The latest walking corpse to join the shambling horde of PC zombie survival sims is the terribly named H1Z1 from Sony Online Entertainment, the team behind PlanetSide and EverQuest.
“We’re building a sandbox style of gameplay where players can build shelters out of resources in the world,” SOE president John Smedley said during the game’s reveal playthrough on Twitch.
“They can even work together to make amazing fortresses, complete with weaponry, to help defend against both the Infected and other players. Players also have access to a very deep crafting system that can let them make a huge variety of awesome stuff, including weapons, explosives, and other fun surprises.”
So DayZ meets Rust, then? Not quite. “There will be multiple servers with very different rulesets. This creates a thriving trading economy. It also means you have potential allies in the all-out war on the infected.” The game will be free-to-play, with a $20 early-access option before release and in-game microtransactions. But Smedley said they’re “not interested” in making the game pay-to-win. These purchasable items will be cosmetic only.
“The main thing that differentiates H1Z1 from the other great games in the genre is the emphasis on player ownership and building. We want you to be able to form roving gangs that are headquartered out of an abandoned warehouse you’ve taken over, or a house you’ve built from scratch after having cut down trees and secured the resources to make it.”
Hardcore DayZ-style survival mechanics in an MMO-sized server could be amazing-or a lawless Wild West full of griefers. But Smedley thinks the large map size will help in this regard. “We want it to be remote... If there are 20 players in view, it’s not a very convincing apocalypse.”
