV is the only requirement for you to get the flawless experience,” he continued. “Until every household has a gigabit fiber connection by default (expect that to take at least 20+ years from now), a network/internet based gaming solution won’t be a success. The alternative (a regular console), is simply a better and faster solution for the average consumer.”

In the same interview, Schreiber also said that he sees the PS5 and the next Xbox being far more powerful in terms of specs than Stadia. Read more on that through here.

3D Realms’ Wrath: Aeon of Ruin launches on PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch later this year. Our full interview with Schreiber will be going live soon, so stay tuned.