Making Revenge of the Savage Planet an unexpected (and anticipated) sequel

As we watch a member of the Raccoon Logic workforce hop, run, shoot and splat their manner by way of Revenge of the Savage Planet at Gamescom, the studio head and co-founder Reid Schneider tells us the objective “wasn’t to make the anticipated sequel.”

That is a tall order, provided that Raccoon Logic was fashioned by people who had beforehand been at Journey to the Savage Planet developer Storm Studios earlier than it was closed as half of Google’s Stadia shutdown. The workforce introduced from the off that it had managed to reacquire the Savage Planet IP from Google – and confirmed again in April that it was certainly engaged on a brand new title in the sequence.

Like Journey to the Savage Planet, Revenge’s gamers discover themselves on a vibrant alien world, exploring and scanning life types, blasting hostile creatures, gathering assets, and utilizing them to craft or improve objects. The sport additionally retains its predecessor’s wacky humour, with various digs at the sorts of firms who assume it is worthwhile to colonise area.

So in some ways, it’s totally a lot an anticipated sequel. How, then, is Raccoon Logic trying to subvert expectations?

“It is powerful,” Schneider admits. “With the first one, if you make a brand new IP, it is variety of like catching lightning in a bottle. The entire time we had been making the first sport, we had been like, ‘Is anybody gonna care a few area sport with fart jokes?’ Seems folks really do care a few area sport with fart jokes, so we mentioned, ‘Okay, how may we go a lot greater and broader on this?'”

In Schneider’s view, the anticipated sequel can be “a pair extra planets and staying in first-person.” Revenge of the Savage Planet lets gamers unfastened on 4 planets, has an entire new colony space they’ll customise between expeditions, and most notably shifts to a third-person perspective.

“We felt like there’s quite a bit of alternatives that we may take, particularly with comedy, by pulling it into third-person,” Schneider explains. “There’s extra bodily comedy now – slapstick is a giant touchpoint for us – and it simply felt like we needed to go do one thing a lot greater, higher, unexpected, stunning.

“If we had been ever going to do it, we will do it now as a result of as an indie developer, we personal the firm and we are able to go do it.”

Artwork director and fellow co-founder Erick Bilodeau provides that the third-person perspective was really thought of throughout the manufacturing of the first sport, notably when engaged on the platforming components.

“We already had all the animation of third-person as a result of of the co-op. So we had this cheat mode the place we may put it in third-person and take a look at it, nevertheless it was not able to be shipped. In order that’s one of the first issues we needed to experiment with after we began engaged on this one.

“The principle motivation behind it’s to convey humour as a result of now you see a personality. There’s not quite a bit of issues you may emote with simply two fingers on display screen. However now we have now the full character, you see the janky animation, and we are able to convey humour to the character.”

A lot of the humour can also be present in the story. As with the authentic, you play an worker of an enormous company set on colonising area. This time, nevertheless, the firm you’re employed for determined area exploration was too pricey and unprofitable whilst you had been in cryosleep, so that you’re made redundant earlier than you even get up.

It is exhausting to not assume it is a dig at Google, the workforce’s former father or mother firm, provided that Storm Studios was shut down earlier than it ever acquired to make its first undertaking as half of the Stadia enterprise (Journey to the Savage Planet was already effectively into manufacturing earlier than the acquisition). Nevertheless, artistic director and co-founder Alex Hutchinson says this story is extra impressed by the trade’s expertise with layoffs and studio closures over the previous two years.

“It is a story about all of these firms who acquired caught up in an thrilling second, after which [the people who were] turfed out by massive multinationals”

Alex Hutchinson, Raccoon Logic

Since firms had been central to the theme of the first sport, the workforce needed to thought of what these firms would have achieved in the following years. For this, they checked out what’s taking place with firms and sport firms at this time, with Hutchinson noting that the studio itself was amongst these “acquired after which discarded.”

“We’re an instance of it, nevertheless it’s not a narrative about us,” he says. “It is a story about all of these firms who acquired caught up in an thrilling second, after which [the people who were] turfed out by massive multinationals. So it isn’t particularly about Google in any respect.”

Schneider provides: “Google is clearly in the ether, however there’s a a lot wider feeling in the trade that we’re seeing [with] all the studio closures – all of us noticed the stuff with Embracer. It felt like the timing of this was proper.”

