Snow begins to fall round me. It’s serene, however I do know that in Prologue, the upcoming survival sport from PlayerUnknown Productions, it indicators my impending demise. A blizzard is quick approaching. My solely hope is to search out one of many cabins scrawled onto my map, and with extra assist from girl luck than my woeful orienteering abilities, I discover a little bit picket sanctuary. A few of the home windows are shattered, and the cabinets are naked aside from a pair baggage of rice and a few tins of soup. Except for the dim glow of a light-weight bulb, it’s darkish – I would like my torch, which I simply dropped with a mispress of a key. Catastrophe. However because the raging blizzard subsides, some extra excessive climate begins to roll in. A thunderstorm, with crackles of lightning that illuminate the cabin for a short second. After just a few flashes, I spot my torch after which gratefully reclaim it. Perhaps, simply perhaps, I’ll make it to the tip of this run.
Prologue excels at creating such moments. Ever since Brendan ‘PlayerUnknown’ Greene, the creator of the long-lasting battle royale PUBG, unveiled his new studio and impressive plan to create an open-source, moddable metaverse filled with planet-sized worlds referred to as Undertaking Artemis, I’ve discovered it arduous to fathom the way it could possibly be executed and what it will appear to be. Prologue, his new survival sport, is meant to be the primary main step in direction of it. In case you had been to look over my shoulder and see me enjoying it throughout my go to to PP’s studio, you in all probability wouldn’t assume it right away.
This can be a ‘easy’ survival sport, even by PlayerUnknown Productions’ personal admission. The early construct I performed was janky and contained a variety of bugs, together with the internally notorious ‘lake home’, which sees your beginning cabin spawn in the midst of a river. The visuals, particularly whereas inside cabins, seem fairly outdated too. It appears to be a good distance from a constructing block for a revolutionary metaverse – it didn’t even instantly strike me as a great survival sport, reality be instructed. However I steadily warmed to it.
Let’s begin with its credentials as a survival expertise. Regardless of its simplicity, Prologue is hardcore. It’s addictively grueling. A restricted stock and an deliberately clunky item-handling system demand your full focus. Unforgiving starvation and thirst meters will depart you in a continuing state of nervousness. The prospect of a blizzard that can freeze you to dying in a matter of minutes continually looms over you. There aren’t any goal markers, solely a compass and a map to assist information you. The overarching purpose sounds straightforward: journey out of your beginning cabin to the faint, blinking gentle atop a climate station tower. The journey, nonetheless, is much from simple.
The land you need to traverse just isn’t a bespoke, hand-crafted map. It’s, in actual fact, the best part of Prologue, and the muse for the massive worlds PlayerUnknown needs to create in Undertaking Artemis. Prologue makes use of machine studying to generate a contemporary, 8×8 kilometer map each single time you load up the sport. Totally different terrains, distinctive mountain formations, random cabin placements – each time you fail to succeed in that climate station, the route you simply carved for your self turns into irrelevant, and also you’ve obtained one other world to discover.
These maps are huge and punishing, with aforementioned dynamic climate occasions rolling in at unpredictable moments, usually large expanses of wilderness in between cabins, and a few brutal terrain that makes it tough to journey because the crow flies. It’s a terrain that may change with the climate too – rainfall will make rocks slippery and create swampy mud patches that sluggish your motion. Prologue’s machine studying system additionally creates every thing from stunning, plausible vistas to obscure phenomena that’ll have you ever questioning the legal guidelines of nature.
“I really like the best way that our worlds are generated, as a result of there’s a lot risk, and there are these possibilities for barely bizarre shit to seem,” Greene tells me. “However even the true world is stuffed with barely bizarre shit… Prologue is supposed to be undiscovered, it’s meant to be distinctive [every time], so I’m excited to see what’s found ultimately.”
PlayerUnknown Productions says that in Prologue, which confines itself to only one particular biome that resembles the forests of the German-Czech border, there are nonetheless tens of millions of attainable maps. The unbelievably lengthy seed numbers within the nook of my display screen every time I booted up a brand new map had been a testomony to that.
And that, on the finish of the day, is all the level of Prologue. It’s the primary of three video games PlayerUnknown Productions will launch within the build-up to Artemis, with each testing a core pillar. For Prologue, the pillar is how properly its machine-learning mind can create new environments. By including a gamified layer on high of the terrains it builds, it permits PlayerUnknown Productions to higher perceive its strengths, weaknesses, and quirks.
“As a result of we’re making a survival sport the place you need to continually be looking out, we’re placing the surroundings beneath a variety of scrutiny, as a result of all you’re doing is wanting on the world round you,” senior character artist Hakan Kamar succinctly summarizes to me.
Regardless of that overarching goal on the trail towards Artemis, the builders nonetheless need this to be a standalone, gratifying survival expertise that they’ll assist and broaden over time. It’s dropping in early entry first with a value level across the $20 mark, Greene tells me, and the studio is eager so as to add and enhance options as time goes on.
Resulting from its unforgiving nature, how tough it’s to succeed in the climate station, and a continually altering map, there’s a variety of potential for replayability right here. Whereas its visuals and obvious simplicity might put some folks off, its dynamic, ever-changing, and punishing world affords an alluring, irresistible gauntlet.
