Alienation is Housemarque's "most ambitious game to date"

We talked to Sony XDev Studio's James Hawkins about Alienation, which according to the executive producer is Housemarque's "most ambitious game to date."

"If you look at it in comparison to Resogun or Dead Nation for example, you kind of have ships in Resogun and they get upgrades as you play through, always the same upgrades, and online is always co-op with two players, in both games, indeed, in every Housemarque game we've done so far. So here in Alienation we have four-player co-op for the first time, and we also have some PvP modes that we're working on."

Hawkins continued: "I think the key thing is there are three unique character classes in the game... and they all have a special character class that you get by default right now at the start of the game, and other skills that you can level up and build up as you go through. So in some ways you'll see inspirations from more modern games, particularly games like Destiny and Diablo, which are really lofty for the scope of this game, but you'll see inspirations for those games in this game as well."

We then asked about the structure of the game, and while Hawkins couldn't reveal too much, he did say this: "There is a story flow that you go through, but the whole game is online... So people can drop in and drop out of games, you can call for help from other players, and at any time people can come in and help you out. I think the key things with the tactics that we're doing, again playing to the depth of the game, is that when we look at all of the powers and the characters, we're really looking for abilities that can create new ways for people to play together."

Alienation is a PlayStation 4 exclusive and it's due to land on the console at some point this year. As Hawkins says during the interview, more details are coming soon, through E3 and beyond. In the meantime head here for our recent hands-on preview.