Our goal is to have folks feel a connection to it, which we think results in people caring about being good custodians of our environment.”Į-Line is shooting for an early 2019 release of “Beyond Blue,” on PC and consoles, though they aren’t announcing which consoles just yet.As a lifelong fan of oceans, I’d love nothing more than to do a deep-sea dive to explore a world-within-our-world that’s far more fascinating and imaginative than any sci-fi planet ever conceived. “It’s an aspirational game and it’s one that has a lot of hope in it. “All of our investors are impact investors who care a lot about making games that authentically represent the world and provoke people to be curious about the world,” Angst said. The game will certainly include the impacts of climate change in its near-future vision, but in a way that displays the world as a beautiful place to players and not shame them. Angst admitted the influence, but said E-Line’s game focused far more about choices and the constrictions of time to forge a unique experience out of the decisions a player makes. “Beyond Blue” certainly resembles Giant Squid’s game “Abzu,” as they both are based around ocean exploration. We’re not making up future discoveries… That being said what scientists know and what they can publish are different.” “All of the creatures are scientifically represented. “We’re trying to get more at the more factual understanding about what these creatures are all about, but also visit their spiritual side,” Angst said. Angst did not give too much more information about what quests or choices would entail, beyond understanding more about aquatic life from a scientific standpoint. He clarified that it wasn’t a game about staying alive, rather it was one about gaining resources through exploration and then using that knowledge to make tough choices about how best to plot your course. “We hope to present the player with morally complex questions, ones that have real world stakes.” “A lot of the choice of the game is what quests or research threads you want to prioritize and what that means in terms of stakes in the narrative,” Angst said. There are more missions than any one player can achieve given the time constraints, and so decisions of where to spend time matter greatly. Time will play a big role in “Beyond Blue.” There are defined night and day cycles which will restrict players in how they make decisions. Choices of how to use resources that you gather will affect the game and what branching paths through the story you can take. Throughout the course of the game, you will open up your sphere of exploration through using an advancement of technology at your disposal, like AI-controlled drones. “The company’s ambition is to use the power of games through really well crafted experiences to speak to the human condition, help people be curious about their world, and ultimately help them understand and shape the world,” Angst said. Which is precisely E-Line’s mission statement. It’s about education, entertainment, and growing closer to life on this planet. “Beyond Blue” will ask players to learn more about the habits, survival, and communities of the multitudinous species that live in the depths. The reveal trailer showcases much of what the game will look like: third-person exploration, investigating various ocean life to a great degree. “The question we asked them was ‘in 10 or 15 years, if you have some of this amazing technology that lets us explore the ocean in a less intrusive way, and allows us to more deeply understand it… how would you use that time,” Angst said. They worked with embedded scientists to understand how best to showcase the ocean’s future and spent a year trying to determine the proper way to bring that experience into a video game.
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