The video version:
The written version:
Over the last few months, I’ve been quietly contemplating which game to create content for following the abrupt and rather sad end to the development of Mavericks Proving Grounds, after its developer, Automaton went into financial administration at the end of July 2019.
Looking forward, I decided there are a few key factors that I want to see in whatever game or games I start to create content for. Amongst other things, one of the most important was actually the same thing that drew me to Mavericks in the first instance, and that was a game that incorporated a large-scale photo-realistic environment.
That aspect drew me to take a closer look at a game being developed by a new studio that was founded in late 2018. From what I’ve seen from them so far, it’s likely this new PC game will be the subject of the content you’ll be seeing from me in the foreseeable future. So, who are they?
Well, Embark Studios was established after Patrick Söderlund, the former Chief Design Officer of EA and CEO of Battlefield developer, DICE, left that studio in August 2018. Söderlund is joined at Embark by a team now totalling around 80 staff, many of whom were formerly at DICE working on games such as Battlefield and Battlefront. It’s a team that appears to be highly-experienced, and more than capable of creating a game that includes a sublime environment, and hopefully AAA-level gunplay and character movement to boot.
In addition, at the start of July 2019, South Korean gaming giant Nexon, a company with a market capitalization of around 12 billion dollars and six-and-a-half thousand employees, took a majority shareholding in Embark Studios, meaning that the fledgling developer has some pretty hefty backing.
So, what sort of game is Embark making? Well, we only know a few details so far, but Söderlund wrote in a blog post at the start of July 2019 that they are creating a cooperative free-to-play action game set in a distant future and that the game’s theme is about overcoming seemingly impossible odds by working together.
We also have a few concept art and early render images and some environment video to go along with Söderlund’s description of the game, so let’s take a closer look at those.
The concept art includes images of massive structures built in an expansive and desolate landscape, as well as what appears to be the remains of some sort of space shuttle next to a launch tower, adjacent to a tall waterfall, although why one of the solid rocket boosters on the vehicle appears to be attached pointy-end down in this artwork is anyone’s guess.
The top left image in this trio shows a pair of characters setting up some sort of device in an Icelandic-looking environment, the bottom-left image has a group of three with a long cable laid out on a beach, which appears to shoot out flares in order to signal or attract a massive robotic quadrapod emerging from the coastal mist. This image is reminiscent of the tripods from Orsen Well’s 'War of the Worlds', so perhaps the game will share some of those themes of individuals fighting against an oppressive force, which I think would be pretty interesting. The righthand image is of a woman in some sort of flight suit, which appears to be the same seen in the top left image.
Embark have also recently posted rendered images of the woman’s helmet, which show exquisitely realistic detail:
Reflected in the woman’s visor appears to be the interior of a large well lit building like an aircraft hanger. The studio also released this short video of the stages of the helmet being composited:
The same woman is also seen in this single image from the developer’s first weekly playtest of the game from a couple of months ago, which Patrick Söderlund also described as gloriously buggy:
The yellow note above the large monitor appears to say “It can only get better from here” with a heart drawn underneath, possibly a little encouragement for the devs from the studio’s management team.
It’s too early to know if the third-person perspective we see of the woman in the playtest here is representative of the entire game, or if this in-game shot is purely some sort of lobby image with the actual gameplay being in first-person perspective. You’ll also notice the desert environment appearing again here and this brings me neatly to the environment videos Embark have published:
The videos outline photogrammetry trips to Tenerife, an arid volcanic island located off the south-western coast of Morocco, as well as Iceland - the latter of which has likely been used for that concept art image of the abandoned space shuttle we saw earlier - this location could well be set in front of an artist’s rendition of Iceland’s picturesque Seljalandsfoss waterfall that you see here:
Now, If you haven’t heard of photogrammetry when it comes to game development before, in short, it’s the method of taking thousands of photos of real-world environments or objects and using those images to make photorealistic in-game textures or objects. The advantage of this, is that photogrammetry can literally save a developer time and money when it comes to projects that rely on reality-based art styles.
Anyhow, both Tenerife and Iceland present absolutely stunning desolate and craggy environments, and I can’t wait to see more of the in-game environments based on these locations.
Embark have taken the work from the Tenerife photogrammetry trip and incorporated it into two development videos which show a desert biome that includes the remains of large radio dishes, and in another shot, what appears to be a large oil or water pipeline. In this first video published it is explained by Andrew Hamilton, art director for Embark Studios, that the landscape you see here is a portion of a 256 square kilometre landscape with dynamic weather and lighting, and that it was created by just three people over three weeks:
The detail shown in the environments here is pretty amazing and I think it’s great to see a studio this dedicated to producing realistic-looking in-game landscapes.
As well as making a start on their first game, Embark has the goal, as part of its mission, to create tools that will allow non-professional game developers to create games. As the studio admits in a blog post, that’s a pretty big vision, which will take time and effort to complete.
Their AI team has already been experimenting with a physically-based system that uses reinforcement learning to create animations. They show some of the progress for that in this video below which provides an example of some walking animations for a spider-robot, created by the learning system without any manual animation work at all. It’ll be interesting to see where this work leads to.
That’s all I have about Embark Studios, so far, but I’ll be sure to update you as soon as I have more info about the game they’re working on.
If you enjoyed this blog post, please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel.
Comentários