From what little we could see, the combat looked interesting and smooth, though the enemies appeared to mostly be waiting around to be murdered. Still, the idea of brief cut-scenes for timed attacks – such as splitting the club in half when timed with a proper sword slash – is something we hope is consistent throughout the game. It’s always nice to see when a game offers things that a player doesn’t have to do but can discover. The ability to alter how a fight plays out – or to be surprised by how a fight plays out – is a step in the right direction.

The melee/ranged combo is always a nice touch if handled properly as well. Harkening back to Devil May Cry, this system has always offered players a variety of ways to approach and engage enemies and bosses. Coupled with some fancy air-combos and the usual goodies, if the pacing is kicked up a little, it should be lots of fun.

Biomutant also appears to have a little Fallout 4 thrown into it, with a collapsing world and a crafting system fairly similar. While crafting systems aren’t bad, they are getting a little bit old at this point, and we’re hoping that this one doesn’t become the constant fetch questing that Fallout 4 had.

Overly ambitious or complicated crafting systems are often something developers like to flaunt, but they are rarely things that players enjoy. If the weaponry is done right, it will give a large variety of options without a large amount of farming, but being an open world, we wouldn’t count on there not being a lot of that.

Yes, that is a green raccoon riding a giant mechanical hand.

All said, we think Biomutant has a lot of potential. The style is innovative and different, the combat looks fun, and there are a lot of elements that could make the game unique – like the ride-able robo hand for one.

What the trailer didn’t show us very much of was the RPG elements of the game. We’re still hoping that Biomutant doesn’t run into the problem so many open-world games do which is that it feels like a huge world that is devoid of life, or at least, devoid of any interesting life.

We’ll have to wait until next year to know for sure.