Until Dawn – Everyone Dies

Make all the wrong decisions in Until Dawn and everyone dies. Who would have thought? Most everyone turn into Wendigos and it’s on Sam and Mike to survive by destroying the lodge when a gas leak breaks out. Of course, this can also be botched, causing the two to die in the explosion as well. Even if Josh somehow survives the whole ordeal, he’s seen in the post-credits turning into a Wendigo.

Limbo

Set on the precipices of Hell, Limbo sees a lone boy trying to find a missing girl, who’s apparently his his sister. Along the way, he meets either angry folk or dead folk. Oh, and a terrifying giant spider that will quickly murder him. After all the trials, the boy finds himself back in the forest and seemingly finds the girl. Suddenly, the game ends. Yes, just like that. Did they proceed to the afterlife? Are they stuck in limbo? The unknown can be scary in its own right and Limbo masters it quite well.

Funcom’s excellent and unsettling psychological horror, The Park, is going to launch on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 soon. However, the Xbox One and its players will once again be getting a version of a game that is not quite on par with the PS4 version- the game has been confirmed to be running on 1080p and 30fps on the PlayStation 4. The Xbox One version, on the other hand, will run anywhere from 900p to 1080p, depending on the situation.

That’s not all, either- in an interview with WCCFTech, Funcom’s Chief Technical Officer (CTO) Fred Richardson also confirmed that no DirectX 12 version of the game was in the works for now.

“We are not using DX12 for The Park currently on any platform,” Richardson said. “Improved draw call submission performance would not automatically yield great gains for us in The Park. DX12 is a potentially very powerful API for certain types of scenes, but games that have been written to handle the limitations of older-gen graphics APIs might not benefit from it immediately.”

The Park is available now on PC, with the console versions launching soon.

This summer, Microsoft and Reagent Games will be offering our first look at what could be the future of cloud tech-powered games with Crackdown 3‘s multiplayer. Based on the demo we saw at Gamescom 2015, we’re excited but it’s still a little odd to see this technology being consolidated into huge AAA titles like this.

GamingBolt spoke to The Park game director Joel Bylos of Funcom about his opinion on the same and where he thinks it will lead gaming in general. He stated that, “Hmmm, technology is a wonderful thing but it is the impact on gameplay that really matters. I haven’t looked into exactly what Crackdown 3 is doing, but using cloud computing to do physics calculations on the server side and then passing that information back to a client… sure I guess.

“It’s a cool idea that probably doesn’t alter your immediate experience (the moment to moment) of playing the game that much. And seeing it is a multiplayer only feature, my assumption is that the developers would not be hanging their hat on that particular feature either.

“I do think cloud computing can have a huge impact on indirect activities, but since it will always be heavily tied to connection speeds, I’d be wary of using it for any core mechanics. With that said, imagine an RPG like The Witcher with an AI driven Game Master who lives in the cloud and creates adventures for your player (like a world building version of the AI director from Left 4 Dead). This sort of technology makes these sort of possibilities available. I like new technology because it always throws a new tool in the toolbox.”

At the end of the day, it will ultimately come down to the kinds of games that cloud tech can power and whether they’ll be fun. What are your thoughts on it? Let us know in the comments.

"The Park has undergone many iterations even during such a short development time, but the backbone of the story was in place very early. We knew that we wanted a slow build-up and we wanted to plant a lot of possibilities in the mind of the player early on."

Funcom has a very strong reputation with adventure games, as evidenced by The Longest Journey and Dreamfall. Is that what motivated you to return to the genre or was it something else?

Joel Bylos: Funcom has always been a company that likes to tell stories and even though in recent years we have had a focus on multiplayer games, we still tried to develop interesting worlds and narratives within those worlds.

Our motivation with The Park was mostly technical, to be honest. We assigned a small team of developers to learn the ins and outs of the Unreal Engine 4 technology and as a team decided that the best way to learn the engine would be to create a full game from start to finish. Because of our past and our strength as storytellers, it was only natural that we went with a heavily narrative driven game

The Park is very unlike Funcom’s previous adventure titles. Was the intention to experiment with The Secret World’s mythos or were you unsure what kind of game it would ultimately be?

