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Biomutant - open world post-apocalyptic kung fu with furries

polo

Magister
Joined
Jul 8, 2014
Messages
1,737
This looks like a lot of fun if they make it right.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
From an interview with CEO of THQ Nordic. Apparently this is coming this quarter? https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...thq-nordic-is-doubling-down-on-licensed-games

While THQ Nordic is now focusing more on licensed titles, it's certainly not neglecting original IP. One of the publisher's biggest titles of 2021, Biomutant, is due this quarter and is described by Kreuzer as "a release of great importance." The open-world adventure is dubbed a "post-apocalyptic Kung Fu fable," set in a world populated by anthropomorphic animals, and has been met with intrigue and anticipation since its announcement.
 

Belegarsson

Think about hairy dwarfs all the time ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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Uwotopia
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
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Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.ign.com/articles/biomutant-heres-why-the-developers-have-been-quiet-for-so-long

Biomutant: Here's Why the Developers Have Been Quiet for So Long
Heads down, bugs squashed, script tripled.

After an extended period of being almost silent, developer Experiment 101 recently announced a May release date for Biomutant, its long-awaited open-world action game. That silence was for good reason - studio head Stefan Ljungqvist tells us that parts of the game have become bigger and more complex, but with only 20 people to make all that extra work happen. Rather than ship a buggy game, Ljungqvist says Experiment 101 has been taking its time to quietly build a truly finished product.

“It's a big game, a big bite for 20 people to chew off,” says Ljungqvist. While Biomutant’s map may be just eight square kilometers, it’s packed with warring tribes, conquerable outposts, strange creatures to fight, and a protagonist who can mutate into new forms to overcome obstacles. As we’ve said before, Biomutant looks bananas, and its many moving parts are a challenge for the studio behind them.

That 20-person team, established by ex-Avalanche Studios employees, is determined to stay small. But while that helps keep the studio nimble, it also imposes some restrictions. “At the end of the project, there's only a certain amount of bugs that you can physically fix during the course of the day,” says Ljungqvist. And that’s what much of Biomutant’s last year of development has been: bug squashing.

“It’s been a huge amount of work for QA, because it's not easy in an open-world game to find them,” explains Ljungqvist. “And then once they've been found, we have to fix them, and that's put some additional challenge on us, being a small team.”

Ljungqvist is realistic about being able to ship Biomutant completely bug free - a game with so many systems in its sandbox world is difficult to deliver without the odd problem - but he wants it to arrive in players' hands as solid as possible. “Any game is going to ship with [smaller] bugs, but I'm talking about bugs that are truly disruptive to the game experience,” he says. “We don't want to ship with that. I think that's what caused us to just wait until we were ready to do it.”

Quality assurance isn’t the only thing that’s been happening at Experiment 101 over the last year, though. Biomutant has, well, mutated in that period, too. “If you look at the script, by the end of 2019 I think it was about 80-85,000 words. Pretty much a novel,” recalls Ljungqvist. “But in the final game, it's closer to 250,000 words. That was a big thing, to wrap that script.”

Those new words are scattered across many different areas of the game, which in turn has demanded further development work on those features. Ljungqvist notes that, as a result of the expanded script, players can expect a reactive karma system called Aura, which will change NPC dialogue based on your light or dark allegiance. There’s also a better tutorial system, which more effectively communicates Biomutant’s overflowing toy box of ideas. On top of the additional script forming the basis of these features, the game will be available in 13 different languages, 10 of which are fully voiced, and so localisation is required on all those added words. It’s safe to say it’s been a busy year for Experiment 101.

Ljungqvist has been careful to pace the studio, though. “I've been doing this for quite some time,” he says, referring to his almost decade-long tenure at Avalanche Studios. “I myself was burned out. I learned a lot on those themes, on those subjects. I learned to recognize it.” This goes some way to explain the studio’s ‘ready when it’s done’ approach, and lack of constant public updates. It’s an approach that has been supported by publisher THQ Nordic, Ljungqvist says, at a level he’s “never had before”.

The lack of pressure from THQ Nordic to ship Biomutant has been a blessing, as the negative outcome of crunch would be destructive to both individual staff and the studio overall, Ljungqvist explains. “I mean, the studio, we are 20 people and we can't afford to have [staff] leave the studio, or be destroyed during development. That would be devastating.”

