After finishing the four-or-so-hour preview build of Metro 2039, the upcoming first-person shooter sequel from Ukrainian developer 4A Games and falling completely in love with it, I reached out to the team to ask some questions about how they've approached the latest entry in their post-apocalyptic franchise – both in terms of the game itself, but also because their real lives have changed so much since Russia's invasion of their country in 2022.
  • Naz@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    121·
    17 hours ago

    “For our younger audience, I might say, use sprint only when you really have to,” Ulmer suggested. “Don’t sprint through the game all over the place. There’s a lot of things to enjoy, as Jon mentioned, a lot of things to hear, to think about, just to absorb the atmosphere. So sprint only when you actually have to sprint, running from a lot of threats that will try to chase you. In that case, go for it. But it’s like a good movie. Playing this story just in order to finish, it’s a bad idea. Enjoy it. Take your time.”

    If you give players the option to sprint or run, they’re going to always run. Even in games like Half Life 2. The default movement is “fastest”. You have to pace your cutscenes with the assumption that some players will just absolutely blast through the content (and/or completely ignore/skip dialogue) or sprint the whole way, and that’s fine.

    If games are too slow-paced, they also die (see: Witcher 3, many, many players started it, but didn’t finish it, despite its commercial and critical success).