Too Human: Baldur's Arsenal

A warrior without a weapon is a sad warrior indeed. With 18 basic weapon types and hundreds of thousands of weapon variants and types in Too Human, it's safe to say that Baldur won't have that problem. It will take players hours and hours to collect the best of the best, so we took a shortcut and went straight to the game's developers, Silicon Knights, for info on the history and variety of the weapons you'll come across. Henry Sterchi, Director of Game Design, and Ken McCulloch, Director of Content, gave us a few moments of their time to fill us in.

The tale of Too Human blends Norse mythology with technology you'd only find in a science fiction story. Baldur's weapon, Fenrir, is decisively in the sci-fi half of that combination. His melee weapon has a sentient AI trapped inside of it, forced to aid Baldur in battle. According to Silicon Knights, "The sentient weapons were, if you will, a very early experiment in using "fire to fight fire." They are essentially the captured brains of monsters put under restraints and forced to fight for whoever wields them. The intention was to use the machines' brutality and lethal concentration against themselves. They are incredibly effective, but bring a host of other issues with them, both ethical and technical." Being monsters trapped inside of a weapon, they don't always get along with their owners or the humans they're supposedly fighting to protect. And other times, they're downright dangerous.

This historical backdrop for Baldur's weapon isn't just there as a pointless piece of trivia. Silicon Knights sees the relationship between Baldur and his blade as representative of the main themes found in the game. "In some ways, Fenrir represents the primal side of Baldur and almost fills in his character in ways that he might not be able to do alone. Baldur is reliant on Fenrir as his weapon of choice and is subject to all the benefits and disadvantages that it brings --to be effective as a warrior, he needs to exert his mastery over it."

Of course, Baldur has more than Fenrir to fight with. He also has a pair of glass guns, appropriately named Havoc and Malice. They aren't sentient like Fenrir, but have been into battle so many times that the Aesir see them as having their own personalities. According to Silicon Knights, "This is a nod to the Vikings of real life to whom well-made weapons, such as pattern-welded steel swords, had unique traits or markings and were named appropriately. Axes and swords with names like "Leg Biter" and "War Flame" were valuable and esteemed weapons." These guns will probably do more than bite legs, though. Glass guns use electrostatic linear accelerators for propulsion and are said to share tech with Odin's weapon, Gungnir.

There are six basic weapon types, each with three categories. The melee weapons include swords, staffs and hammers. Each of these can be either two-handed, one-handed, or dual-wield. Guns are broken up into pistols, rifles and cannons, which can all use slugs, plasma or lasers for ammunition. Each class is open to using any of the weapons with a few exceptions: The hammer and shield is exclusive to the Defender class, dual-wielding can only be done by the Berserker class, and the cannon weapon type can only be used by the cybernetic alignment.

Once you take the 18 basic weapon types, the many variants start to make things a bit more complicated. Silicon Knights laid out the depth for us. "Each weapon type has a wide variety of different visual meshes (looks) and each of those comes in a variety of colors. Statistically, the weapons have a variety of base stats (damage, armor, etc.) and between one and four open customizable slots where players can socket over 150 different types of Runes. Each Rune type can drop in a number of different levels, making their total well over a thousand. Weapons can also come with special status effects (fire, poison, ice, gravity well, etc.). In addition, Cybernetic weapons have a wide variety of Ruiners built in." So we're guessing you'll be able to find a weapon that you like the look and feel of if you play long enough. It's probably just one or two loot drops away.

And you'll have to do more than just search for epic weapons to outfit your character properly. Both of your weapons and all six pieces of armor you have equipped can each have up to four empty slots for modding. This gives you up to 32 slots to slot the over 1500 different Runes to mod your character to your liking. Silicon Knights promises that many of these bonuses will affect how your avatar moves as well as boosting stats. "Weapons can have a wide variety of status effects on board too, including game altering things like poison, ice, gravity well, acid pools, and more. Your character at Level 50 will not feel or move anything like your character at the beginning of the game -- they'll be significantly more powerful."

Make it to the top of the loot food chain and you'll find the red epic items. Some of these come in sets that have additive bonuses, rewarding those that complete the outfit. You'll probably have to play for quite a few hours before you come across these, but Silicon Knights promises that they're well worth the wait.

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