Brendan Greene, the creator of battle royale mega-hit PUBG, higher identified by his alias PlayerUnknown, is about to launch a brand new sport. It is referred to as Prologue: Go Wayback! and it is launching in early entry on twentieth November, and it is the primary sport by his new studio PlayerUnknown Productions. It is also not the sort of sport you are most likely anticipating it to be.
Prologue: Go Wayback! has no fight in it in any respect. As a substitute, it is a sport primarily based purely round survival – round orienteering via forests and braving typically ferocious parts. The significantly thrilling factor right here is the tech: each degree you play is procedurally generated, and every thing that occurs when you’re enjoying is procedurally generated too.
The sport is definitely step one in realising an enormously bold masterplan of procedurally generated worlds – total worlds. Prologue is, in a way, the terrain-level realisation of that. However additionally it is a sport to be performed – it isn’t solely a technical demonstration.
Within the sport, it is advisable learn paper maps and a compass to navigate throughout forested terrain in all method of opposed climate circumstances. You will transfer from the relative security of wooded cabins whereas attempting to not get caught in blizzards and torrential rain, all whereas managing starvation and thirst, and your private heat. Let your self get too chilly and you will get hypothermia, as I as soon as did within the sport, and you may die. Let your self get too moist and you may must dry-off or get chilly and die, whereas additionally doubtlessly getting caught in dynamically created swamp land.
You will need to cope with fuse bins, turbines, wooden fires, range pots and cooking, clothes, and even hammer and nails as you reboard weather-beaten cabins earlier than they let an excessive amount of punishing chilly air in. There are quite a lot of techniques in play and extra are being added the entire time; that is an early entry launch.
And I used to be struck whereas enjoying it how daunting the climate may be. That is one thing we all know effectively from exploring in real-life in fact, however video games solely ever characteristic climate as a backdrop, actually. Right here, although, climate is within the foreground – it’s the solely supply of menace within the sport, which strikes me as very daring artistic imaginative and prescient for a sport in 2025. I like it lots.
I additionally admire the large concept powering the mission, of grand procedural technology, as a result of it is the sort of shoot-for-the-stars idea that may be so thrilling to get caught up in. And let me inform you: Brendan Greene’s huge concept actually is colossal, and I do know this as a result of I spent an hour speaking to him about it not too long ago. Anticipate extra quickly, as quickly as I can write it.
