Hey everyone!
Today we want to give you a overview of what is to come. As you may have read, we are currently working on Grand Operation which is a really huge update and might need a bit more time, but it will be one of the biggest leaps we have taken as a studio.
Keep in mind that all things are never set in stone and we always do what is best given the current situation / plans might change.
Keynotes:
- Focus on out-game elements
- New Base of Operations
- Construct varied Buildings
- Unlock perks and features
- Interact with NPCs
- New difficulty system
- Story elements
- Quests
- Rework on menus
- Party System
- Gameplay & Balance tweaks
- Final Boss Blessings
- and more!
In Grand Operation, the main menu is removed and you start as a android pilot from the human resistance. You are stationed on the stealth Resistance base "Phantom-One" near the coast of Vietnam, right at the border of the machine expansion.
The base allows free roaming and constructing varied buildings, containing menus you know but also new features and progression unlocks. The new resistance radio allows you to play music, barracks, shield generator and fusion reactor give you improvements to tackle the higher difficulties. The radar explains the environments in the world and the state of the machine expansion but that's enough of the spoilers.
Constructing buildings increases the war effort and progresses the timeline, adding a slightly flexible but clear campaign progression throughout all the old and new features of the game. Lastly the big main building (secret) will offer quests while at your mission and form a small storyline.
The Grand Operations update takes a lot of time since we first had to develop new systems to drive the walkable main menu, rework and split up the old main menu UI and set up unlockable base buildings. We are mostly finished with this and are now shifting towards adding a first batch of story quests with voice lines, some 3d characters with animations and more.
There is a lot more to tell but we don't want to spoiler too much, so stay tuned!
U15 Under the Hood
In the last months we have reworked and added many core elements of the framework, such as groundwork for the new Quest systems, dialogs and dialog chains, flexible currencies and action bars, NPCs, voice lines, interchangeable hud and menus, outgame saving and reward structures, networking and lobby changes, new shader and asset pipelines, character pipelines, skin shaders, icon workflows, particle system changes, major project cleanups and so much more. The editor has also seen major improvements.
All these things will be directly in use in the game in Grand Operations or will be important groundwork for future updates. We know this sounds quite obscure but there has been a lot happening under the hood. After grand operations we will be pretty much done with foundation work however and are planning on mostly spending time on content and polish.
Keynotes:
- Planned around christmas holidays
- Overhauled class perk / module system
- Focus on in-game Game-play improvements & classes
- Improvements on the base of operations
- and more...
Ascendency will focus on further gameplay improvements and giving the classes more variation with a new perk system. We also want to really polish up the core gameplay and the enemy encounters. As usual there will always be plenty of unplanned improvements coming in.
Keynotes:
- Early next year
- The Engineer Class
- Boss / Gameplay Improvements
- and more...
After U17 we are intending to go quickly towards launch. Depending on how things go, the Engineering update might be integrated into the launch update. You can expect a new announcement for this when it's time.
We'll keep you posted about Grand Operations!
Thanks for stopping by, have fun!
- Team FFG
