A new report circulating online suggests that Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis may be delayed to 2027. Currently in development by Crystal Dynamics and Flying Wild Hog, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is a remake of the original 1996 game. The game plans to reimagine Lara Croft's debut adventure with enhanced visuals, updated gameplay mechanics, and modern elements, while still preserving the essence of the original experience. View the full article
Half-Life 3believers don't give up easily, and Steam has just given them another reason to believe it could be coming soon. Following persistent rumors that the long-awaited sequel may finally be on the horizons, fans have started to expect that Half-Life 3 will release alongside the Steam Machine to help incentivize sales of the new hardware. View the full article
Peter Molyneux has somewhat of a reputation for overpromising that I will now proceed to gently rib him for—sweeping statements about carving your name on a tree and that name still being there years later, to the fiascos of Godus and the awkwardness of Curiosity, which promised a life-changing revelation inside a blockchain cube and then… didn't do that... Read more.View the full article
Steam users have until April 24 to claim the popular, well-reviewed 8-player 2019 co-op game, Shipped, completely free of charge. Honestly, it's almost always a good sign when the broad description of a Steam game far exceeds the length of its title, and it's even better when players save money on it—$10 in this case. But hey, $10 is lunch...in some places. View the full article
Fear Tall Grass, a new dark fantasy creature-battler, has just been announced for the Nintendo Switch. Alongside a Nintendo Switch port, Fear Tall Grass will be heading to Xbox and PlayStation, as well as PC via Steam. View the full article
Believe it or not, I'm kind of a cautious fan of Wizards of the Coast's new, live-service-videogame approach to D&D - and not just because, after long months of excruciating, confusing inactivity in 2025, literally any update to the DnD release schedule is like water in the desert. No, I think the whole schtick of 'seasons' and 'roadmaps' could make a lot of sense. The problem is that, in order for it to make sense, those seasons need to be stuffed full of tasty new game to play - and right now, I feel like that's still too far down WotC's priority list. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Will D&D's new Actual Play series suffer from the 'Mercer effect'? New to D&D 5e solo play? This 4th-level adventure is perfect for you! Wizards is launching an official D&D actual play starring Astarion and Lae'zel View the full article
Vampire Survivors developer Poncle says it’s working on over 15 games and opening new studios, following the big success of the roguelike shoot ‘em up. Since its release in 2022, Vampire Survivors has surpassed 27 million players, according to Poncle. It also won Best Game at the 2023 BAFTA Games Awards. This week, the ***-based studio released a deck-builder spin-off, Vampire Crawlers, but according to chief strategy officer Matteo Sapio, there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes. Read More... View the full article
A new Noble Legacy update is ramping up its immersive simulation systems in what developer Studio 369 calls one of its biggest overhauls to date. The medieval game has already grown from a fairly low-key start with an impressive list of upgrades, and today's major patch is another step in that direction. It expands the potential size of your towns, enhances the variety and behavior of your population, forces you to consider factors like temperature and cleanliness, and even introduces good boys and girls that can help you to keep bandits at bay. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: International transport tycoon game Worldwide Rush gets multiplayer, and it's an impressive achievement A new Project Zomboid update could make multiplayer servers much more deadly XCOM spiritual successor Warhounds dumps its gen-AI portraits, and I'm breathing a sigh of relief View the full article
Various missions you'll encounter during Disney Dreamlight Valley's Star Path events task you with crafting refinement items. You're not told what these actually are, though, so figuring out what to make can be pretty tricky. Crafting is a mission you'll run into fairly often while working through Star Paths, but most quests tied to this activity are a lot more straightforward. For this one, though, your end goal is a bit trickier to figure out, so here's what refinement items are in Disney Dreamlight Valley. Table of contentsWhat is a refinement item in Disney Dreamlight Valley?How to find refinement items in Disney Dreamlight ValleyAll refinement items in Disney Dreamlight ValleyWhat is a refinement item in Disney Dreamlight Valley? Screenshot and remix by Destructoid Refinement items are key materials you can craft in DDV. They used to be listed under a Refined Materials category at the crafting station, but following the Pocahontas Whispers of the Wind update, this