Disclaimer: This game is developed by MBC Group which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Public Investment Fund (PIF) of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have written extensive reports about how human rights are being violated and abused by the PIF under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Including the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who was surprised by the reveal of 1001 Threads of Mizan during Opening Night Live at Gamescom. It offers a distinct setting, inspired by the Middle East and the tales of Scheherazade as well as something that seems to graphically punch above its weight. So on my final day of Gamescom I managed to go hands-on with the game for about thirty minutes. My demo was co-op focused, seeing me and two others defeating two massive bosses. Accompanied by the game’s creative director Lars Bonde, who worked on Prince of Persia and Watch_Dogs for Ubisoft, I was surprised by how the game balances two very different types of gameplay. The three characters you can pick from each have distinctive weapons and styles. I favored the ranged fighter Yusra, using her bow and a staff, but each character has a mixture of several archetypes. Combat feels pretty straightforward, with light and heavy attacks, a special charged attack, and a parry. Enemies didn’t have a lot of complex patterns and we smashed our way through groups fairly easily. That is until we reached the first boss, who threw tornados and lightning fast attacks our way.

This is where your secondary mechanics become essential. Each character has a flying carpet that you can spawn in at any time. The best analogy here is that it almost turns into a game of Star Fox once you step on the carpet. You can zoom around and gain altitude at pretty high speeds, but attacking is limited to single attacks when you’re in melee range of your target. Using the left trigger you can brake to make quick turns and dodge incoming objects that bosses throw at you. This was required when dealing with the massive Djinn waiting for us underneath the desert–an enormous boss that would shoot layers and layers of projectiles our way, with only tiny gaps to pass through. Figuring out her patterns and waiting for the right moment to strike her weak spots was quite an endurance run, especially when relying on your other teammates for a combined attack when the time was right. Even though I am not one for multiplayer games, I liked the dynamics at play here. That said, it is hard to gauge without seeing a progression system that helps define the other fighters.

The story is also placed on a high pedestal for 1001 Threads. The creative director told us to of course expect some appearances from famous characters of the One Thousand and One Nights stories. The game respects the culture those tales originated from. One of the first things he did was hire cultural experts from the Middle East and PhD researchers who are specialized in the stories of One Thousand and One Nights. It simply does not feel like a case where a western-led studio is barging in and mixing and matching elements from a variety of cultures, which I really appreciate. Granted the gameplay is still pretty much in line with a lot of AA and AAA game projects: familiar combat systems with a couple new flourishes rolled into one. I was, however, especially pleased to hear that the game also fully supports a single player mode where you get to learn more about the three characters. So no need to rely on your friends to see it through till the end.

I do wonder how well the game will run on Switch 2. I’ve been impressed by the recent ports from studios like Ubisoft, Saber, and Capcom and it gives me hope that Switch 2 was immediately mentioned after the reveal. Yet I remain cautious for how well a game of this scale can perform on the handheld, particularly because it does seem like we may be waiting on this one for quite some time.

But overall I think that during this especially meager Gamescom, 1001 Threads of Mizan was the big surprise for me at the show. With a talented creative team and a ton of money thrown at the screen, it does seem to be a very impressive action game for both solo players and those who like to head out with friends. That magic carpet truly sets it apart and I am excited to see how it will be deployed for some of the larger scale bosses that the trailer seemed to be hinting at. At the very least, you have plenty of time to brush up on these scores of tales as the game is still quite some time away.