Raccoon Logic has additionally made modifications to how the sport is developed. As with Storm Studios, the workforce has been saved small – 30 folks plus some contractors – however this time issues are way more organised. When speaking about the studio construction throughout growth of Journey to the Savage Planet, Schneider says: “Scrappy does not even start to explain it.”

For Revenge, producer Noémie L’Écuyer tells us the manufacturing schedule has been divided into three most important phases: conception, manufacturing and polish.

“This allowed us to basically have an alpha halfway by way of. It actually gave us sufficient time to shine the sport and ask ourselves the actual questions. It is a actually collaborative method as effectively, quite a bit of folks have quite a bit of opinions, tons of enter – it is the excellent dimension workforce to do this.”

Hutchinson provides: “I believe there’s way more possession when you may have a small workforce. Everybody will get to the touch every part. On some of these large AAA groups, half of you in all probability [don’t] even know the sport that they are making, you simply know the excessive idea. For the first first time ever in my profession of 20-plus years, the complete workforce is taking part in the sport all the time and truly giving suggestions on it.”

Many of the Raccoon Logic workforce are former AAA builders, with Hutchinson himself beforehand serving as artistic director on Ubisoft’s Murderer’s Creed 3 and Far Cry 4. When you may have tons of of folks engaged on a title, he posits, most individuals make simply half of the sport – and that work can generally be misplaced completely.

“We had an terrible second at Ubisoft, I believe it was on Far Cry 4, the place we had been enhancing the sport at the finish,” he remembers. “We had been reducing three missions as a result of they only did not match the stream. They had been superb however they felt too sluggish and we needed to hurry up. And we realised we had been reducing the work of one degree designer; that was the entirety of his years on the undertaking. It was the proper factor for the sport, however that is all he’d achieved so it was variety of miserable.”

A smaller workforce means everybody has extra of an opportunity to contribute, and in addition means a sport that is smaller in scope. The workforce tells us Revenge of the Savage Planet is prone to be 15 to twenty hours lengthy, up from Journey’s ten to 12. Once more, this performs as much as the expectation that sequels are noticeably longer; we ask if there’s strain when making a follow-up to make sure it is considerably greater and higher than its forebear.

“I do not assume that is true after the second one,” Hutchinson says. “With the first one, you at all times depart quite a bit of stuff on the desk, and it is normally about what you will get achieved. It isn’t essentially the excellent dimension for the sport that you just’re making. This one will not be radically longer than the first one, nevertheless it’s way more completed, denser, and way more polished.”

As for the workforce’s expectations for Revenge of the Savage Planet, issues are just a little unclear – largely as a result of Hutchinson admits that the workforce is “probably not 100% positive” how effectively the first sport did on account of the scattered launches throughout completely different platforms and below completely different publishers.

“We all know we have had [over] 4 million gamers and that, simply in the final couple of months when it was re-released on Xbox, virtually half one million folks downloaded it on that platform,” Hutchinson says. “So we’re hopeful there’s an actual viewers on the market, however the trendy market could be very difficult in that there is subscriptions, and the place issues go and the way they’re purchased is altering.”

Lastly, we ask about the problem of educating potential gamers forward of Revenge’s launch. Journey to the Savage Planet sounds prefer it had a good viewers, however maybe did not set the trade alight. The attitude has modified, the construction is barely completely different, and even the developer has modified its title. How can gamers know what to anticipate?

“In the trendy market, every sport has to face by itself,” Hutchinson says. “You possibly can’t do sequels that require information from the final one. Even the Marvel Cinematic Universe came upon that, like the comedian trade it is based mostly on, after a certain quantity of time, there’s an excessive amount of data to retain. It is enjoyable to know just a little bit however when you’re 17 motion pictures in and also you missed the TV present… This can be a standalone sport. Should you performed the first sport, you may get quite a bit of in jokes and you will get some further content material, however you do not want any data from the first sport.”

Schneider provides that the workforce is eager to help the sport lengthy after launch and is at the moment in discussions with Tencent, which helps to fund the undertaking, to work out what this appears like. For now, the focus is on self-publishing the sport throughout PC, Xbox, and PlayStation.

“We wish to have one thing that individuals get pleasure from, we wish to make it higher and higher because it goes on, however we additionally wish to ensure that we have now a extremely nice launch that individuals reply to effectively and ideally hopefully – knock on wooden – we are able to do extra in the future.”