category was removed, and they were given a different name, making them a bit harder to locate. How to find refinement items in Disney Dreamlight Valley All refinement items are available to craft under the Materials tab at any crafting station. This is the third tab over, situated right in the middle of the top row. Every item listed under this category counts as a refined item, so you can make any item you like from it to check off Star Path tasks that ask you to make them. The Materials section is essentially just a renamed version of the Refined Materials category that existed prior to the Pocahontas update. All refinement items in Disney Dreamlight Valley There are 36 refinement items you can craft at any point in DDV. Some of these assets are tied to DLCs or special events, but the vast majority are easily made using basic materials you can get from around the valley. Here are all the refinement items you can get. BrickCoal OreEmpty VialFabricFiberFour-Leaf CloverGlassGold IngotIron IngotSeaweedNight ShardPixel Shard DuplicatesRopeSoilTinkering PartsV-EGG-etable SeedAll SnippetsBlue Bird SnippetBlue ****** SnippetGreen Bird SnippetGreen ****** SnippetGreen Frog SnippetPink ****** SnippetPink Frog SnippetPurple Frog SnippetRed Bird SnippetRed ****** SnippetShadowy Bird SnippetShadowy ****** SnippetShadowy Frog SnippetYellow Bird SnippetYellow Frog SnippetBrass IngotBronze IngotElectric PowerMechanical PartsStorybook Magic Screenshot by Destructoid There are also a few quest-specific items that fall under this category, like the Oswaldian Pencil and High-Quality Paper. Since you can only make these items once, though, during the mission they're tied to, we haven't listed those here. Instead, only items that can be crafted at any point are listed. If you're not sure what to do with all the fresh refinement items you made, consider starting Olaf’s Grand Exhibition quest. Once you get this mission going, you can work on the museum, which requires lots of materials to finish. You can use some of your refinement items to complete the Peaceful Meadow room, the Dazzle Beach room, and additional rooms as they're unlocked. The post What are refinement items in Disney Dreamlight Valley? appeared first on Destructoid. View the full article
A livestream centered around the nation of Snezhnaya in Genshin Impact has been officially revealed, and it won’t take too long to get some insight into the final nation of Teyvat, as well as what may lie therein, including exclusive regional mechanics and maybe some story teasers. HoYoverse’s action RPG was released back in 2020, and since then, it has been exploring new regions annually. Genshin Impact 6.0 entered Nod-Krai last year, a sub-region of Snezhnaya, essentially extending the game’s lifetime by a full year. View the full article
The 2026 Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is mighty impressive, but without a price tag it's difficult not to gaze upon this $500 discount on the previous generation.View the full article
The Last of Us video game actor Troy Baker has said there's more to come for his character Joel, potentially including "more games." Baker, who played Joel in Naughty Dog's The Last of Us and its sequel, made the remark while discussing the character's impact with fans — something an audience wider than video games has enjoyed with Pedro Pascal's portrayal of the character in HBO's The Last of Us TV series. Warning! Spoilers for The Last of Us video games and TV show follow: Alas, with Joel now dead in the games and the TV show, you'd think that would likely be it for the flannel-wearing hunk — but not so, said Baker, who likened the character to one potentially portrayed by many actors over time. "I hope that Pedro is not the last person to play Joel," Baker said, speaking to Eurogamer. "I want to see this character be proliferated and iterated on in multiple mediums, whether it be TV, film, more games, comic books. I see people that cosplay as [Joel] all the time... he made an impact." Baker's comment comes hot on the heels of remarks by franchise creator Neil Druckmann that suggested a third The Last of Us game will eventually get made — even if it is still some time off. Indeed, a former colleague of Druckmann's recently shared an eye-opening plot idea that the creator had once planned, which could seemingly play a large part. Surely, any future game featuring Ellie would also include at least one flashback to her time with Joel, as a send-off to the series and Baker's original take on the character. Some kind of cameo for Pascal in HBO's final season of The Last of Us also feels inevitable. "I definitely know we've not seen the last of Joel, whether that be Naughty Dog or somebody else," Baker concluded. Exactly when Joel may next appear, however, remains to be seen. For his part, Druckmann has never ruled out making a third chapter of the saga, and Naughty Dog's official Grounded 2: Making The Last of Us Part 2 documentary even ends with Druckmann stating that he feels "there's one more chapter to this story" for Naughty Dog to tell. In the meantime, the studio is busy building Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, which Druckmann is directing. The developer also has a second game in production that's being directed by Shaun Escayg, who previously helmed Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, which is not believed to be The Last of Us related. All of that likely means The Last of Us 3 won't launch until sometime in the 2030s. Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social View the full article
