Greetings, friends! In the previous update, we reported that we were lying there doing nothing. So, we keep doing it, but our copywriter, unexpectedly, decided to roll over to the other side and hit the keyboard with his paw. That's how this whole text came about. Probably...
Well, anyway. Last time we pretended to answer some of the most common questions. Today we'd like to do the same, but with different questions!
Let's start, perhaps, with the most frequent question. What will happen to the voice acting: will the spacesuit be the only one to talk, or will we hear some new voices? It's worth repeating that Breathedge 2 will be a game about a team of renegades wandering through deep space, and playing with a silent team - well, that's a debatable experience. As such, all of the game's characters will have their own voices, and they'll talk a lot. Even the Man will have his own catch phrases, or at least sounds. No one has heard words from him yet, to be honest. We plan to add VOs to all participants of events, regardless of their importance in the world - no simlish or silent subtitles with mouth opening animation would work for us. And yes, of course Babe will get her own voice as well. As one of the main and earliest members of our team, she has a special role to play in the project, gagging her would be blasphemy and just ew.
One of the most fundamental questions that arose after watching that weird trailer of the Man running around with a wheel was about the planet. In the first part of the game there was only one planet, far away, and it exploded. It's reasonable to ask - why do we need planets at all? The answer is uh, ehm, well.
Great, we got that sorted out, let's move on. A lot of people have asked what the planet landings are going to be like. Will it be a full-fledged globe with drop-offs at any spot and procedural generation of the surface? The answer is just two letters: YZ. Or whatever letters stand for negation... There are no plans for the procedural generation of planets. Landing on planets is rather a separate little adventure with its own peculiarities, tasks and opportunities. Planets are rare small patches of terrain with completely hand-drawn design, meant to tell their own story within the game universe, as well as give the Man and the crew a chance to take a break from weightlessness. Resting, exploring, building, resources, enemies, quests, wasting time - there will be plenty to do on the planets.
Since we mentioned building on the planets, we have to address this subject as well. There will be building both in space and on the surfaces of these very three and a half planets (the exact number of planets will be revealed closer to the game's release, i.e. by nevermber lastnext year). You all know that besides exact dates, we are also big fans of useless buildings, but this time we would like to put a little more sense into them. First of all, building on the planet will be designed to facilitate our adventure - from convenient storage of surplus resources, to automatic extraction stations, sending the resources we need directly to the ship, wherever we are (magic, Mr. Potter!). Second, bases can become some kind of centers of attraction in the area of space. Who knows who and when our base will lure, and how it will benefit us in the future. And also, although we mentioned it somewhere, you can always return to your base from anywhere, and we will not remove it with an invisible wall after loading the next stage of the walkthrough. Yes, we know it's not our style, but what can we do with it?
Someone, but definitely not us, said something about the enemies above. There is one unanswered question about them: will the game have more enemies than the first part? We can proudly respond by saying that our artist has beautiful eyes! Yes! Okay, who are we fooling, he has no eyes at all, and it's noticeable... But there will still be enemies, and we plan to increase their quantity and quality a lot. Breathedge 2 will not turn into a shooter, no, and the core gameplay will still be based on exploration, not on the slaughter of hordes of cannibal hamsters. But, definitely, you'll always be able to find someone to use a crowbar against.
There was another minor, odd, yet frequent question: will there be underwater gameplay? It's probably all because of our love for Subnautica (Subnavtica, Sabnawtica, Sobnatica, Sub... ahhh, whatever). While we've never once mentioned it in every news post, or even hinted at this wonderful project in our final Breathedge splash screen, we will point out that underwater gameplay would be interesting to do, but it's definitely not the main focus. We can't promise that it will be there, nor can we promise otherwise. Rather, the presence of underwater gameplay will depend on how well we do with the main task - space gameplay. *The author of the text waves his hand indefinitely in the direction of somewhere else, with a blissful expression on his face and the phrase "we'll see" frozen on his lips.
And also, also, if there are enemies, surely they can be captured, caged, trained, and turned into obedient pets? We're afraid it doesn't quite work that way. We tried this theory with our programmer, but it didn't work. He still bites, shits on the floor, and screams "refactoring" in spring trying to attract a female. Since our project has always been and remains an ultra-realistic simulation of a real astronaut, we will try to bring taming mechanics into the game, but make it logical. It is most likely possible to tame some creatures, but only in special cases under certain circumstances. Grabbing the first aggressive coffin robot you see and naming it Anton is not the best idea.
If there are enemies, a crew, and maybe even pets, how can we get rid of them? Will there be only one kind of small arms in the game, or will there be a variety of them? Here the answer is pretty trivial - Yes. And we move on... Okay, okay, we need details again. In the first part of the game the Man had almost no natural enemies, except for himself and rare security robots (and bosses, but they don't count). For the second part we have already recklessly promised crowds of various enemies, and this automatically leads to the need for some variety in weaponry. Here we can unequivocally promise that the Man will have a wide range of weapons, both small arms and not. Again, since this is not a shooter, you should not expect all kinds of vibro-bell-whistle-guns, but the game will not be limited to one blaster.
By the way, since we've talked about planets, landings, enemies, bases and other stuff, we must mention the general structure of the game. We are asked about it, there are a lot of questions on this subject, there were even some answers, but... So. Based on numerous reviews, wishes, hundreds of watched streams and just common sense, Breathedge 2 will resemble the first chapters of the first part of the game. It will feature gameplay in open space, among various structures and debris, searching for useless trash, oxygen and food. The game will consist of separate locations that will be unlocked through loading. Of course, we will try to hide the loading screens and make everything pretty, deceiving the viewer, but don't trust your eyes, there will be loadings, subloadings, and even overloadings everywhere. So, being on such a loaded location, figuring out a very interesting and non-banal story arc of this area and collecting all sorts of junk, we will expand our game opportunities, upgrade our ship and make new kinds of tools. All this will allow us to travel further, bigger and more active, moving our ship to new locations via loads. Honestly flying through empty space in real time, spending thousands of years to move between planets is not our plan, but do let us know if you really want it. A little later, in a separate update, we will definitely reveal the gameplay details, with pictures, videos and all the dirty details, but for now, to make it clearer, we drew a rough gameplay scheme. We hope that it will answer almost all known questions.
And lastly, a small quiz. Who noticed something wrong in the text? Where did we lie?
A) Nevermber lastnext year is not a real date
B) You keep mentioning Subnautica all the time
C) You can't have a copywriter
D) A programmer never bites, just messes around
And the correct answer, of course... drum roll... C) We don't have and have never had a copywriter. We just rub the keyboard against the dirty carpet and T9 does the rest. Whoever guessed it, big ups.
And that's all for today, because the carpet is already full of lint. We hope that all this profound text has brought some clarity to the future project, and if not, try reading the update backwards. We'll even help: :pleh neve ll'eW. sdrawkcab etadpu eth... bullshit, agreed. Anyway, at least we tried.
For us to try better - reach out to us directly on our official Discord.
Here it is:
https://discord.gg/uezQcU7
And, as usual, we remind you that we are open for all kinds of e-mails at [email protected]. And if we didn't answer you there, we probably thought you were spam. It happens, alas.
And you can still add Breathedge 2 to your wishlist. The more people add it, the sooner the developers will be overflowing with pride. You'll even be able to burst us, but that's unconfirmed information. We would, personally, give it a try, so join in.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2412960/Breathedge_2
