Last month, Avalanche Studios, the game developer behind the Just Cause series that is also co-developing Rage 2 alongside id Software, revealed yet another project it has in the works: an open-world co-op shooter game called Generation Zero in which players must hunt and defeat hostile robots in an alternate version of 1980’s Sweden. Now, Avalanche has revealed a little more about how the game’s enemy robots will function, and how they’ll be able to use clever behaviors to get the jump on unprepared players.
Speaking in a recent interview with Polygon, Generation Zero game director Emil Kraftling talked about how the inspiration behind the game actually came from another lesser-known game called The Hunter which Avalanche had co-developed with another developer, Expansive Worlds, back in 2009.
Even though it eventually led to a franchise of subsequent game releases, The Hunter never really became mainstream, but one aspect of the game that Avalanche was particularly proud of was the hyper-realistic AI behaviors of the animals the player could hunt. Along with being able to see and hear the player, the animals could also potential smell the player based on their position and what direction the wind was blowing. Kraftling said he and his team wanted to keep that inherent tension and risk of being detected, but they also wanted to apply it to an enemy type that could hunt the player back:
“When we realized we were going to make a new self-published game, we wanted to make something that was less niche and more mainstream. We said, ‘What if instead of animals that run away from you when they detect you, what if you have something dangerous that comes at you when it detects you? What if we take that stealth, tactical element and we combine it with the other side of our history — which is these explosive, action-packed, AAA games like Just Cause — and we tried to combine them into something that is in an entirely new experience?’”
In Generation Zero, players will be able to use unconventional tools and tactics to get the jump on their robotic adversaries. For example, a boom box blaring music can lure a robot into an ambush. However, Kraftling also noted that the robots will have a few tricks up their sleeves as well:
“Being machines, we realized we could add more advanced sensors to them. So for instance, rather than just having normal vision, some of them can have night vision so they see better at night. Some of them can have heat vision — infrared vision — where they basically they see you through foliage. They can see you through a fog or smoke, which you otherwise could use against them. The same is true for some of their other more advanced senses.”
We haven’t yet seen too much of what Kraftling talks about play out in real time, but hopefully we won’t have to wait long to see it for ourselves. Generation Zero is currently slated to launch in 2019 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.