Crimson Desert's boss fights have proved to be a point of contention, with some players now calling them out for being poorly designed. While Pearl Abyss made it clear well ahead of release that its latest game was not a Soulslike, it is still full of challenging bosses to defeat, and these segments have come under the magnifying glass lately. There's no denying that Crimson Desert is a massive success, but the quality of some of its content is up for debate. View the full article
We're just a few hours out from the early access release of Masters of Albion, which creator and legendary hyperbolist Peter Molyneux is pitching as both his swansong and "redemption title." To mark the occasion, Molyneux recently took to YouTube to field questions from fans about his career, Masters of Albion, and where his god-game obsession stems from... Read more.View the full article
Does lightning strike twice for poncle with their Vampire Survivors spin-off deck-builder Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors? Maybe. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article
Maingear, a maker of high-performance gaming PCs, unveiled the next-generation MG-1, a total redesign of the original PC gaming machine. The MG-1 was Maingear’s most acclaimed gaming desktop ever, with awards from Tom’s Hardware Editor’s Choice, TechRadar Editor’s Choice, IDA Design Awards Gold Winner 2025. .memberful-global-teaser-content p:last-child{ -webkit-mask-image: linear-gradient(180deg, #000 0%, transparent); mask-image: linear-gradient(180deg, #000 0%, transparent); } This article is free — just create an account Join GamesBeat to read this story and almost everything else on the site. No credit card, no catch.Start Reading FreeAlready a member? Sign in The post Maingear unveils MG-1, a redesign of its most-awarded gaming PC appeared first on GamesBeat. View the full article
When game developer Nikita Buyanov launched a set of trailers this year for his new sci-fi shooter game Fragmentary Order, he did so secretly, as he wanted to keep its origins secret and let the content speak for itself. The team wanted to build anticipation for game slowly, revealing the title bit by bit in a mysterious marketing campaign. He threw them off the trail a bit since the developer is not Tarkov’s maker, Battlestate Games. Rather, Buyanov created the new Rant Gaming Studios But when the audience for Escape From Tarkov — which has been played by at least 54 million people — quickly figured out that the game was coming from Buyanov, he couldn’t help himself and confirmed his involvement much sooner than he had planned. After a detailed trailer with a backstory on the game debuted exclusively on GamesBeat last week, players called it “Starkov,” and then Buyanov confirmed in a tweet that he was behind it. And now he’s telling more in an exclusive interview with GamesBeat. We’re glad to be the first to reveal his thinking in moving on from Tarkov to “FragOrder.” But speculators were wrong about one thing. Battlestate Games, Buyanov’s earlier 400-person company, is still focused on just making Escape From Tarkov content. And the 130 or so developers working on Fragmentary Order are part of a brand new studio called Rant Gaming Studios and the publisher is the new firm Cor3, Buyanov said. He told us the game has been in the works four a couple of years, starting from its conceptualization stage and it’s been in production for a year or so. It’s not the same extraction game set in space. Buyanov doesn’t call it an “extraction shooter,” like Tarkov. It will have extraction mechanics, but he sees it as a “combat simulator.” Buyanov was pleased most of the response to the new trailer was good, but he knew it would be “polarized” because Tarkov fans would want to protect their community but the company needed to reach a balance between those who wanted the old and those who want something new. “I felt I needed to say it out straight that is is another invention,” he told me. “People should not treat this as the next thing, changing current priorities to the next thing.” Buyanov said he was “tired” from the work on Tarkov and needed to make something new. And while Tarkov is still evolving after 10 years, Buyanov said he wants to make the new game much faster than that by two or three times. But he knows that won’t be easy because gamers now are “super demanding.” Buyanov thinks of it as “hard science fiction,” which could happen in the next couple of hundred years as a straight line from the current events. The trailer describes the “order” brought to society by the AI-based Core organization, but that order fragments in the future, and that’s where