“For certain pushes, you might do it in a limited form,” he acknowledges. “But the most important thing is you get paid, which is not common in our industry, crazily enough. And also you get ‘recap time’, because you have to have rest. If you're just doing this constantly for 12-14 hours a day, you will eventually have to pay for it.”

“I think it's part of the DNA of the studio to not do it,” he concludes. “That's why I think for us, if we do it, it's controlled, and it has been rare. I guess now moving into the release, we're prepared to do it for some days, but it's not the constant thing. It will kill you.”

With the announcement of the May 25 release date, some fans may have been surprised to see that PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are not listed as platforms that Biomutant will launch on. It is, afterall, easy to assume Experiment 101’s silence and the continued development was due to the team preparing Biomutant for next-generation systems. Ljungqvist confirms this is not the case - Biomutant is a ‘last-gen’ game - but there’s good reason for that.

“When we developed the game, we lead on the last-gen,” says Ljungqvist. “And if you look at it from a development perspective, that's really important because it's easier to scale up than to scale down.”

“I think for us, as a team, we would like as many as possible to be able to play the game,” he adds, noting the currently small install bases for PS5 and Xbox Series consoles. “So, if we just release it for ‘next-gen’, I think that would not have been a good way forward.”

Despite this, Biomutant still takes advantage of high-spec hardware. “There is a high-end version of Biomutant already made for PC high-end versions,” Ljungqvist says. “I mean, the game already in some form exists in what you would expect on the current-gen platforms.”

“Are you going to be able to play it on those consoles?” he asks himself of the PS5 and Xbox Series X, teasing the future of Biomutant. “Definitely. We will see moving forward what's going to happen, but you will definitely be able to play it on those consoles.”
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
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Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-02-08-kung-fu-injuries-and-delays-catching-up-with-biomutant

Kung fu, injuries and delays: Catching up with Biomutant
The last o' fuzz.

There's something very Saturday morning about Biomutant that has always really appealed to me. Where other open-world games can be grim, this is exuberantly colourful; where other games can be bogged down in grit, this is light and full of energy.

It looks like a child's imagination exploded all over the screen. Mutated animals tear about, kung-fuing gigantic monsters with three heads, which are also adorable, and there are outlandish contraptions, DIY guns and vehicles to use. There's one vehicle that looks like a hand and moves around like Thing from The Addams Family, and finger-guns enemies dead. There are others that fly through the air or speed across the water, as you whizz around over-saturated and kaleidoscopically vibrant worlds.

That's not to say I ever thought Biomutant would change the world. I never really thought of it as a blockbuster. But does everything have to be? They can be so timid. This feels reckless, charming, and it abounds with a kind of breeziness I am totally here for in 2021, with all this going on, gestures at everything.

But where did Biomutant go? I remember the announcement in 2017, and I remember the original 2018 release date. That obviously didn't happen. Nor did the subsequent 2020 release date. And each time it slipped, it slipped from memory too. But now, Biomutant is back, firmly on the release schedule for this year, 25th May 2021. What kept it? I sat director and Experiment 101 founder, Stefan Ljunqvist, down for a chat.

One thing that makes immediate sense when you meet Ljungqvist is where the game's love of kung fu comes from. It's him - it's him all over. He is all about kung fu, Sanshou in particular, a kind of Chinese kickboxing. He's been practising for nearly 20 years. He goes off to muay thai camps in Thailand to train in it, he spent a year training intensely with a Shaolin Monk, and during his decade at Avalanche making Just Cause and Mad Max games, there was a time when he was training five times a week for two-and-a-half-hours a pop. He's serious about it. How good is he? "Well, I... I can do it," he says, in that self-deprecating way people who can really do something do.

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Stefan Ljungqvist as I see him. He's a very smiley fellow.

Sadly at 48, his body has other ideas, and in 2019, it rebelled. He ruptured his calf, got his cheek crushed by a knee, and he has something called 'boxing wrists', which is micro-fractures in the tiny bones there, and one swelled up like a golf ball. "Those three things alone was like a sign that I had to stop," he says. But - well, we're our own worst enemies sometimes - he didn't. And then he "destroyed" his back. I don't know exactly what happened but it left him requiring surgery - spinal surgery - and months of rehabilitation. And that, on top of everything else, was his 2020.

