Hello Hunters!
One of the things we're most excited about with ZERO Sievert 2 is expanding the world. We want Zakov to feel like a real place. A world with consequences to your actions.
To achieve this, we're adding even deeper narrative than the first game. That is not a knock on ZERO Sievert 1. The original already has rich environments, characters, story arcs and plenty of that carries it forward. It's more that ZS2 has the room to go the whole hog. Or, I guess, the whole boar.
To give you a proper look at how that thinking is taking shape, Ethan and Crimmerz sat down for a chat.
Ethan is a Game Designer at Underdog. He's also QA on ZERO Sievert 1 and our official Lore Keeper, so he knows the world like the back of his hand from both sides of the bunker door.
Crimmerz is a Gameplay Programmer at Underdog. And between the two of them, you get the design intent and the systems that have to actually make the stories work on a Hunt.
ZERO Sievert 1 wears its influences with a grin. Most of the references stay subtle, then every so often one slaps you in the face. Stalker. Roadside Picnic. An exclusion zone full of things that shouldn't exist and are often trying to kill you...
Follow that chain back and it runs Zero Sievert, to Stalker the game, to Tarkovsky’s Stalker, to the Strugatsky brothers’ Roadside Picnic. A wish granter. A crystal. A place that changes everyone who walks into it.
We are not doing a straight adaptation of any of that. The pacing would be a completely different game. What we can do is keep the elements that matter, filter them through ZERO Sievert and mix in some other things until Zakov feels like itself.
The first game already has a strong hook. You are the Hunter and most of the quests push you towards Zakov. Once there, it opens up... Though, we're not gonna spoil what in this post.
For ZERO Sievert 2, we can go further. There will be a main quest of course. There will be faction quests too, just like before. And instead of leaning only on Networker dailies, we now have the space for smaller, complete stories from a selection of interesting characters.
For example, someone from outside the Zone comes up to you. They need something from inside it. Their story may last one or two quests and the whole thing you can play tin an evening. Then you go back to the Hunt.
Think less “20-hour main path and nothing else”, more the joy of a game like Morrowind. Big through-line, yes, but a lot of the best stuff is the strange person you meet, the snippet of a life you only half understand and the feeling that the world keeps moving whether you are on the critical path or not.
Antoine has said this in a previous video and it still holds: we are making a video game, not a movie, a book or a comic. The story has to live in the doing.
Some of the best memories in games are the side quests where you meet a weird character, do something completely random and for a few minutes you are not in a linear story anymore. You are just in the world.
That is a target for us. More strange people and encounters. More missions. And more story to uncover the deeper you go.
The nice surprise for us has been just how much content is already in. A worry at this stage would be writing a pile of quests that add up to an hour and calling it a day. That is not where we are. There are already many hours of this kind of content taking shape, which is a very good sign.
Thanks for taking the time to read through our latest update! If you would rather watch than read, or would like to get to know our devs that little bit more, then check out the video version of this dev update here: We'll see you in the next one, Hunters