the name and the conflict in the story comes from. As far as answers go, Buyanov is giving some. You aren’t fighting aliens. It’s more like combat against other humans controlling their own clones or drones. There are vehicles and maps that can be four or five times the size of Tarkov maps. The game looks more realistic in part because it’s built with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine. There are lots of things Buyanov isn’t talking about yet, such as funding sources. The company has not yet said when it will get the game out. But it’s in relatively early stages in terms of testing, as the firm will have closed alpha testing soon. Buyanov has said the team is international, with offices in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and elsewhere. But the primary mode of operating is remote. Buyanov isn’t trying to make everyone happy. He just wants to make a game that he likes. The game is very challenging to make, he acknowledged. “So it’s not a walk in the park. Sometimes it’s unbearable, even. But I need to take this shot. I have a lot of people who believe in me and who are helping me. Hopefully we’ll succeed,” Buyanov said. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview. GamesBeat: What’s the reaction that you’ve absorbed from the announcement? Nikita Buyanov: It was basically polarized. The ******* part of the responses were really good. Some of them were opposite – people shared their opinions like we should not do it this way, started to tell us what to do, or what not to do. But in general, it was great. Later, I made a post about my involvement in the project, cause It would be hard for me to protect both communities – Tarkov’s and Frago’s. I felt I needed to say it straight out that this is another invention, another adventure. People should not treat this as a replacement for Tarkov. It’s very hard for me to live and work with these two current projects simultaneously. But this is why I’m taking the risk. I want to make something new. I don’t believe I’ll have the energy to do that later. Tarkov has been in production for more than 10 years, and I really want the new project to be made faster than that. That’s one of the goals – we need to make it much faster, and that requires a lot of energy and a lot of time. But yeah – I just want to do something new in the first place. [Hidden Content] GamesBeat: Do you remember what the reaction to Tarkov was like at the very beginning? Buyanov: I don’t quite remember. The first trailer for Tarkov was also a CGI announcement trailer, and it was okay, not massive. But people were interested, because they saw familiar things, some hardcore vibes. The community from Contract Wars was also waiting for it. I used that community to build on this initial momentum and start promoting Tarkov. But now things are different – the community has changed. And gamers have changed in general – now they’re super demanding. The Tarkov community, for example, the super passionate extraction shooter community – they are always in the drama and fights. GamesBeat: How many millions of people were there in the community? Did you ever figure out how big Tarkov was overall? Buyanov: We checked it many times, especially for the previous release year. Overall engagement was around 54 million people. Those were people who were interested in Tarkov. People who signed up, gave their emails, put it on wishlists, followed us on Twitch, etc. The cumulative number of fans. But when we released Tarkov on Steam, we realized many more people were interested in that genre. It’s come to even more than that, two times or something like that. It’s pretty huge. GamesBeat: How do you think the audience was different from Call of Duty, Battlefield, or PUBG? An ambush in zero gravity in Fragmentary Order trailer. This is actually a piece of the Earth on the moon. Source: Cor3 trailer. Buyanov: They’re more critical and hardcore. They really want to be sure that everything will be as they think and predict. The Tarkov community doesn’t treat the game as something fun. They treat it as part of their lives, something inside of them. They’re really attentive to details, attentive to dates, attentive to everything. If developers like me do something wrong or say something wrong, they’re furious about it. GamesBeat: If you wanted to hide your identity for a short time here, what was the reason? You wanted them to judge the content just on its own merits? Buyanov: Basically, yeah. It was an idea to see how a game like this–we don’t consider this an extraction shooter, by the way. We call it a combat simulator. It will have extraction mechanics, but it will be pretty different. Again, we want to have something new in the genre, create some new mechanics, and maybe it will be another genre after all. But for the announcement, I wanted to see how it would go naturally, organically. The whole lore of the new game. Is it possible to boost this without me getting involved? It’s still an ongoing process. Especially at the early stages of the announcement, I thought, let’s see how this will be – how the community will react without