Joel Bylos: We made a lot of choices based on economy in the beginning. We wanted to constrain the gameworld to a small area – Atlantic Island Park was a very good fit for the size of the world we wanted to create in The Park. From there it was a very simple choice to set the game in the universe of The Secret World and to use that style of storytelling in a familiar setting.

So the answer that we started out unsure as to what type of game we would make, but as we constructed our logical framework for such a short production, we quickly saw that The Secret World was the best alternative.

It’s interesting to note the characters of The Secret World but how The Park‘s protagonist is a seemingly normal woman. What can you tell us about the process behind designing Lorraine and her story?

Joel Bylos: Because of the shorter production time and the limited team size, we tried to keep our ambitions for the gameplay in check. This meant that in order to gain traction we needed to build interest in the story. In the end, we’re all the sum of our influences and in the case of The Park, I’ve spent a lot of time the past few years (since my children were born) fascinated by the changes that people go through as they become parents. It’s intriguing to me that in a world with so much information there are still dark sides to being a parent that are not discussed openly.

Lorraine was born of that fascination – I wanted to make a character that could reflect some of those thoughts and ponderings back into the world and build a story around a horrible “What if?”

"As for additional chapters, The Park itself is a very self-contained story which doesn’t really need further chapters or sequels. But more of the same in The Secret World? I’d be onboard with that."

Horror games have made a very strong comeback in the past few years but The Park seems to take a more reserved approach. What can you tell us about the overall atmosphere and how you went about creating it?

Joel Bylos: The Park has undergone many iterations even during such a short development time, but the backbone of the story was in place very early. We knew that we wanted a slow build-up and we wanted to plant a lot of possibilities in the mind of the player early on.  Visually, our art team know how to create a story through the environment and they took the first design and ran with it. Originally the world was more open and gradually became more claustrophobic and I think that they managed to carry this over well.

And naturally, our audio team have always been world class and in a genre like horror it really gave our guys a chance to shine. It’s really important to remember that The Park was experimental and so we tried a lot of different techniques throughout the game – each ride is an experiment with one aspect of the technology built into Unreal Engine 4 and we tried to build our game accordingly.

What is your response to criticisms regarding The Park’s length? Does it feel like something worth continuing into additional chapters/games?

Joel Bylos: I think that the criticism is of the value proposition rather than the length per se. People see the length of The Park and the price of The Park and they have to decide whether it is worth their time. And that decision will always be up to the individual, I think. Some people will say “It’s worth a couple of beers or a lunch” and others maybe don’t want to spend that much on a couple of hours of entertainment.

My biggest focus is making sure that the game isn’t full of “filler” content. I’m not a massive fan of the direction many games have taken lately with larger worlds that are filled with collectible content that extends the playtime, but doesn’t add much to the experience. We tried to make The Park focused and intense, with minimal filler.

Some examples of this were making the game more linear (originally you could visit the rides in any order) and making sure that the player had a run button. Both of those decisions decreased the playtime, but in my opinion they increased the value. I’d rather players walk away feeling that they got something of value in 2 hours, rather than feeling that they got something vaguely unfulfilling in 5 hrs.

As for additional chapters, The Park itself is a very self-contained story which doesn’t really need further chapters or sequels. But more of the same in The Secret World? I’d be onboard with that.

Have you considered an episodic horror series in the vein of Telltale Games’ various IPs?

Joel Bylos: I’d love to develop a longer story that we could tell over several episodes and I certainly have some ideas in that direction, but if I told you anything here, I’d have to kill you.

What are your thoughts on The Park coming to Xbox One and PS4?

Joel Bylos: It’s exciting! In my career I’ve never actually worked on a console game so seeing that process from start to finish will be very interesting. These days it seems a lot simpler to get on consoles than it used to be, but we still have a lot to learn to get The Park up and running.

"[VR] is almost like the evolution from card games to board games to PC games. There is a new type of design mindset that is going to be needed and while principles will be shared across the all, it is going to require a specific subset of skills."

Furthermore, which platform are you guys more likely to launch on first?

Joel Bylos: I have no idea. I have seen it running on one of the consoles, but again I don’t want to say too much without knowing for sure.

For that matter, what are your thoughts on both consoles in general? Do you see Funcom investing heavily in current gen consoles at any point in the future?

