Grapple, wall run, Musket & the voice of Napoleon

Most coverage of Valor Mortis stops at “first-person soulslike.” That undersells the part One More Level is most obviously proud of: this is a soulslike built by the Ghostrunner studio, and the movement kit came with them. This page collects what the developer has officially said about traversal, the Demo’s second-level weapons, and the casting of Napoleon.

Everything below comes from first-party posts on the Steam news hub for App 2828710 and from the store pages. Where the developer described something without detailing it, we say so rather than filling the gap.

Who you are playing

The protagonist has a name: William. He is a soldier of Napoleon’s Grande Armée, pulled back out of a battlefield grave, and the developer ties his abilities directly to the setting’s enabling substance — “the protagonist’s connection to the nephtoglobin plague allows him to grapple, wall run and swing across wide expanses.”

That is the important structural point. The parkour is not a genre bolt-on; in-fiction it is the same corruption that resurrected him. The Fall-2026 trailer post puts it the same way: “William’s ties to the nephtoglobin will grant him the ability to grapple through the air, wall run across cliffs, and manipulate terrain to get to new vantage points for combat.”

The traversal kit, as officially described

Four verbs have been named across the two posts:

Ability	Official wording	What it implies
Grapple	”grapple through the air”	Point-to-point movement across gaps
Wall run	”wall run across cliffs”	Surface-to-surface momentum, Ghostrunner-style
Swing	”swing across wide expanses”	Pendulum traversal off anchor points
Terrain manipulation	”manipulate terrain to get to new vantage points for combat”	Traversal that feeds positioning in fights

The last row is the one worth underlining. The developer explicitly frames terrain manipulation as a route to combat vantage points, not just to the next platform. Read against the enemies page, where mobility is described as the intended counter to Napoleon’s Eternal Guard, the movement and combat systems are being pitched as one system rather than two.

Not stated anywhere official: whether grapple points are marked or free-aimed, whether traversal consumes a resource, whether any of it is unlocked progressively, or how “manipulate terrain” actually works at the input level. The Demo is the only place to see it, and we will document specifics against the retail build rather than guess now.

The Demo’s second level: the Lighthouse

The Demo’s structure is officially two modified levels. The first is the ravaged battlefield that returning playtesters will recognise, serving as the combat tutorial. The second is described as “a brand new level that expands the game’s scope dramatically” — and it is the traversal showcase.

The setup, in the developer’s words: the bridge to the Lighthouse has been destroyed, and you use your transmutation powers to cross the broken cobblestones. That is the one concrete traversal scenario One More Level has described in a shipped build.

Three things debut in that level:

• The Rapier — a new blade. Covered in detail on our Chapter 7 page and weapons page.
• The Musket — a new firearm. Named officially, with no stats, handling notes or reload behaviour published.
• A new Shield Transmutation — named, with no further detail given.

The developer summarises the level’s purpose as “more enemies, more challenges, and more gameplay variety.” Note that “transmutation” is the term used for the powers doing the traversal work, and the Shield Transmutation sits under that same umbrella — so transmutations appear to cover both movement and defence. The developer has not spelled out how that category is organised, so treat the grouping as the wording it is and not as a confirmed system diagram.

Why the Ghostrunner comparison keeps coming up

One More Level makes it themselves. The Demo announcement calls Valor Mortis “a unique soulslike game, with a dash of FPS and even platforming action from our past Ghostrunner titles.” After Steam named it one of the top Demos of Next Fest, the studio noted that speedrunners had already finished Chapter 7 in under 3 minutes, adding: “That level really brings back memories of Ghostrunner!”

The studio then opened a Speedrunning section in its Discord, citing the movement mechanics and platforming segments as the reason runners had latched on so fast. A soulslike with an official speedrun scene before launch is unusual, and it tells you which half of the design the team expects people to master.

For the launch timeline these posts sit on, see road to launch.

Vincent Cassel is Napoleon

Announced with the Demo: French actor Vincent Cassel stars as the voice of Napoleon. The studio calls him their dream casting for the role from early on, and lists his work in Black Swan, Ocean’s Twelve, La Haine, and as Victor Chevalier in Tekken 8.

Two details the developer volunteered from the recording sessions:

• Cassel was an avid gamer in his youth, naming SSX Tricky and Kelly Slater Pro Surfer.
• He is from the Corsica region on his mother’s side — Napoleon’s birthplace — and told the team his auntie would describe Napoleon as “a cousin of the family.”

Napoleon’s voice is confirmed to be audible in the Demo as well as the full game. No other cast member has been announced, and William’s performer has not been named. For the wider cast and the plague lore, see the characters & lore page.

What the developer changed after feedback

The traversal additions did not arrive in isolation. Before the Demo, One More Level published a developer update on the three most common combat complaints from the earlier playtest, and one of them bears directly on movement-heavy fights: target lock and camera behaviour was to be refined with smoother tracking, smarter target prioritisation, and extended range covering both melee and ranged combat. Players had flagged it as inconsistent in multi-enemy fights and boss encounters — exactly the situations terrain manipulation creates.

The Rapier’s design also shifted between builds. In the playtest, enemy weakpoints had to be pierced by a pistol bullet; the Rapier “grants this power to your melee weapon.” That is a documented case of the studio moving a capability from the gun to the blade, which is useful context for how provisional any pre-launch balance detail should be treated.

Confirmed vs not confirmed

• Confirmed: the protagonist is William, a Grande Armée soldier; his grapple, wall run, swing and terrain manipulation are tied in-fiction to nephtoglobin; terrain manipulation is framed as reaching combat vantage points; the Demo’s second level involves crossing to the Lighthouse after its bridge is destroyed; the Musket, the Rapier and a Shield Transmutation debut there; Vincent Cassel voices Napoleon and is audible in the Demo; speedrunners cleared Chapter 7 in under 3 minutes.
• Not confirmed: any inputs, cooldowns, resource costs or unlock order for the traversal abilities; Musket and Shield Transmutation stats; whether transmutations form a single unified system; the rest of the voice cast, including William’s performer; how much of the Demo’s traversal design carries into the retail build.

The Demo is free on Steam — see download — and it is the only way to test any of this yourself before October 13, 2026. We will re-check every ability description on this page against the launch build and replace the developer’s phrasing with tested behaviour where the two differ.