I hope you are having a good day. I have some bad news to share. After our hiatus, we had a discussion between us about the future of Active Quest. While we love the show and each other still, we’ve come to a decision to put Active Quest on an indefinite hold for the time being. Now that all three of us have jobs in the video game industry, we now have significantly less time to put into the podcast. We wanted to improve it, but we don’t have the time, nor the resources for Active Quest to prosper. We will be recording one last show to reflect on the podcast, the games we’ve played, and our friendship.
As an editor, I’ve poured in hours upon hours of work into a show that barely anyone was listening to, and week by week, it became disheartening to see the lack of response from listeners since the pandemic began. Some of you have been dedicated, listening week to week, and we truly appreciate you joining this journey with us. It’s been fun, but it’s time to bow out for the time being. We may come back but don’t expect us for a while.
We’ll be all doing our own separate projects, so follow us @JosephYaden, @itsjerkjersh, and @PenwellWrites. Thanks so much for listening to us over the years. May Xbox Game Pass forever be praised and may Joseph always hate Sonic with every fiber of his being.
Rate us on iTunes and Podcast Addict so we can continue to reach people, attract cool guests, and get more review codes to provide coverage to you all and more. Reviews are so helpful for discovery and opening doors in the industry for us!
In this episode, Joseph Yaden, Axl Bosso, Steve Vegvari, and Jared Eden give their impressions of the new action RPG, Mortal Shell. It’s a fantastic game that newcomers might gravitate towards.
Rate us on iTunes so we can continue to reach people, go to E3, get more review codes to provide coverage to you all and more. Reviews are so helpful for discovery and opening doors in the industry for us!
Mortal Shell is an action RPG developed by Cold Symmetry and published by Playstack. It follows a similar formula as Dark Souls, but features stark differences that make it stand out on its own.
In it, you play as a faceless character who can inhabit Shells.These Shells are one of its main features, which are sort of like costumes that all include their own unique abilities. There are four of them that are found throughout the world and you’ll want to experiment with all of them to find one that suits your playstyle.
The game’s story is as ambiguous as you’d expect with it being a Soulslike, so don’t expect a narrative that will hold your hand. You’ll find some environmental storytelling here and there, but for the most part, the main focus is on the combat.
General Impressions
At this point, we should discuss our general impressions of the game, without going into too much detail. We’ll get into all that further down.
Shells
Here, we’ll discuss the Shells, their mechanics, and our overall impressions of them.
Harros, The Vassal — Middleground, all around Shell.
Tiel, The Acolyte — Stamina Shell
Solomon, The Scholar — Resolve Shell
Eredrim, The Venerable — Durability Shell
We’ll discuss the Harden technique, along with Shell abilities, and how the Shells work when you die.
Combat, Bosses, and Mechanics
This portion will focus on the game’s other mechanics, like weapon usage, Resolve, combat (parrying), its controls, items, leveling up the Shells/weapons, the Tar system, and how the game feels, overall.
We should also discuss whichever bosses stood out to us, if possible:
Imrod, The Unrepentant
Tarsus, The First Martyr
Crucix, The Twiceborn
The Unchained
Exploration of the World
During this segment, we’ll discuss everything about the world, like the fog, enemies, Sesters, and the locations themselves.
Fallgrim
Shrine of Ash
Seat of Infinity
Crypt of Martyrs
We’ll also talk about which locations stood out the most and what we liked/disliked about them.
Final Thoughts
Finally, we can cover our overall thoughts about Mortal Shell at this point before we end the episode.
Active Quest 