Xbox One's Ryse: Son of Rome live gameplay eyes-on

As Sony's presentation last night appeared to center on the game Destiny, so too are we seeing Microsoft bring the heat today with the game Ryse: Son of Rome. This game is developed by the folks at studio Crytec, the same folks that brought the world Crysis. Here with Ryse: Son of Rome, Microsoft's Xbox One boasts high-powered graphics and a third-person perspective with the gamer taking control of one of history's most infamous warrior tribes.

This game makes a case for the Xbox One's graphics power taking command from behind the body of a Galea-wearing warrior taking on no less than the barbarian hordes. You'll find this game to take on a mix of what popular culture recognizes as 300 and Gladiator – sandal-era films kicked into a barrel here for one hack-and-slash festival that's aimed at Microsoft's next-generation console.

Gameplay you'll be seeing here is similar to what was shown earlier this week by the developers and Microsoft as well. In fact, it's the same launch-point at which that gameplay began, Maximus-esque speech (by a character named Marius Titus) and all, boat explosion and all. But here the demonstration rings true: there's a man to the right of the display here actually physically playing the game in front of us.

What's most striking about this game is, indisputably, the level of intensity in the graphics from start to end. While this game might go down as the first in a line of ancient battle arena titles, spawned due to their crash-and-bang gameplay and relatively unique plot-line collection, here in our first peek, it's all about the looks.

Massive fireballs and floating elements of the battle atmosphere cover the bodies, alive and half-dead, while you, the "Son of Rome" himself, forge forth into the nastiness of it all. While it's only a single demo, from what we're seeing, this is certainly a game that'll be on our must-try list when the time comes.