It’s almost like we’re on different floors in the same building – we can’t go to their desks, but communication is really easy between the two.” Working between the locations is largely smooth he adds: “We have a teleconference system that’s open all the time between the two offices, so it’s pretty much like having a window, and stand-up meetings are conducting that way. Though, as Bloch explains, they “have representation of every single department in both locations,” rather than allocating specific skillsets to just a single location. The team is then split almost evenly between offices in the Ukraine and Malta. The ambition of the features and technical challenges required to implement them is greater than anything we’ve done before.”ĭespite the triple-A polish and scope, all of this is the work of a relatively small team of 150 people, a number which includes administrative staff and internal QA too.

It’s pretty huge in scope and scale, and it’s a challenge trying to communicate all those things.”ĤA Games executive producer Jon Bloch confirms that all those changes make for a lot more work: “From a production standpoint the scope of this game is much larger than anything we’ve done before. We really vary the flow and the pacing throughout the game, so it can go from rollercoaster action set piece, to slowburn survival horror, to pure horror, to stealth. “At E3 we showed a much more action-oriented trailer, but we wanted to show the other side to the game here. “Trying to find that one thing that will communicate what this game’s about can be somewhat misleading,” he answers.

The E3 and Gamescom trailers are in fact so different in tone they could almost be for entirely different games, so we ask Beynon if that’s a tricky hurdle in terms of presenting the game to a wider audience? The E3 demo, set in spring, was a far more action-packed outing than the autumn section we’re playing. Walking through that wood, we can hear the wolves circling around us, with one flashing out of the trees to attack, and later we see them chasing a pack of antelopes across our path, before we eventually chose to climb up to walkways in the trees to avoid their attentions.Īs well as being more expansive, the game is also more varied, set across all four seasons, each with their own unique feel, both graphically and in gameplay terms. Coming off a zipline we’re shown a scene where a huge beast chases a pack of wolf-like creatures through a wood. It may be bigger, but the world still cleverly blends scripted and dynamic events to great effect. “In terms of game length it’s looking like both the previous games combined, in terms of dialogue more than double the dialogue of both the previous games and all DLC combined.”Īnd we instantly appreciate the extra work. The game is bigger “by an order of magnitude,” he continues. There’s no map screen with thousands of different tabs for main quest, side quests and the number of wolf belts you’ve collected,” he reassures us. “Just like every Metro game there’s no HUD, we keep the UI to a minimum, we don’t give you fetch quests and objective markers, all the information is still communicated through physical in-game items. There’s already a lot of very similar open-world games out there, but I think what we’ve shown here, and at E3, is that this is a beast unlike anything else, there’s a lot of STALKER influence in there. “We don’t borrow from contemporary open-world conventions. Beynon tells us that the team has “spent a huge amount of time in pre-production getting the formula right, so it still feels very much like a Metro game, but adding more freedom and player choice.” However, he is keen to highlight that these aren’t typical open-world mechanics.

Metro exodus maps