If all goes well, in a few months Back 4 Blood it will finally be reaching our hands. There are still many things that interest us about the new of Turtle rock studios, so in this interview with Matt O’Driscoll, lead producer of this team, we had the opportunity to have him answer many interesting questions.
Besides Left 4 Dead, what other games served as inspiration for Back 4 Blood?
“I wouldn’t say that we were actually inspired by a specific game; Rather, we started with a foundation on what we wanted to do and began to build on that throughout its development. But I wouldn’t say that we chose several games to draw inspiration from. Instead, we looked at what might and might not work and thought about what Turtle Rock Studios’ vision for a modern game might look like. “
I understand that Back 4 Blood requires an internet connection at all times, even when you want to play solo. Are there plans to change this post-launch?
“I never say never, but as you mentioned, during its launch you will require a constant internet connection to play and at the moment we have no plans to change it but you never know how things are changing and how the community responds to these stuff. For now we know what our plans are for its launch. “
Can you tell us a bit more about some specific features of the next-gen version of Back 4 Blood?
“It’s certainly interesting because, since we’re going to release it for next-gen consoles as well, we need to maintain some fairness between all systems because we also offer crossplay and crossgen so you can play from an Xbox One with people from PS5. So it wouldn’t be possible for us to say, ‘Okay, we’re going to have 100 zombies on this console, but not on this one,’ because that wouldn’t make sense in gameplay.
We definitely looked at things like the haptic feedback from the DualSense on PlayStation 5, the graphical fidelity also looks better on new consoles, there is an option to enable HDR mode, a higher frame rate per second. But because we wanted to provide the same level of experience for everyone, no matter what console you play it on, we wanted to offer a certain level of fairness across all platforms. “
Certain difficulties in Back 4 Blood have friendly fire enabled, are there any in-game measures to counter trolling by other players?
“If that is something that worries you, you can play in Easy mode, where there is no friendly fire. But you know, the internet will always be the internet, but we do have a reporting system, you can block people who are trolling so that you will never be paired with them again. So yes there are ways to avoid that, I mean, you can always have a few bitter minutes, but there are ways to correct that quickly. “
Would you recommend Back 4 Blood for someone thinking of playing solo? Or is it absolutely necessary to play it in company?
“It’s definitely a game we created with the co-op in mind. After all we as a studio specialize in that. But we also take into account that, for example, if you are playing with someone who has a bad internet connection and they disconnect, then artificial intelligence will take their place. And this bot should be able to help you throughout the game, it can’t just be a bot that is there because your experience would be bad. We definitely work on the bots so they are not useless.
And yes, you can play by yourself. I think playing alone will help you understand a lot of the game’s concepts and you can definitely take your time. There is no such pressure to play with people online and your group is never going to break up, because the bots will always be with you. So you can definitely enjoy both experiences, but co-op mode is where we put it all in. “
What is some of the features that you think might be the most exciting for gamers?
“We have this new card system, and there are a lot of cards. In fact, all of our cards are available to beta testers. So there are definitely a lot of variations to card decks, so you can build your own however it works best for you. And there are endless possibilities for all players. We as developers test all these cards daily to make sure they will work, but once they are available worldwide, we are not sure how users will use these cards.
These next few weeks are going to give us a lot of important information that will show us how this system is working and we will surely have to make balance adjustments in many things, so that excites us. “
And just to confirm, Back 4 Blood will enable crossplay and crossgen on launch day, right?
“Yes, those are our intentions. In fact, the beta will already have these two features enabled and we will be testing how this works over the next two weeks because we want this to fully work during launch. “
Back 4 Blood will debut on October 12 for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X | S, Xbox One and PC.
Source: Atomix