It goes a small way to understanding why the game has been delayed, because when your writer (and director) can't finish the script because he's laid up in bed after back surgery, there's not a lot you can do. Especially when you're only 20 people - I didn't realise that. That's a much smaller team than I thought.

But Biomutant's doesn't seem to be a story of troubled development, which surprised me. I don't hear about cut features or about a publisher brute-forcing a game out. Instead I hear about a script quadrupling in size, a crafting system multiplying in complexity, and features like the factional tribe system being beefed up and moved centre stage. If anything, I hear about embellishments, and about THQ Nordic, the publisher, apparently being supportive of it.

"I don't know if that's troubled or not," Ljungqvist says. "Was it more complicated than we thought? Yes. The part where there are so many interconnected features: that's where we kind of underestimated the challenge."

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What is so complicated about Biomutant, then? Because from the footage we've seen, it looks fairly simple, excluding maybe the crafting system. We certainly don't get a sense of where a 250,000 word script is being used, or what the tribe system is, or what the aura system is that glues it all together. And that's a shame, because it sounds like these are really what shape the game.

Take the aura system: it's a kind of glow that you - that everyone - has around them. Think of it a bit like a BioWare good/evil aura. It helps you tell the intention of tribes when you meet them. A tribe with a light aura will likely want to unite everybody and protect the Tree of Life, and mend the world as it is, whereas a tribe with a dark aura might want to smash it all to pieces and then build it back its own way after.

Working for these tribes will focus your attention around the world, and you can talk with them, using a dialogue system, and learn kung fu from them. How they react to you depends on your own aura, and the kind of interactions available to you will depend on it too. And the choices you make there can have far-reaching effects throughout the game, even on the endings you receive. So you see, it's all tied together, aura and dialogue and actions. And bundle it into a 15-20-hour story, with an open-world playground offering plenty more play-hours besides, and you begin to see where all the hours of development went.

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A lot of work has also gone into making the game work well on the machines it was announced for: PS4 and Xbox One, as well as PC. PS4 was apparently the lead platform for development, and getting "really solid" performance there was top priority. Then, a high-end version was built up for PC. As for next-gen consoles:

"I cannot really go into any depth," Ljungqvist says with a cheeky grin, "but let's say that when I got the question 'will the game be playable on the new consoles?' I said 'yes'. So let's assume that there will be more communication around that soon."

As it stands, though, Biomutant will of course be playable on PS5 and Xbox Series S/X, and make free use of the extra power there (there are no limiters in place). You'll apparently see improvements on PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, too.

So here we are, a few months away, with only really bug fixing left to do. Will Biomutant find an audience in 2021? I hope so.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
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Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://gamingbolt.com/biomutant-has-the-potential-to-be-one-of-2021s-biggest-surprise-hits

Biomutant Has the Potential to be One of 2021’s Biggest Surprise Hits
Experiment 101’s action RPG is finally almost upon us, and we’re curious to see how it lands.

biomutant_header.jpg


You couldn’t be blamed for forgetting that Biomutant exists. Well, it doesn’t quite exist yet it’s still in development but that’s my point. Biomutant was first announced in 2017. Yet we’ve only gotten small drips of information about the post-apocalyptic Kung Fu RPG since then. Those who might have forgotten about it could just as easily be reminded by a very quick description of it being the game about a bunch of bizarre monster animals trying to save the world. Odds are that type of description will find its way to sticking in the back of your mind somewhere. The game has a lot going for it stylistically, as it mixes character creation and customization with the sprawling RPG and a heroic story that puts you in the mix and forces you to navigate your way through it with the skill sets and resources that you have available to you.

