The creator of PUBG has outlined his new project, which is coming soon via a tech demo.
In a video on Twitter, Brendan 'PlayerUnknown' Greene - who recently announced his departure from PUBG studio Krafton - revealed Prologue, telling fans that throughout his development career, "I've held a deep fascination with sandbox-style open-world games, and the freedoms that they give their players."
pic.twitter.com/dipZpUSeNYSeptember 3, 2021
Greene also says, however, that he wishes those games were a big bigger. That is the mission of his new studio - "to create realistic sandbox worlds on a scale that's seldom attempted. Worlds hundreds of kilometres across with thousands of players interacting, exploring, and creating."
Unfortunately, filling those worlds with content in a reasonable timeframe isn't really possible. To get over that hurdle, Greene's new team is developing the technology required to populate those worlds in a more procedural manner, via a neural network. Prologue is intended as an early introduction to the tech that the team is creating.
In Prologue, you'll have to find your way across a "runtime-generated" wilderness - one that's crafted as you load into the game. Once you're in, you'll need to gather resources and craft tools to help you traverse a landscape marked by deadly weather conditions. Greene says there'll be no guidance or path to follow, "just a world, a spot on the map to reach, and the tools needed to get there."
Prologue is an early peek at the tech powering Greene's future efforts, rather than a full game - "the first step on a multi-year journey towards what we hope will be rich and interactive open worlds." Because it's only a demo, you'll be able to pay what you want for it. There's no exact word on when you'll be able to do so - Greene says that the team will be ready to show their work "soon" - but a more in-depth reveal of the project is due to arrive tomorrow at 08:45 PT.
We got our first (extremely early) peek at Prologue at The Game Awards 2019.