Joel Bylos: I do think the benchmark for getting a game onto consoles is a lot lower than it was last generation. In general the gaming market is converging in a way I haven’t seen before – Valve are focused on bringing the PC experience to the TV screen, but on the flip side, the console makers are making it as simple as possible to bring new games to their consoles from the PC platform.

The important winners here are game developers because we get more places where we can deliver our products and that hopefully means we can expand our fan base as well. Funcom is definitely watching this space with interest!

Is it possible that The Park ever heads to VR devices in the future? What do you think of technologies like Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR?

Joel Bylos: The Park already works somewhat on VR (though we disabled it for launch) thanks to the built in capabilities of Unreal Engine 4. It needs a lot of UI work and design tweaks (unlocking the camera in cutscenes, for example) before we could release it on a VR platform. Whether that is ultimately something we decide to do will depend on the company strategy going forward.

That said, I do agree with the Oculus guys when they said that games should be made for VR and not converted. It’s a different design process and The Park is ultimately not a game designed with VR in mind. VR in general, I think is going to (perhaps has already) become a new branch of the industry (actually a whole bunch of industries). VR will offer an experience that can only really be created using VR technology and I am very excited to see where it goes.

It might be that VR becomes the ultimate platform, given time. It’s almost like the evolution from card games to board games to PC games. There is a new type of design mindset that is going to be needed and while principles will be shared across the all, it is going to require a specific subset of skills.

I can’t wait, to be honest. We have a HTC Vive at work and it really does blow me away with its potential.

So there’s this whole marketing thing behind it and it’s going to be one of the bigger Xbox One games for next year. There’s this whole future technology behind it with cloud computing because people are like, “we’re taking advantage of the cloud. We’ll deliver this kind of stuff. This kind of level we’ve never done before.” I just find it a little strange. Somehow we are consolidating the future talk with the marketing budget for triple A titles, like say Call of Duty or even Assassin’s Creed and such. So I was just wondering your take on that. Cloud computing that going on in Crackdown 3 and where you think that’s eventually going to lead for video games in general.

Joel Bylos: Hmmm, technology is a wonderful thing but it is the impact on gameplay that really matters. I haven’t looked into exactly what Crackdown 3 is doing, but using cloud computing to do physics calculations on the server side and then passing that information back to a client… sure I guess. It’s a cool idea that probably doesn’t alter your immediate experience (the moment to moment) of playing the game that much. And seeing it is a multiplayer only feature, my assumption is that the developers would not be hanging their hat on that particular feature either.

I do think Cloud computing can have a huge impact on indirect activities, but since it will always be heavily tied to connection speeds, I’d be wary of using it for any core mechanics. With that said, imagine an RPG like The Witcher with an AI driven Game Master who lives in the cloud and creates adventures for your player (like a world building version of the AI director from Left 4 Dead). This sort of technology makes these sort of possibilities available.

I like new technology because it always throws a new tool in the toolbox.

"DirectX12 on PC and DirectX12 on Xbox One are slightly different propositions. The bottleneck on Xbox One is the GPU and DirectX12 is not a magical panacea which will suddenly remove that bottleneck."

What is your take on DirectX12 and do you think it will improve games performance on X1?

Joel Bylos: So, DirectX12 on PC and DirectX12 on Xbox One are slightly different propositions. The bottleneck on Xbox One is the GPU and DirectX12 is not a magical panacea which will suddenly remove that bottleneck. And remember that the Xbox One was already optimized to take advantage of DirectX11 at a hardware level.

So the primary advantage of DX12 on Xbox One (in my opinion) will be the optimized draw call pipeline. Which means more things happening on screen – but not necessarily faster or prettier things. If anything it widens the gap between the CPU on the Xbox One and the PS4, giving the Xbox One a larger advantage in the area where it already had one.

The consoles have 8GB of memory. Do you think that is enough to last the next 5 odd years?

Joel Bylos: Hmmm, that’s a difficult question. It will last because it has to. Is it an optimal situation to put developers in? Absolutely not. And VR is coming – that’s going to come with hefty requirements. Who knows what will happen in the end? There are rumors that the PS4 VR has a separate box with unknown hardware inside. Maybe they’ve added a little extra hardware to help with the requirements.

What does Funcom have planned after The Park?

Joel Bylos: We’ve recently announced our intention to release 3 games in 2016. We’ve also announced our renewed interest and partnership with the Conan IP. Keep your eyes peeled!

