Xbox 360’s Too Human: Rewards and Customization
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008
Silicon Knights’ Too Human revels in rewarding you at every conceivable turn. Each minute of play brings you tangibly closer to your next level and loot drops nearly without reprieve from every crate, obelisk, and enemy you vanquish.
If the rewards are plentiful, the customization options in Too Human are equally outstanding. No character looks or plays quite the same. From your armor and weapons of choice all the way to the Runes and Charms you bear and even the color of your gear, your Baldur is very much your own.
There’s really only one question. What kind of Baldur will you be?
Skill Tree - While your choice of class helps define how you approach the game, each class has their own unique skill tree to help you further specialize your skill set.
For example, one side of the Bio Engineer skill tree focuses on one-handed weapons, group-heals and a Battle Cry that wipes out negative effects, increases resistances, and amps up your basic offensive stats. Meanwhile, the other side of the tree relies more on crowd control, using skills like Skuld’s Embrace, which grants you a chance to turn enemies against one another, and Wrack of the Lightning Mine, disabling enemies for a short duration.
Whatever the class, you must choose among three distinct branches of your skill tree. But Too Human doesn’t permanently lock you into that path. You can choose to “respec” your skill tree at any time for what amounts to a fairly modest cost. For example, at level 12 I have 30,675 Bounty, and the cost for reapplying my skill points is just 1,000 Bounty.
There’s also opportunity to access a second skill tree, but discussing that further would spoil part of the story, so I’ll let that be.
Runes - Nearly every weapon or piece of armor you discover has its own unique characteristics, but many also contain empty Rune slots for further customization. The Runes themselves offer powers as varied as the game’s classes, skill trees, and mechanics. Some focus on basic weapon damage while others may increase one of your attributes (say, adding 10% to dexterity), reduce the cooldown on your abilities, or extend the length of time you can juggle an enemy, to name just a few.
For those of you that fear clashing colors, you can also buy color-based Runes to mix and match your armor’s color scheme to fit your own sense of Aesir fashion.
Charms - Both more potent and rare than Runes, Charms require more than just collecting to make use of their power. For example, the Rupturing Influence Charm introduces a chance to create a small explosion during battle. To use it though, you need to first kill three hundred enemies as well as apply three different Rune types to power the Charm.
Blueprints - Early on, your outfit will consist of a hodge-podge of gear from a mishmash of sources, but for the truly epic armor sets and legendary weapons, you must turn to Blueprints. Though there’s always a chance you’ll uncover a rare Blueprint off an ordinary monster, you’re more apt to discover these more powerful items from bosses, larger monsters, or even secret rooms.
Just finding the Blueprint isn’t enough. They require hefty Bounty deposits in order to craft and use them, so you must carefully consider the investment versus reward.
Midgard Wares - Your best bet for tracking down exceptional items may be on the battlefield, but the Aesir of Midgard can outfit you with armor, weapons, runes, and even special cybernetic implants. Don’t discount these vendors even later in the game. You might be surprised at what items they have for sale.
Trade Time - While you can Salvage any item you choose to for Bounty, don’t forget that you can trade items online when playing cooperatively on Xbox LIVE®. You’ll almost certainly find a better value for rarer items bartering with the community than if you simply Salvaged them. This is particularly true of class-specific items and Blueprints, so don’t go selling off that rare purple gear just to make room in your inventory.
The sheer breadth of options for customizing Baldur’s powers and appearance is staggering, and it’s one of the game’s most remarkable accomplishments. Each piece of armor and every weapon are imbued with artistic beauty firmly rooted in the game’s Nordic style. And each item is appropriately balanced, requiring you to weigh each item’s various powers and statistics in order to outfit Baldur with the best gear that fits your chosen play style.
Source: Xbox | Read other Xbox 360 news.
