Interview With ASOBO Studio, Developers Of The Last Frontier (Exidium Corp.)

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I recently had the chance to sit down with ASOBO Studio Game Designer Hugo Sahuquet and Communication Manager Aurélie Belzanne to discuss their upcoming game, The Last Frontier. We discussed the game's inspirations, factions, future vehicle additions, and more.

Me: How many people are working on The Last Frontier and how long has it been in development?

Sahuquet: It has been an internal project for a few years, but real development started about a year ago. A year and a half now. We are eight people on this project.

Belzanne: There are also some engine guys going back and forth sometimes, so it varies. Eight to ten.

Sahuquet: We have an engine team at ASOBO that randomly comes to help us if we have some questions so might want to include them in this. Eight to ten. Depends on the things we’re working on.

I noticed when I played the game that it’s primarily built around gamepad users right now. Is that an intentional design choice or will you be able to use the mouse for menus and such in the future?

Sahuquet: It is not a design choice, but we want the game to be compatible with pads, so we went first to pad controls because, historically, ASOBO has been developing on consoles. So we took our engines with that, but we will soon have mouse controls that allow you to free the mouse from the gun. Like on the map.

So all the menus, upgrades, and such will have full keyboard and mouse support.

Belzanne: To complete this, we must admit that this is an Alpha test, so a lot of things are placeholder right now. We are leveling up everything we can when we can, but we mainly try to help people to play better. Then, when we can, we optimize the menus, the economy, and things like that.

I also noticed that all of the game’s vehicles are based on a single style. Will future vehicles have different styles?

Sahuquet: Currently, we have only gliders, but we are planning factions in the future. Currently, you only have the Exidium Corp. faction. In the future, it is planned that another faction will come and will have completely different designs in vehicles, buildings, and drones.

Will other factions have completely different buildings or will they provide the same functionality with a different look?

Sahuquet: They will have different functionalities because the other factions have different specialties and abilities that Exidium Corp. does not have. But when the new faction is introduced, Exidium Corp. explorers will gain new abilities from Exidium Corp. that can counter the other, new factions.

Belzanne: Presently, this is the beginning of the story arc with only Exidium Corp. exploiting the planet. In the future, we will develop this story arc to have cliffhangers, to have some stuff to discover, and to learn more about what’s going on on the planet. So right now, it’s basically the functionalities and the first faction.

Sahuquet: And more with that also, Player vs Experience, I know on the chat, it has been a wild debate these last few days.

So you’ve planned out the addition of more factions in the story and, throughout the Alpha, you’re going to have an overarching story running through it?

Sahuquet: Yes, exactly. Currently, we are in Alpha, so we are implementing the basic functionalities, the overall interface, and mechanics, so there are some core mechanics that we haven’t introduced, like the weapons and more advanced alliance systems. When that is ready, we will introduce the story and develop a few interesting narratives in this game that will introduce, over months, factions and other challenges.

What inspired the town hall system? If I’m understanding correctly, town halls almost become a guild with people placing their garages in the area and working together because they’re all in the same town hall?

Sahuquet: I wouldn’t say a guild because town halls, in our vision, are more like neutral grounds. Any player can build a town hall and other players come in and pay a tax to stay in this town hall. In the future, town halls will become fortresses that are harder to attack than regular bases. We’ve recently added a shield for town halls and we will continue to develop more defensive features for town halls to be safe for people who don’t want to build in the wild and choose to exploit the soils that are less productive but safer to play in. This is what town halls are for us.

A guild system is closer to the alliance system. Players can already form alliances and have a big alliance building that has bonus slots and several other features that we’ll add in the future. Alliances are more like a guild system.

Right now, from the outside, it looks like you can basically pay your way through everything. Are there plans to balance it out or are you committed to the business model?

Sahuquet: Well, no. There are a lot of things we want to add to prevent some pay-to-win situations that currently exist in the game and we are aware of it, like the ones where you can buy resources. This will be greatly limited in the future and we will add a few mechanics that prevent this. But tokens can be and will always be found in the wild. It is used to accelerate stuff and upgrades. That is what we will stick to, I believe.

Belzanne: As we are in an Alpha phase, everything that is built today will be given back at the release of the game.

Sahuquet: ...If we wipe the world. But we still haven’t decided whether there will be a restart for players. I don’t think we are planning for a wipe of the world at the moment.

If you’re not planning a wipe, when do you think you will begin opening the game to the public?

Sahuquet: This is currently Closed Alpha. Well, it’s not really closed because everyone gets a key in time. We will get to a point of an Open Beta. We will not have an Open Alpha, but when we get to Beta, we will have Closed Beta and Open Beta, I think later this year. Then release, but we don’t quite like the term “release” because we are doing a soft-launch and the game will always be up and gradually switch from Alpha to Beta then to release quality.

Belzanne: Full content should be at the beginning of next year. Something like that. We hope so.

Sahuquet: Even after release, we have a lot of things going and on the roadmap.

At this point, Sahuquet and I get on the game and he shows me one of the game’s world bosses.

What is the world boss’ design inspired by?

Sahuquet: I think the creature is a native from this planet. The inspiration mainly comes from StarCraft. It looks like quite the Zerg, but I know the concept artist of this would love to speak about it.

So it’s a native creature and we want, on this planet, to have titan-like creatures more like this one. Some will be friendly. Some others will be bosses.

What inspired you to create a game with a mix of RTS and shooter gameplay?

Sahuquet: So, at first, we wanted to make an exploration game that was an MMO. But then we thought it would be really great to have bases, persistent ones. The idea just came from this and we took reference from other building games. We had inspiration from Clash of Clans and other building games. We took a lot of inspiration from StarCraft with the units and the future drone commands. But the main idea of the planet exploration and persistent world came after ASOBO made Fuel, because Fuel had a very big map and we wanted to use the same technology with a very big map, an open world, and space exploration. So that’s how we came to this.

How large is the world?

Sahuquet: The world currently is about 400 kilometers by 400 kilometers. Currently, if you go to the edge, it will just teleport you back because we haven’t implemented a circular world, but it will be circular in the end so you can circle around the planet.

Are there plans to implement any sort of flying, rather than just hovering?

Sahuquet: It was in the original design, but at this point, we don’t know. Maybe. There were also vehicles with wheels that were implemented, but they didn’t compare to the hovercraft.

But since we have bomber drones that fly higher than other drones, maybe we will use this mechanic. We want to introduce floating rocks and maybe allow players to try to build bases on these floating rocks. Maybe we’ll have vehicles that are fliers, but it’s not definite at this point. I think we will first focus on hovercraft and have different physics and polished physics on these craft before implementing new types of vehicles.

If we have flying vehicles, it would be after release, probably. Like next year.

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You can sign up for The Last Frontier's Alpha test on the Exidium Corp. website. We also have an Alpha key giveaway running.

I've been playing MMOs since back in the day when my only option was to play Clan Lord on the family Mac. Since then, I've played too many MMOs to count. I generally play niche, sometimes even bizarre, MMOs and I've probably logged the most hours in Linkrealms prior to its current iteration. Currently bouncing between a few games.