During a recent preview event in Paris hosted by Focus Home Interactive to profile the publisher's upcoming games, we caught up with Deck13's head of game design, Adam Hetenyi, who joined us to talk about the recently announced soulslike sequel, The Surge 2.
During our conversation, Hetenyi confirmed that the game was being built with the studio's in-house Fledge-Delta engine, a move allowing them to try new things as the sequel takes us out of the factory and into a more expansive city environment. Players can expect non-linear exploration, new weapon and armour types (and effects), smarter enemies, and an expansion of the drone system to make it more central to your experience.
"Ultimately we just want to make everything wider, more open, and allow a lot more experimentation and people to create their own play experience," Hetenyi told us.
Players will be able to create their own characters in The Surge 2, a subsequence of the freedom offered elsewhere; it didn't make sense to offer so much freedom in other areas of the game and then have less authorship over your own character.
"Having a less linear approach to both overall world design and individual areas in the world is, I think, a really big benefit for a game like this and I think for us in particular. So yeah, more boss encounters, more different sorts of special encounters in between these things is something that's really, really important to us."
We also discussed the story, with Hetenyi confirming a bigger emphasis on environmental storytelling: "The more you look in the nooks and crannies, the more you explore, the more you engage and think, the more you'll pull out of it. If you want it, it's there for the taking."
The Surge 2 is coming to PC, PS4, and Xbox One (with Pro and X support) in 2019. Watch the full interview below for even more insight into this intriguing sequel.