The full PlanetSide Arena interview: can the quintessential MMO shooter go battle royale?

The next PlanetSide will be a battle royale. It’s not a surprise, exactly - developer Daybreak Games has had a foot in the genre since PlayerUnknown himself designed a proto-PUBG mode for H1Z1. It makes sense that the studio would want to leverage its successful FPS series for the same purpose. Yet there’s a whiff of sacrilege about it. PlanetSide has been a quintessential PC series - played at an extraordinary scale, it sees organised armies battle in a sci-fi world where consequences are persistent. In many ways, it remains the only true MMOFPS, having defined its niche and stuck to it. The idea that the name would be subsumed by the latest multiplayer phenomenon, just like everything else, is a disheartening one. Which is why the upcoming context is particularly important: PlanetSide Arena is something Daybreak is doing as it “moves forward with the franchise,” lead designer Tony Morton tells us. It’s an experiment, one in which Daybreak can discover how PlanetSide suits session-based play, while the series at large advances. It’s also one that preserves many of the aspects that make PlanetSide what it is.

from PCGamesN https://ift.tt/2Bdic1C