Primal Carnage Interview - Extinction & Genesis

After our little tease published yesterday, here’s the full interview with Circle 5 Studios‘ Aaron Pollack, where we talked in-depth about Primal Carnage: Extinction and we even got a hint at the chances Genesis still has to release some day.

Enjoy!

 

• What are the main gameplay differences that veteran players will find in Primal Carnage: Extinction when compared to the original Primal Carnage?
  Veteran players can generally expect to see more variety of gameplay options (new mechanics, more features, etc.) and a significantly improved graphics and performance. Though Extinction has completely been built from the ground up, we kept most of the game elements from the first game but added a lot to them.

 

• Will there be new classes for Mercenaries and/or Dinosaurs? How many maps will the game have at release?
  Both teams are getting new playable options, though not in the same way. There are now 5 dinosaur classes replacing the original dinosaur characters. So for instance, the new Tyrant class includes both the T-rex and the Spinosaurus subclasses. The additional subclasses the game will launch with (the Oviraptor, Tupandactylus, and Crylophosuaurus) were conversions of the premium skins from the first game. But we have more dinosaurs that are already under development.
  Rather than creating entirely new human classes, we decided to go in the direction of most multiplayer games and introduce weapon selection.

 

• What kind of DLC can be expected for Primal Carnage: Extinction, if any?
  A wide variety of new content will continue to be released after launch, potentially for quite some time, including more game modes, maps, dinosaur subclasses and weapons. And any new gameplay-related (non-cosmetic) content will be accessible to players for free.
  Many new cosmetic skins are being designed for all of the dinosaurs as well as dino accessories such as spikes, horns, quills, feathers, chains and a whole lot more. Human will also have additional slots for weapon skins, hats, and other cosmetic items.
  The introduction of “item drops” of these cosmetics, which can be traded and sold through the Steam Marketplace, greatly increases the replay-value of for Extinction. Players can expect to see a large variety of items added to game with every patch and many promotional item-drop events. By the end of Early Access there will be over 100 items in the game.

 

• You’ve announced that the PS4 version will be available in Q1 2015. Will it be digital only, or is there a physical release planned for Primal Carnage: Extinction?
  For the time being we’re going to stay digital. Support from the games industry and our key partners is strong enough that a retail push isn’t really necessary. And the size of the game won’t scare anyone off from downloading this to their console.

 

• Will Primal Carnage: Extinction run at 1080P@60FPS on PS4? 
  Yes. We feel we’re on track to hit this mark.

 

• Is there any chance to see the game on Xbox One at some point?
  Nothing’s impossible. I think we want to see how Extinction fares with the PC and PS4 platforms first.

 

• Are you using the Unreal Engine 4? If so, what do you think of it?
  When we started on Primal Carnage: Extinction one of the choices we has was whether to start again on Unreal Engine3 or to move over to UE4. Moving to the new engine was an exciting concept but there were a few design elements we couldn’t come up with easy answers for at the time. Our teams also had more experience with Unreal 3 so this was what we opted for. In retrospect, had we known how the scope of this project would grow we probably would have gone with UE4. The rapid ability to prototype and implement new features is unparalleled. I know that both Circle 5 Studios and Pub Games are looking forward to using UE4 for their next projects. The inexpensive licensing model Epic introduced and the available content for UE4 that has followed ensure that UE4 will soon be one of the most popular and well understood engines out there for game development and that’s important to us as we grow our team.

 

• Finally, would a successful release of Primal Carnage: Extinction increase the chances to see Genesis in the future? I know many players were dismayed to hear that the game was put on hold.
  We are very aware that our fans would like to see Genesis happen and, yes, the success of Primal Carnage: Extinction definitely increases the chances of Circle 5 Studios returning to the project. We think there are a lot of cool places we can take the Primal Carnage brand. The world needs more dinosaurs. We’re probably not going to talk too much about Genesis for a while, but we regularly bounce around ideas for how we might do Genesis in the future.

 

• Thanks for your time!