me and with me involved. GamesBeat: Did you find anything amusing in the comments? “Starkov” was one that I thought was kind of funny. Buyanov: There was a lot of speculation. We’d started to tease something, and a lot of people thought it would be Space Tarkov. We used that in-house to describe it, that it’s basically Tarkov in space, at the start. But a lot of things changed. We’re not treating this as Tarkov in space now. It’s a super solid, hardcore experience with a predict-the-future approach and so on. But yes, it was fun to read comments from the Tarkov community like “head, oxygen tank.” A world in chaos in Fragmentary Order’s backstory. Source: Cor3 trailer. GamesBeat: Why was Fragmentary Order the name you came up with for this? What does that mean? Buyanov: It has different meanings. In military terms, “fragmentary order” is a complex military order consisting of fragmented pieces that come together to form a whole. But another meaning, within the game: the order is Core, this super-corporation that leads the world, and it’s starting to fragment from within. Something has gone wrong with their control. GamesBeat: You said you wanted to do a hard science fiction game for a long time. What was involved in deciding to go from modern combat to sci-fi? Why make that shift? Buyanov: I’m basically tired of making a single project for more than 10 years. I wanted to experiment and see how things could be in the future. I’ve always been a fan of hard science fiction, and so have a lot of us in the company. It’s a perfect opportunity to create something super grounded and realistic, with cyberpunk motifs, for example, and to put it all together in the game design. We want to have a feeling like, “that can be possible in the future.” It’s a playground for artists, narrative designers, and game designers to have a feature or idea and try to predict how it will turn out. GamesBeat: There’s some history in the game industry already of this kind of transition. When Call of Duty did Infinite Warfare, it was an interesting challenge for them. They went from modern combat to science fiction, and it was considered a failure. It was [maybe] 10 million sales instead of 20 million, which would be good sales for most games, but for Call of Duty it was a failure. Buyanov: That was 2016, when the trend was going toward more modern and historical stuff. That was the year when Battlefield One dropped, and it exceeded Infinite Warfare drastically. Maybe they just didn’t match the current theme. GamesBeat: Sometimes it has to do with what the competition does. Rant Game Studios office. Source: Rant Game Studios Buyanov: Yes. But I don’t treat this as a competition. I just want to make a game that I like. That’s it. That’s how it always is in our development. We’re not afraid. For example, if we’re working on a patch, and somebody points out that this other game is going to be released around that same time, I don’t care. Players want the patch, so we need to do it. For Fragmentary Order, it’s the same as when we started on Tarkov. We did Tarkov for us, for people who love guns, who love all this tactical stuff. We wanted to have a game we wanted to play. Fragmentary Order is basically the same. We’re not just trying to sell 20 million copies. That’s not a goal for us. We just need to have a sustainable player base. That’s it. And we want to create something that will benefit both developers and players. It’s a never-ending battle. A lot of games try to do different things by looking at each other and imitating the same things over and over, especially in extraction shooters. They don’t understand that extraction shooters and Tarkov-like games are different. You can’t just re-create all the same features. You need to put the soul into it. To put the soul into it, you need to love what you do and make a game that you love to play. GamesBeat: How much of the story is going to stay secret, hidden for the players to discover, and how much are you going to tell them from the outset, about what happened in the lore? Buyanov: The lore is huge. A lot of things are concealed, especially for the final version. There will be a lot of things to uncover later. The golden age in Fragmentary Order’s backstory. Source: Cor3 trailer GamesBeat: What exactly happened to Earth? Buyanov: It will be described briefly, but the thing is, there was a kind of experimentation going on in the Urals, in a secret Soviet facility underground. Something went wrong, and a piece of land was teleported to the back side of the moon. Why? Nobody knows. I know why, but I’m keeping that for later. GamesBeat: I wondered why there were old buildings in space. Buyanov: Right, it’s an actual piece of land from Earth, teleported there. GamesBeat: Are there aliens that you’re fighting? Buyanov: No. GamesBeat: You’re fighting humans, or robots I guess. Buyanov: Artificial units, robots, drones, clones. Nothing fantasy. GamesBeat: Is there a Tarkov origin in this lore? Does some part of the story come from Tarkov? Buyanov: This I won’t say. GamesBeat: When you say “war is systematized,” what do you mean by that? Core has a