Welcome to Nightbridge. A virtual hell hole.

A lot of open world games that claim to be such, really aren’t that very open. In most cases, you end up with a walled off environment with artificial barriers. Most of my games are truly massive and open world environments. Which makes them that much more intimidating; and in some cases, slow paced (due to the travel distances).

In LOD I still wanted to build a fairly large open world area due to the fact that the game features infantry combat, as well as vehicles, naval and fast moving aircrafts. Aircrafts by their very nature need a lot of room to move. Unless of course you’re happy with the COD or Battlefield style boxed-in environment whereby a jet is just another big and powerful gun with zero meaningful qualities in terms of its apparent effectiveness.

However, when you go open world, you better have the content to fill it up with or you end up with a large and boring environment.

In All Aspect Warfare though the game was set on a barren planet, some gamers still expected the vast expanse to be populated (trees, shrubs, rocks etc) regardless of the premise of the game world.

The bases in LOD are vastly different because though the world is smaller, with a new game engine and totally different art direction, we are able to do more things within the premise of the game. For example, the Nightbridge starbase (one of four bases) located in the moderate climate zone was built within the ruins of a once bustling city, long since abandoned when war came. Imagine what would happen if New York City were abandoned and the military setup shop there. That’s Nightbridge. The massive (2km x 3km) city is being built as a regular city, with buildings, roads, streets, rubble, bridges, canals etc and with all the key starbase assets (reactors, starbase etc) strewn across it at various locations. Gamers will be able to run or drive up and down the streets wielding weapons of mass destruction. Some will probably die before they actually get to their destination (e.g. the C&C building is clean, clear across town) unless of course you’re flying or driving the distance.

This image shows the construction of Nightbridge as it takes form. In the coming weeks, other shots will show all the buildings fully textured, the city laid out etc. And if you imagine you and your fireteam standing in the middle of a mall square plotting your last stand, you peering through the scope of a sniper rifle from 1500m away from atop a skyscraper or you wounded, crouched behind debris smack in the middle of a hot LZ awaiting a helo evac – that is exactly what you”ll be doing.

It is going to be fun!