Biomutant’s world is a big part of its draw. While it is post-apocalyptic, there is a society here that has a lot of ins and outs in different facets that are not only worth paying attention to but are integral to understanding the story. In a nutshell there are six main tribes that have formed since the previous societal systems had collapsed. Half of these tribes want to restore order and the other half have more self-serving agendas. Your character’s job will be to deal with these various differences between the tribes as you strive for the greater goals. Whether that be through mending the bridges between them all or aligning yourself with one tribe and seeking dominance over the others seems to largely be up to you. But dealing with them one way or another is going to be a huge part of your story as you set out on your journey in this broken world.

This type of dynamic opens up a lot of narrative doors for obvious reasons, but it also opens up a lot of gameplay doors. certain missions may or may not be impacted by how you’ve interacted with certain tribes. This is all impacted greatly by the layers added from the karma system that the developers have confirmed exists as well as the branching story paths that your decisions will lead you to. Interlocking story paths and alternate outcomes are no small feat to add into a game like this, which is why so few games really take advantage of these ideas to great extents.

The truth is, this makes Biomutant an incredibly ambitious project, and I’d wager is likely a large reason why it’s taking so much longer to make than how many of us had hoped it would. It’s compounded even more by the fact that you can establish companionships with various NPC characters that will follow you around and fight alongside you if you choose. Reportedly this aspect could also alter the story in various ways and could lead to different paths in the narrative that otherwise might not have been accessible.

The depth of the world wouldn’t add up to a whole lot if it wasn’t presented extremely well though and it looks like Biomutant understands that with a gorgeous world that has a lot of variety, both visually and gameplay-wise. large open planes and other types of topography have been shown in official footage of the game so far, and that seems to be greatly expanded upon with the game’s exploration. It really seems like they’re trying to craft a world here that you’re going to want to explore, not just need to, and that’s the right way to do it. An open world game like this needs to be as visually appealing and inviting as possible, and making that as true as possible seems to be what Biomutant is laser focused on right now.



So while the narrative world-building is definitely going to be one of Biomutant’s strongest suits, the game play will also be one of its more fleshed-out elements. This is not going to be a small game, nor will it be a simple game, so the moment-to-moment gameplay will reflect that with lots of exploring, deep combat, and various other tasks to keep you busy for many hours on end. To start things off you will of course be customizing your character much like you would at the beginning of most other RPGs. Strength, Vitality, Charisma, intellect, agility and luck are all facets that you’ll be choosing to emphasize or not. You can also greatly alter their physical appearance again much like you would see in RPGs today, so if you were worried about this being a thin experience then you can probably put those fears away as you will have plenty of control over your character and how they start out.

Once you get your character together and set off into the world you will start to see how the attributes that you chose impact the way that your character plays. Of course, the way that you choose your attributes when it comes to strength and agility will impact your playstyle somewhat, you will always be subjected to the same deep combat system that gives way to lots of stylish moves that the developer affectionately referred to as “gun-fu”. This is the department where a lot of RPGs tend to slack off a bit so they can spend time focusing on other more role playing focused elements, but Biomutant does not appear to be making that trade with a deep, flashy, and rewarding combat system that gives no quarter to the idea of just mashing buttons and watching your experience bar fill up.

Weapon variety is looking impressive with a wealth of options both melee and projectiles that are sure to complement any and all play styles as well as reward some experimentation to see what sort of weapon sets fit better with different situations. This merging of the deep rewarding combat of an action heavy game with the deep rewarding Interlocking systems of a well fleshed out RPG is looking like one of Biomutant’s many great strengths, as it clearly wants to satisfy as many gamers as possible with this approach. We’ll have to wait and see just how well this marriage of those two philosophies works out, but from what we can see so far it does look like that the developer is going out of their way to make sure that there is something here for as many gaming persuasions as possible.



Whether or not Biomutant excels at this tactic of throwing everything at you but the kitchen sink we’ll have to wait to get our hands on it and give it an official review, but if nothing else the game should definitely gotten our attention with its ambition and with what it’s been able to pull off so far. Few games aim as high as Biomutant is, and even fewer are able to pull it off, but if footage that we’ve seen so far and the amount of time that the game is spending in the oven are any indicator, I’d say we could very well have one of the biggest surprises of the year on our hands here.
 

Dodo1610

Arcane
Joined
May 3, 2018
Messages
2,155
Location
Germany
You could always buy 3rd party games on Origin so there are also 3rd party games in their subscription service.
 

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