lot of control over exactly what kind of conflict happened? Buyanov: The whole system has started to be shaken. The control of Core is weakening. That’s created additional boiling points. New conflicts have re-emerged. Everything has spread around the solar system. But before that, the whole economy, the new economy, social interaction, and things like that, were all run through the CORIE system. It is something that united and controlled people around the solar system. It’s AI-driven. Nobody understands how it works. But everyone uses that system. VR of the future in Fragmentary Order. Source: Cor3 trailer That system propagates tasks. You can start working with the help of this holographic technology, the IWC transmission system. Everything is connected through that. All the payments go through that system, all the tasks. All the superiors are there, operations, reputations, everything is there. It’s an ongoing process in which every conflict is organized through different patterns and procedures. Everything is systematized. It’s war without the emotional part. Conflicts are just a set of military and business actions. GamesBeat: For civilians on Earth, are they controlling clones that are sent to go colonize the solar system? So there’s no risk to those civilians. They’re safe from any combat. Buyanov: It’s not only used to control your combat clones. You can also control the management of a colony, control space pilots, and control almost anyone from far away. In the far colonies, Earth is trying to terraform them. So it’s not only about combat roles. It’s also about civilian roles in hazardous environments. GamesBeat: Is there an extraction scenario here that you’re going to describe soon? A short combat loop, where you go in, fight, and extract something? Do you take something out when you fight? Buyanov: That part will be described later, because we’ll have a lot of new stuff in there. The basic mechanic is this: you infiltrate and exfiltrate. But there will also be different types of gameplay. The main idea is to earn money within the system and improve your life. The basic extraction principles will be there, but they won’t be the main principles. VR controlled combat in Fragmentary Order. Source: Cor3 trailer GamesBeat: Are you the one link between Tarkov and the new game? Is it an entirely new team? Buyanov: It’s about 98% a brand new team. I have three or four consultants who share experience from Tarkov, but it’s otherwise totally new. GamesBeat: The other company, the other team, can still work on Tarkov. Buyanov: Yes, exactly. That’s the reason. GamesBeat: Why did you choose Unreal Engine? Buyanov: I just wanted a different engine. One that’s more beautiful, for sure. Way more advanced in terms of visuals. With Tarkov, running it in Unity means the visuals have gotten pretty obsolete. I’ve always wanted to work in Unreal, so there’s also a personal use it. GamesBeat: Some fans wanted to know if you would clarify whether it was using DLSS 4.5. Buyanov: We have direct support from Nvidia, but we don’t have everything from them. The important stuff will be there. GamesBeat: Is DLSS 5 coming in time for this? There’s been some negative reaction to that. Buyanov: I think so, yes. If it’s available, we’ll bring it in. The AI thing–if we’ll be able to control it, we will try it. I’m more interested in other types of additions through DLSS, not only this total overhaul of the picture. We need to see what it will be like. They’ve only just put this technology out in public view. It still needs many additional changes. A city in the future in Fragmentary Order. Source: Cor3 trailer GamesBeat: Back to the lore, there’s the PCF and Core. Is this basically a civil war between the two? Buyanov: No, the PCF is a sub-faction in the Mars location. We’ll have many locations throughout the solar system. Mars is just the first one. We’ll also have location lore. Not just big lore for the whole solar system, but lore for all the sub-factions in particular places. The PCF is like the rebels on Mars. A long time ago, in our lore, they proclaimed themselves the true Martians. Historically, they’ve fought against the Core Colonial Structure, the CCS. The Core administration for colonization. They’re the two rulers of Mars, in a constant state of war. GamesBeat: Would you say there’s a clear good guy or a bad guy? Buyanov: There will certainly be good guys and bad guys. There will be bosses, and the bosses will have a lot of lore to them. GamesBeat: Rapid innovation, was that the manufacturing of AI robots, or is it something else that happens in the lore? Rant Game Studios office. Source: Rant Game Studios Buyanov: It’s everything. AI-driven factories, self-sustaining factories, self-deploying machinery. There’s a huge shift toward an AI-driven economy and industry. It’s not just basic production. You have self-deploying, self-sustaining factories with drones that build machines. GamesBeat: The combat on the moon looks like zero gravity, or low gravity. Is that the kind of combat to expect in this, or will there be Earth gravity combat as well? Buyanov: We’ll have