8 GB has been a major talking point for both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 since both consoles released. The Xbox One has 8 GB DDR3 RAM, of which 5 GB is for games, while the PS4 has 8 GB GDDR5 RAM. Much has been made about how this, along with other hardware in current gen consoles, would lead to better looking games. And for the most part it has.

However, Funcom creative director Joel Bylos, who is working on bringing The Park to current gen platforms, is a bit iffy on whether it will last for the next 5 odd years. “Hmmm, that’s a difficult question. It will last because it has to. Is it an optimal situation to put developers in? Absolutely not.

“And VR is coming – that’s going to come with hefty requirements. Who knows what will happen in the end? There are rumors that the PS4 VR has a separate box with unknown hardware inside. Maybe they’ve added a little extra hardware to help with the requirements.”

Considering the heavy system requirements for Oculus Rift, it certainly seems possible. But where does that leave non-VR titles in the coming years? Regardless, let us know your thoughts on the viability of RAM for both respective consoles in the coming years.

Joel Bylos, Creative Director at Funcom [the team behind The Park] has shared his thoughts on DirectX12 and how it can possibly improve games performance on Xbox One. Speaking to GamingBolt, Bylos stated that there is a difference in the way DX12 works for Xbox One compared to gaming PCs.

“So, DirectX12 on PC and DirectX12 on Xbox One are slightly different propositions,” Bylos stated. “The bottleneck on Xbox One is the GPU and DirectX12 is not a magical panacea which will suddenly remove that bottleneck,” he added.

It must be noted than when Microsoft started to plan the architecture of the Xbox One, they had already included a low level API that takes advantage of DX11 libraries. This is something that Bylos reiterates. “Remember that the Xbox One was already optimized to take advantage of DirectX11 at a hardware level,” he stated.

However if developers plan to use DX12 on Xbox One games, there will be certain advantages such as optimized draw calls. This may not make things faster or prettier, but will push out more things on the screen, according to Bylos.

“So the primary advantage of DX12 on Xbox One, in my opinion, will be the optimized draw call pipeline. Which means more things happening on screen – but not necessarily faster or prettier things.”

Bylos further notes that the DX12 will actually help the Xbox One widen its gap from the PS4 in terms of CPU processing power. It’s already known for a while that the Xbox One has a better CPU than the PS4, something that Sony have been trying to optimize via their own SDK updates.

“If anything it widens the gap between the CPU on the Xbox One and the PS4, giving the Xbox One a larger advantage in the area where it already had one.”

It will be interesting to see what kind of benefits will DX12 have on Xbox One. Hopefully Microsoft will release some benchmarks in the future that will exactly show the users about the benefits of a faster API on a console.

The Park doesn’t deviate back towards what made Funcom so successful; it’s a spin-off to The Secret World but not one that especially requires knowledge of that game to really appreciate. The Park wants to incite horror as much as it really wants to scare you, and that unevenness in attempt, the length and breadth of its story-telling and the overall presentation stand out, even if everything doesn’t come together for the most compelling video game.

"When setting its atmosphere, The Park is immensely successful. The visuals aren’t the sharpest or most memorable but they do a fine job of creating the impression of a grimy, ethereal amusement park with plenty of secrets (and demons) lurking in its midst."

The story sees Lorraine, a single mother, trying desperately to find her son Callum in the Atlantic Island Park. Things aren’t right obviously – Lorraine is trying to find her son’s toy bear but the park itself is shut down and decidedly abandoned. As you travel through it, attempting to find Callum, you’ll have the ability to travel on the various rides and call out to the boy (just like Heavy Rain’s infamous “Jason!” button but with the added twist of audio-visual manipulations).

Much like Everybody Goes to the Rapture, The Park isn’t concerned with complex puzzles. You don’t pick up a number of objects and manage them throughout the story. The main lore is built through the various newspaper clippings, books, articles and other bits and pieces of information that offer a look into the Atlantic Island Park’s sordid history. Bad things happened in this place but after a point, you begin to wonder how much of it is actually real and how much is a manifestation of Lorraine’s inner demons.

