Oh great, another survival game set in a post apocalyptic future with zombies, I hear you think. But it’s been in production longer than you might guess. It was announced back in 2012 and even then, there were little to no information about what can be expected from a game, which genre has been repeated ad nauseam (ooh, fancy words).
To its defense, its premise sounds exciting and promises a lot of replay value: The gameplay is basically defined by how you start. There are three classes: Action, Intelligence and Stealth. Furthermore, and this is where the ‘unique’ from the headline applies, you get to choose if you either want to be alone or survive along a partner or child. Those decisions combined will define how you can interact with the scenario and will change your character physically and morally as the game goes on. However choosing your play style right from the start sounds as if you are limited to one role, namely brute-forcing through, sniping or avoiding enemy lines.
Now this sounds enticing and all, but why have you probably never heard of it? Well, the game was intended to be made for the Ouya. Developers Crytek and Robotoki quickly disregarded those plans however. The title will now get full release on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. This was announced on the GDC. Furthermore, the game will use the new CryEngine to look as beautiful on those systems as possible.
Changing from Android to next-gen graphics was a huge step for Robotoki president Robert Bowling: “The ambitious narrative and gameplay of Human Element required an innovative set of features in order to achieve our vision,” he said in a press release from Crytek two days ago. “CryEngine is the perfect fit for us because it delivers so many powerful features straight out of the box such as the physical-based shading system and the infinite terrain from segmented worlds to create a massive open-world experience but still allow the visual fidelity and detail our players expect from a first-person experience from our team.”
The PC version will be released November 2015, consoles have no dates yet, but will probably follow shortly afterwards. We anticipate the release and hope that, in the end, the narrative and play style satisfies.