different gravitations around different locations. The gameplay will be a little bit different. We won’t be doing zero gravity, most likely. That would require a whole new game around it. But the gravitation will be a consideration when it comes to your gear and everything else. There will be many more attributes to consider in the game than in Tarkov. We’ll face many hazardous conditions. Not only gravity, but also electromagnetic effects and other things. GamesBeat: The weapons are more sci-fi than the modern weapons in Tarkov. Are there some you can describe? Buyanov: People will find different kinds of weapons. They’ll find kinetic weapons, powder-based ignition weapons, but they’ve changed throughout the ages. I believe that powder-based weapons will be there forever, because they’re so efficient. There will be different weapons, such as railguns. Everything is being designed around theories and potential possibilities of how things could be done in the future. All of the mechanical parts, all of the internals, we’re making them with a great level of detail. We want you to be able to see everything and understand how it works. There will be several categories of weapons that aren’t possible right now, due to the current-gen limitations of technology, and, of course, full customization capabilities. The weapons and technologies could fill a whole separate article. It’s too big to describe. GamesBeat: Would you want to do spaceship to spaceship combat? Or combat in space? Core is a fictional company in Fragmentary Order. Source: Rant Gaming/Cor3 Buyanov: Again, I’m not sure about combat in space. We’ll have space station locations for sure. Maybe we could have some kind of event location. But it’s too early to determine. GamesBeat: It sounds like there will be vehicles on the ground. Buyanov: Yes, we’ll have vehicles. The locations are much ******* than Tarkov. Four or five times ******* than the typical Tarkov location. GamesBeat: Do you expect to have small maps as well, the kind with really tight combat? Or will it always be played on these ******* maps? Buyanov: We’ll see. We’re still thinking about what it will be like. There will definitely be smaller locations to have more CQB fights. A city in the future in Fragmentary Order. Source: Cor3 trailer GamesBeat: Is there a clear distinction between early access, launch, and post-launch content? Buyanov: Yes, but I don’t want to disclose that yet. GamesBeat: How big is the team so far? Buyanov: Right now it’s 130 people. GamesBeat: How are you able to do this with a team that size? That’s considered a pretty small team nowadays. Buyanov: Yes, it’s hard. The most challenging thing in my life is pulling it all together. It’s a hard process right now, especially with Tarkov going on as well, and all these different business processes. This has been the hardest ******* of my life. Managing it all is still an ongoing struggle. I thought I had everything figured out, but working with Western developers is a different mindset. I’ve lost my mind many times because I didn’t realize how to work with such people, especially on a different engine. It’s an ongoing thing. It’s wonderful and exhausting at the same time. There’s the EFT mindset, the Escape from Tarkov mindset: the player’s mindset and the developer’s mindset. The developers of Tarkov are hard-boiled. My idea, especially in the early stages, was to pass that on to the newcomers, because they hadn’t worked on a project like Fragmentary Order before or at a company like this. It’s totally different. You need to put something on the altar, sacrifice something. It’s quite hard to convey that idea to the developers. So it’s not a walk in the park. Sometimes it’s unbearable, even. I’m taking this shot; this is my deep desire. I have a lot of people who believe in me and help me. We’re confident we will succeed, and we’d appreciate full support from our community, whom we deeply care about, as it will make the painful work of achieving our vision more manageable. Again, the idea is not to make a game for everyone, not to sell tens of millions of copies. The idea is to create something remarkable in terms of hard science fiction, in terms of FPS, in terms of a combat simulator. The idea is to create a door, a passage to the future. Players will play our game and be immersed in a possible future. This isn’t flashy science fiction. It will be gritty. It will be dark. It will be realistic in any case. It’s not only about technology but also about future locations. It’s also about social and psychological elements. How will you live in that kind of situation in the future? There are a lot of features around that in the game design. We’ve created these challenges for ourselves, and we’ll try to fulfill them. GamesBeat: What combination of optimism, post-apocalypse, and horror do you see here? Would you say there’s a prevailing theme in your view of this future? A modern Eastern European setting in Fragmentary Order’s backstory. Source: Cor3 trailer Buyanov: It depends on the location. They’re all in different states. If you play on one location, it will be a specific