Obsidian Entertainment has stored its promise to this point of utilizing suggestions concerning Grounded to make the game a greater expertise. Since it hit Xbox Game Preview again in July, the workforce has added new areas to discover within the yard, a brand new zipline journey, and a fearsome encounter towards a (comparatively) huge crow. Its newest replace is the largest one but, including a koi pond and its fearsome fishy resident. Players who select to discover the pond’s depths accomplish that at their very own peril, due to its patrolling koi and, sadly, the brand new diving-bell spider.
“The koi pond was designed in November of last year, so that’s how far in advance we were prepping this,” says game director Adam Brennecke. “We always knew we wanted a koi pond. We were designing and discussing what we could do with this area and make it cool. We made a big list of how many creatures could exist in this area, and one of them was the diving-bell spider.” That real-life creature has a outstanding behavior of securing air bubbles in order that it could actually breathe whereas trying to find prey underwater. “We were like, ‘Yep, that one’s on the list,’ just because we knew, even at that stage, how cool spiders were in the game and how scary they were, and we just wanted to expand on that.”
The koi itself isn’t precisely one thing that glides round a lovely suburban water function. For one, the pond, like the remainder of Grounded’s back-yard setting, has entered right into a state of neglect. The water is murky and foul-looking, which makes it simple to get shocked by any variety of water-based critters. “We’ve all seen those koi fish that are the big badasses in the pond, and they look so gnarly, like they’ve been there forever,” Brennecke says. “They’re all scraped up. That’s what we wanted to get across; this thing’s been here for a long time, and it basically owns this area. This is the koi’s turf. This creature owns this area, and you’re just a little speck in it.”
The huge fish is not outright hostile to you, however it’s going to change into aggressive for those who get too shut or method sure areas inside the pond. There’s likelihood you’ll discover a kind of spots as you discover, together with a number of different factors of curiosity. An underwater lab gives some tantalizing new narrative particulars, and your tiny character can discover objects like toy dinosaurs and quarters in and across the pond.
Brennecke says that is the largest replace that Grounded has obtained to this point, however that the workforce isn’t about to cease considering of how to enhance its survival game. Combat is getting some tuning, after early suggestions indicated that aspect of the game was too static. “We took a step back and we looked at a lot of games with combat that we liked and analyzed them in depth, and one thing we found was we felt like we didn’t have enough creature attacks,” he says. “The spider, for example, had three attacks. What if we added three more variations? What would that do? That’s kind of what we’re doing right now with all of our creatures.”
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The workforce can be wanting on the idea of pets, and the way they may match into Grounded’s world. “We want to have the pet aphid, for example, where you can have that aphid and it follows you around and you can name it,” Brennecke says. “These are all just ideas right now on paper. I think that’s something where we really want to have that experience of having something that you can take care of. I think that’s the goal of that.”
They’re not pets, per se, however Brennecke says his workforce is looking for ways in which gamers might work together with the game’s ants in additional fascinating methods. “I think that’s a really cool thing that we want to explore, of having ways of making ants be controlled by the player and you can have the ants do certain things. … I think once the player can interact with that layer of the A.I., I think there are going to be a lot of cool opportunities for us as game developers but I think the players will enjoy that, too.”
Brennecke says his workforce has grown so as to add a few engineers to assist with incorporating the Xbox Series X/S. Those new consoles are shrinking load instances and likewise enhancing the general framerate and gameplay responsiveness. Those hires apart, Brennecke says he desires to keep up the small measurement of his workforce. “Overall, the team is the same size and we’re going to continue to make cool stuff. We have tons of ideas, and we just hope we have enough time to get those features in and make them shine.”
