If you’ve played Gears of Eden Alpha One, you probably crafted some stuff. You probably made a new drill bit for yourself and maybe some fuel cells to keep you going after nightfall. You also probably noticed that crafting was incredibly simple. Sometimes, we use simple in place of other terms like “intuitive” or “approachable.” Other times, simple implies “basic” and “lacking in meaningful execution.” Right now, we’re talking about the latter. Our primary goal with Alpha One was for it to launch with all the core functionality that the rest of the game would build upon, even if those functions just ended up being jammed in. Crafting is the best example of this. It’s simple, but that’s okay, because we always planned to expand it in future builds.
We’re starting that this week. Indeed, the future is now! The implementation of a more advanced crafting system for Alpha Two is something we’ve been wanting for a long while, and you all confirmed we were taking things in the right direction when we learned that this is one of the most requested features for the next alpha! Since it’s so important to our players, we wanted to get on it as soon as possible so that the next time you play, you can really delve into it!
In this update, we thought it might be fun to explain how we want the crafting system to work! Essentially, what you’re crafting right now are considered basic necessities that can be crafted anywhere; you need to be able to keep yourself powered at night, and we don’t want you to travel back to your base every time you need a replacement drill bit. That would just be annoying. There will be some other craftable items later on, but this is the current catalog for basic necessities. For the bigger, more complicated stuff, we’ll be implementing the SINTER Forge. If you read the recent short story, you may have noticed a reference to it! This is our version of a crafting table, in which you can plug resources in and then get the product in return. This is where the real crafting happens; player modifications, drones, base stuff, etc.
Already, it’s safe to say that this system is going to be in development for a long time; the version you see in Alpha Two isn’t going to be the version you’ll see in the final release! We’re currently playing around with what a SINTER Forge really is and means for this game’s world, and we want your interactions with it to be reflect that importance! However, just like everything else in game development, the more involved mechanics should wait until the foundation is solid. We hope a more robust crafting system will make Alpha 2 more enjoyable, as you’ll be able to apply upgrades to your machine that have a noticeable impact on performance. Of course, there will be even more meaning in future updates when we are able to implement missions, NPC interaction, story and more!
I can’t wait for you to see the SINTER Forge in action, but we’ll have some other updates to share along the way! By next week’s Dev Update, we hope to be well into our next sprint, which will bring durability to your parts! To keep up with the latest, as always, follow us on Twitter and Facebook! We’ll be back soon, and we hope you have a great rest of your week!
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