When setting its atmosphere, The Park is immensely successful. The visuals aren’t the sharpest or most memorable but they do a fine job of creating the impression of a grimy, ethereal amusement park with plenty of secrets (and demons) lurking in its midst. The sound design is more successful even if it isn’t too intricately detailed – this simple yet nuanced approach is enough to keep you uneasy, if not on edge, throughout the experience. It will also be Lorraine’s voice acting and narration of her experience that ultimately compels you to discover the truth, despite how uneven it can be at times.

"It’s a lot to take in at times and while it makes for a “horror” game, The Park succeeds more at maintaining a scary atmosphere rather than trying to outright frighten you. That atmosphere is best served when The Park actually grounds itself and presents the all too common and grim realities of living."

And that’s really what describes The Park in the best way possible: Uneven. At times, it feels less like an actual game and more like a dark fairy tale, inciting the many works of H.P. Lovecraft (watch out for the odd references to Cthulhu and the Dunwich Horror. There’s even a reference to Nightmare Circus, a Genesis title made by Funcom in 1996). Jump scares dot the creepy atmosphere without really inspiring any fright. A long boat ride with silhouettes and a narration of Hansel and Gretel – which plays a big part of the story – is equal parts foreboding and protracted. The one most memorable moment of fright was heaving the word “Boo” in a dark hallway and turning around to see no one there.

Demented creatures, like The Boogy Man (a Babadook-like creature which makes the overall treatment of the story feel even more like a callback to that film) and Chad the Chipmunk interspersed with tales of mass murder, depression, psychological illness and a rapidly deteriorating faith in humanity add to that ambiance. In an odd twist, the most memorable sequence of the game plays tribute to Kojima Productions’ P.T., with the very climax’s breaking down of Lorraine’s psyche very reminiscent of Silent Hill. It’s honestly a very well handled tribute to P.T. without blatantly copying it but it then segues into what many may look at as an un-fulfilling ending.

It’s a lot to take in at times and while it makes for a “horror” game, The Park succeeds more at maintaining a scary atmosphere rather than trying to outright frighten you. That atmosphere is best served when The Park actually grounds itself and presents the all too common and grim realities of living.

"At the end of the day, The Park is a clever little experiment, one that has patches of brilliance hidden within the overarching indecisiveness of its horror."

The experience itself has a lot to say about our responsibilities, the pressures that society forces on us, the effects of a terrible upbringing and our efforts to numb the pain, even if it means losing everything we hold dear. Lorraine isn’t supposed to be perfect and the faults within her character almost mirror the various missteps in The Park. There’s an overall lack of polish throughout the adventure and it doesn’t last very long – erstwhile gamers can easily finish it in less than two hours and there’s very little incentive to return once the story is finished. Because really, where do you go from here?

The Park isn’t a terrible experience by any means – if it were any cheaper, it would be worth playing through at least once, just for the story. At the end of the day, it’s a clever little experiment, one that has patches of brilliance hidden within the overarching indecisiveness of its horror. This isn’t exactly what one would expect from Funcom and honestly, given the developer’s pedigree, it’s certainly capable of a far superior experience. Look into The Park if your curiosity is genuinely piqued but don’t expect too much of a memorable visit.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Funcon’s narrative based cult hit horror game, The Park, is going to be coming to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 soon. The game is scheduled to hit both consoles as early as next year. The theme park game is set in the same universe as The Secret World, and has generally been met with pretty high praise from all those who have played it.

If you are intrigued by the game, and want to look into it yourself, you aren’t confined to waiting for the game’s release on the consoles early next year- you can play the game right now, since it is available on Steam. It’s not all that expensive either, since it only seems to run $13, though of course, it’s not all that long either (its playtime barely exceeds a little over two hours), so chances are you still might complain about not getting enough for your money.

Still, with games like this, it’s more about the quality, not the quantity.

Funcom’s upcoming excellent looking psychological horror game, The Park,. just had its first gameplay footage debut in a brand new behind the scenes video, which is also an explain by the developers to explain just what the game is. It’s just as well, too- The Park is their first single player game in ten years, and it is a bit different from most other horror games on the market.

“For the last ten years, Funcom has been focused on making massively multiplayer online games, so The Park is our first single-player experience in a long time,” saidCreative Director Joel Bylos. “It has been an incredibly fun and rewarding process working on The Park. What initially started out as a prototype and a way for us to learn new development tools, has evolved into a short and intense psychological horror experience which we are all very excited to share with gamers out there.”

Check out the video to get a better understanding of the game for yourself. Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.