Ryse design director PJ Estevez had some comments about the combat in the the upcoming Xbox One exclusive launch title.

“In normal third person action game you have mostly lone wolf stuff, and so with Ryse you will have some lone wolf stuff, but it’s actually about being with your brothers, right, about being part of the legion. You kind of become this battlefield general over the course of the game. You can kind of extrapolate what a guy needs to go through to eventually become a general.”

“We have this concept we call ‘mashing to mastery’. The idea is that anyone can play it and they can mash the buttons and fight, but if you get the right timing you’re able to actually master it. Master the reaction you get out of the AI. You worked on the AI, you get them to this executable state and you execute them and we’re like: “Why does it have to stop there?” “Why do I have to stop and watch this movie play out?”. Because we’ve all played games that have executions and like 30 minutes into them you’re like “Really, I smash this guys head, then I stab then I kick him.” So we’re like, well, let’s continue the flow, let’s make it open up a window and let’s give guys who want to spend time learning it more of a reward bonus.”

Ryse: Son of Rome is an upcoming action-adventure hack and slash game being developed by German studio Crytek. The game is scheduled to be released at the Xbox One launch as an exclusive.