atmosphere. The space station locations will be something like a Dead Space scenario, but without monsters. That’s the idea. For example, a Ring World, a ring station, like the Elysium station or Halo, how was it designed to work and be real? I always wanted to make gameplay in that kind of location, but again, with this super-realistic approach to everything. It will have a totally different atmosphere and local lore. Everything will be connected through the global lore, but each location will be different. Mars, for example, is more like the Wild West in space. People are just trying to survive there. We’ll have moon locations that are not abandoned. It’ll be a living location, but with a sense of abandonment. GamesBeat: Going back to team size, I guess one advantage is that you can probably still get to know everyone on the team. If you have 500 people, there’s no chance to meet everyone. Buyanov: The Tarkov team right now is around 400 people, by the way. But yes, it’s a more condensed team. We have essential people working together in the office. It brings a more old-school game development feel. New projects and teams need to start working together in person. GamesBeat: How much time went into the ideation of the game, versus the time you’ve spent in production? Buyanov: We’ve been in production for 1.5 years. Six months were just pre-production, concept art, and building the initial core team. The active process started about a year ago. We still spend a lot of time on prototyping and concepts. GamesBeat: What was most important for you to get right about the combat before you wanted to announce the game? Buyanov: It’s a good question. Right now, we’re polishing the combat to create the gameplay trailer. I used to shoot a lot. I’ve studied a lot of the tactical stuff myself. I know exactly what’s needed, all the new features that no one has done before. I know how it should look. I’m counting on my experience and my creativity. Social disorder in Fragmentary Order’s backstory. Source: Cor3 trailer GamesBeat: There are some things that players seemed to like or dislike about the combat in sci-fi games like Infinite Warfare. The X-ray gun, where you can see someone through an object, that could give them an unfair advantage. Or just the ability to see where everyone is. Does that make it too easy for some players? Buyanov: First of all, you need to have a physical approach to everything. The technology, and all of the by-products of the technology you’ve created, you need to put it in a physical perspective. How should it exactly be done? That’s how we do it. A lot of the technology is potential military tech that might be realized in a possible future. We can’t do it now, but only because of technological limitations, such as battery capacity. You can include tech that lets you see everyone, but you need to describe it. You could have a drone sensor, a magnetic sensor that scans the fluctuations in the magnetic field around you, and pinpoints them. It might have an AI module that recognizes them and displays text to describe more details. You can’t see through walls with X-rays, but you can see different kinds of information, electromagnetic information, thermal information. That’s the approach we take. It’s not like you have some magic thing that allows you to see everyone like a wall hack. But again, even if you created this kind of tech – for example, to see electromagnetic signatures behind a wall – if you use that kind of equipment, your electromagnetic signature profile will spike up. Other people might see you as well and use that against you. GamesBeat: The emergent gameplay of something like ARC Raiders is popular. Have you picked up any ideas from it? Buyanov: It’s an extraction shooter for casual people. It’s not an option for us. We want to have the most painful, most challenging, and most rewarding experience. GamesBeat: You don’t want to have friendly people in your game? (haha) Buyanov: Well, you can try. That’s your call. But we’re trying to simulate reality. Tarkov is the same. We simulate reality. But in the future, it will be even richer than that. You’ll have a lot to do, and not just fighting people. You’ll need to survive dynamic events in the location. You might need to work with others to find shelter. GamesBeat: So there’s still a reason to team up with other people sometimes. Buyanov: Yes. We won’t force people to fight. But people will fight, of course. GamesBeat: Is there a specific number of people on a team? Buyanov: That also depends on the location. It may be too early to talk about it for now. But from four to five. Maybe four, because, for example, in Tarkov, I think we’ll change it to four. Five is too much. If you’re playing solo and you see a team of five, you’re in a really bad situation. It will be teams of four. But overall, the number of players at those locations will be higher than in Tarkov, for sure. The post How Tarkov creator yearned to make sci-fi shooter Fragmentary Order | Nikita Buyanov exclusive interview appeared first on GamesBeat. View the full article
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