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Nakipag-usap kami kay Anil Glendinning, creative director ng developer Friday Sundae, upang malaman pa ang tungkol sa paparating na maaliwalas na pakikipagsapalaran, na nakatakdang ilunsad sa PC at Xbox Series X/S sa huling bahagi ng taon.
"Hello everyone and welcome back. Today we're in the arena booth at Gamescom and well you might be familiar with who I'm speaking with today because me and Anil we seem to have a lot of conversations at least as of recent. So you're from Friday Sundae, the developer of There Are No Ghosts at The Grand and well the game is back on everyone's mind again because it just appeared at opening night live. So what was that like?
Surreal? It was surreal, it was exciting, and it was thrilling. You know, we've seen Opening Night live, like everyone else, on streams, but it doesn't compare to actually being there in person and being here at Gamescom in person and really seeing the reactions of gamers to the new trailer that we put out. Now, the last time me and you spoke was the London Games Festival back in May, April, springtime. How has the game changed in the period since? How has There Are No Ghosts at The Grand continued to evolve? Well, one of the things that we announced at Opening Night Live is that we're going to be coming to early access this December. And so that's the thing that we've really been pushing towards. The game is structured around a kind of each episode, each mission is like an episode. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And it's in some ways standalone. And so when we release on Early Access, players are going to have access to 22 missions, 22 episodes, to explore the town of Kingswood-on-Sea, the haunted Grand, and all of the characters within it. So we've been working really hard on that since we last spoke at London, and we look forward to bringing that to players December this year. How are you approaching that early access journey then, you know, because you want people to be able to experience as much of the game as possible, but then when you drop new content, it has to feel a little bit almost like a necessary next step. So how are you approaching that and making sure that people feel comfortable about continuing to return to the game?
Why is No Ghosts at The Grand structured like a TV show?
The first series of it, which wraps up a lot of mysteries, a lot of questions and a lot of answers. And by the end of that, you'll discover why there are no ghosts at The Grand, but it will also then lead you forward onto the next series, which will be coming out the following year after just a few months. How does that work from a gameplay perspective?
With early access, players will be able to play the story in a linear way. So we'll have Chapter 1 dropping in December, and then in the first quarter, I suppose, of 2027, Chapter 2, and then towards the end of next year, the final chapter, Chapter 3."
"So players will be able to experience it in that way. But within early... And all of that will be extremely polished, extremely playable, and we'll be really curious to hear people's feedback. But we'll also be dropping surprises along the way, which affect our open world. As well as the story missions, there are side activities that you'll be able to do within the open world town. And those will be dropping every other month or so. So players will be able to explore metal detecting on the beach, or dredging for treasure using their fishing boat, or solving some of the kind of open world mysteries. And those will be coming to early access to kind of draw people back in and surprise them when they log back into the game. So you mentioned sort of three key series that makes up the Early Access journey."
"Oftentimes when developers do, let's say they bring to the conclusion of their story, it usually coincides with a 1.0. So do you regard the third major series as the end of your Early Access journey? Yes, I think that's probably fair to say. So, you know, it's a little bit like you can binge the entire three seasons. And I think the Americans call them seasons and we call them series in the UK. You can binge all three seasons. Recap And we'll cover some of the time jumps that have happened. And it's a great point to jump in because we've designed this game for busy people, busy workers, busy parents. So you can dive in and enjoy an episode that may last between 10 and 20 minutes. And you can enjoy it season by season, kind of jumping in and out because we know people are incredibly busy and we like to respect people's time. There Are No Ghosts at The Grand, Friday Sundae, Anil Glendinning, Gamescom There Are No Ghosts at The Grand, Friday Sundae, Anil Glendinning, Gamescom."
"In the opening night live trailer that you showed off, you committed to the December launch window. When are we going to get any more firm information in regards to an exact date?
When we say an exact date, it's likely to be the first week or so of that. But it's really important, I think, particularly for indie devs, to pay close attention to what else is releasing around that period, so you can find a nice time slot. So a little bit closer to the time when we can find a nice landing spot for the game, that's when we'll kind of drop it in December. But we know people are going to be super busy in December with that little thing called Christmas and that other little thing called Grand Theft Auto. Yeah, you could say that you're a brave man, Anil, for going up against Grand Theft Auto, but someone needs to do it, so I respect it. We'll go with the final question then. Obviously, people have seen There Are No Ghosts at The Grand evolve over the years. They've seen it change a lot and they've seen you showing off more and more gameplay, including actually recently confirming Billy Boyd as a key cast member. As a way to round out, what's one thing that you're really excited for people to experience about the game when they go hands-on quite imminently in a few months' time? I think the thing we're most excited about is that all of the surprises within the game, despite everything that we have shown, the cast, the gameplay, the mechanics, It only really scratches the surface of where the story goes. We cannot emphasize this enough. Not everything you see is real. Not everything you hear can be believed. The player character goes in there as a complete unknown into this environment, but he doesn't know what he stepped into."
"So I think players are going to be really surprised in all the strange and unusual places that the story goes. And it will start making sense as to why we've made some of the casting decisions that we have done. So we're looking forward to players www.gamescom.com"
