Cyanide and Nacon have announced Styx: Blades Of Greed, the third in a trilogy of goblin stealth games known for puke-based mechanics and many a snarky note-to-self. I never completed the previous Styx: Master Of Shadows or Styx: Shards Of Darkness, and if I’m honest, I fear Cyanide’s impish infiltrator is doomed to forever butt his smirking, warty head against the 6/10 glass ceiling, with Thief’s Garrett flashing V-signs on the other side.
Still, I have a certain respect for the series. There aren’t many third-person sneakers like this any more, still fewer that have successfully gotten away with a protagonist who sounds like a chaddy Sam Fisher and looks like he should be cleaning toilets in Moria. So a quiet hip-hooray, then, for Blades Of Greed, which is out later in 2025. Here’s a trailer.
What’s the Green Plague up to in this one, then? The usual, from the looks of it: clambering up massive citadels, shivving or bamboozling their guards, cracking the bad kind of bad joke, making away with the treasure. You can still sick up a clone of yourself and turn invisible using Amber, but you also get powers derived from a new energy source, Quartz – these include mind control and time manipulation.
The story is about stealing Quartz from the human Inquisition, and takes you via airship to three large environments – “The Wall, which marks the boundary of the human world; the lush orc village of Turquoise Dawn; and the Ruins of the elven capital, Akenash”. New areas become available within those sandboxes via “Metroidvania-style” tool-gating. You’ll also get to craft weapons and potions before undertaking each heist.
The setting has always been Styx’s big draw for me. All that cobbled-together, piled-up masonry, buttressed by some respectable grimdark lore. I share Alec Meer’s (RPS in peace) distaste for the character’s internal monologue, however. “Clearly, a lot of money and skill has gone into making Shards Of Darkness, which only makes the fact that you have to battle past this woeful characterisation to get to the strong stealth meat below all the more tragic,” he wrote of the most recent Styx outing.
Re-reading that review, I’m struck by the mention of rampant fourth-wall-breaking, which I don’t remember being quite so abundant in Master Of Shadows. Hopefully they’ve eased off on it in Blades Of Greed. Find out more on Steam.