 What's up everybody, I'm the Mangus. You were awesome if you didn't catch it. Undying games hosted an all Dante all mid exhibition match in order to support the extra life charity event on November 7th. It wasn't the real map, it was only one myth, and the abilities weren't balanced at all, but it was the closest thing we've seen to ethereal gameplay thus far. There are many things to get excited about in this footage, but I want to stress that this isn't the actual game. They took a week to create a whole new thing by throwing a bunch of their assets together so they could have something fun for extra life and help support charities for sick kids. While you can't really view this as a proof of concept, it at least proved to me that ethereal will be what I've been so desperately wanting, a third person mobile with interesting characters that merges lore with gameplay. Dante's voice lines, animations, and kit seamlessly merge form with function to give us the Deadpool-like myth that he was supposed to be, and it looked fucking sick on top of all of that. Let's dive into Dante's abilities. They didn't provide names for any of the abilities so I'll just be making my own up here. Also, please bear in mind that the mana cost, damage, and cooldown were all given a crack infusion for this test. He's not going to hit nearly as hard in a real game. His first ability was a long range projectile that pierces through enemies, good for hitting someone through minions or for some quick wave clear. His second ability was a grenade toss that exploded after a short delay. There will be indicators for the ability in the final product, they just weren't any here. His third ability was a combat roll in the direction of travel. If all of this seems simple, it's because Dante is meant to be a beginner character that newer players can easily grasp. Where it gets really interesting is his right click. Dante fires off both transmitters in rapid succession until they eventually overheat, causing you to drop them and Dante starts flailing his hands wildly to cool them off. While you're waving your hands around, you effectively silence yourself. You can move, but you can't basic attack or use abilities. This provided for an interesting high risk, high reward ability that will definitely separate novice Dante players from masters. They were able to encapsulate the spirit of the myth in one ability and do it in a way that's meaningful to gameplay. So now all we have left is the ultimate which we were calling the base cannon due to the sound effect and the fact that you can kill someone in their base. This was a long range night, much like Murdoch's Long Dong from Paragon. You just aim and fire a massive laser that pierces terrain and minions. It was really satisfying to see all the damage numbers pop up after you fired this through a minion wave. Undying will not confirm that this ability will travel through map layers. If you didn't know already, a theory will have a vertically tiered map structure where the lanes kind of hover on top of each other. But personally, I think it will pierce the levels. What fun would an ability like this be if you couldn't take out an unsuspecting target like a tier below you? Many people in chat during the event started calling Dante Twindoc, which I think is pretty hilarious and appropriate with his grenades quick firing right click and his long dong style base cannon. Aetherial isn't meant to be a successor to Paragon, however, if there weren't any similarities between the two, I probably wouldn't be that interested in it. The game we played took place in a one lane map, but that wasn't just a lane from the final map used for the demo. This was a map created specifically for the Extra Life event, and they made it in about a week and a half. If you're familiar with the Unreal assets, you'll probably recognize the level itself, but they added in many of their own assets. There were minions present. These were placeholder Paragon minions. Each side had a tower to contend with. I'm not sure if this is the tower they will use for the game, but I kind of hope so. I like the Sauron feel of it. There was a glowing tower range indicator that I thought was quite cool. When the sides of the map were glowing health orbs that you could pick up for regen, I'm not sure if that will be something present in the actual game. Most interestingly, the core or nexus or whatever you want to call it, you had to defeat to win was a large living Valkyrie. I loved this. The Valkyrie had its own ability set complete with indicators that you had to dodge or you would take massive damage. We couldn't adjust sound much during the demo, but I was very surprised and delighted that Dante was using his voice lines. The music was epic. I really enjoyed the background music and that will be in the game. Dark and his team really knocked it out of the park with the score. Sound effects could use a tuning pass as some were far too loud while others you could barely hear. However, they all seemed to fit with the abilities being used. While we can't call this a proof of concept, we can look at it as proof that ethereal is very real and is on the right track to be very fun. Everything looked amazing, not just the graphics, but the entire aesthetic. It felt epic to play as this cocky gunslinger doing battle in a fantasy setting culminating in a fight with a giant light sword wielding Viking. There were of course many bugs in this and they also had an internal 100ms delay which made it really hard to hit abilities. Much about this event didn't really go as planned. However, this was something that UG slapped together in a little over a week and it was still breathtaking. The little bit I played left a permanent grin on my face. If this is what they can accomplish on the fly, then just imagine what the final project that they've sunk years of their lives into will be. If you want more information about the demo as well as some of the GDA insight, be sure to check out episode 6 of Enter the Ether which will come out tomorrow if you're watching this on the day of release. Now instead of signing off as usual, I'll leave you with a full match of the demo and give those watching the premiere time to ask some questions. Enjoy. Meeting to be at tomorrow.