Gladiator Lizards and Space Marine Raccoons - Gamescom Predecessor Interview

Audio transcription

"Hi everybody, I'm Alex here with Gamereactor, we're live at Gamescom, we're checking out Predecessor and we're speaking to Olivia and Simon, and it's an exciting time for you guys, the game launched yesterday, it was sort of a slight surprise but you guys have been in early access for a while, what have you been able to learn from that and what have you sort of been able to bring for this full 1.0 launch for players?
Yeah, 100%, I think that what has been a really interesting thing for us is that we built this game with our community, right?
So this is not only a celebration and an amazing achievement for us at the Meta Studios and for our team, but also to all the fans that have supported us when we were doing development for many years, so yeah, I mean, seeing the reception from all of our community has been great."

"A lot of them, they feel this really big sense of pride for being there for day one, so yeah, so it's kind of like a really good, in a way, it's a starting point for us, because we're like, now the work is just starting, right?
But at the same time, it's a really big celebration, it's a really good time for us."

"Yeah, nothing really to add for me as well, it's been three years that I've been at the company now, and seeing it from a small community project becoming this 1.0 launch was really exciting.
For some, it's even longer, so yesterday was definitely a big day for us as well."

"So it is sort of picking up the bones, rising from the ashes of Paragon, how does it feel to sort of get that community response, as you say, you guys are really close with your community, and for them to sort of be the backbone of it being brought up?
I think there's a lot of respect to the source assets that we got, but at the same time, it is a really interesting time for us, because we're building this with the community."

"Every time we are bringing something new, we can get a lot of input from the community of like, okay, how do we want this to happen?
How do we want this to be introduced in the game, right?
There's a lot of interesting conversations with the community, some of them they have a really strong view on how certain things should work, because of previous experiences, but so far, the reception has been really great, because they've seen how creative our team is, and how good we are being able to put those characters that they already know into predecessor, and it's just the point of seeing predecessor evolving into its own game."

"I think the point is, yeah, it's really nice that we are rising from the ashes of Paragon, but it's also good to see how far predecessor is going, and becoming its own thing.
We are releasing our own original heroes as well, that helps us to shine some light into some of the creativity of the team, and we are super excited for this to continue going and growing, and bringing more players and more content."

"It's been a really fun ride.
Yeah, I think especially with the first unique, or our own characters that we made, the reception was really good about, yeah, they fit in the roster of the original ones, and I think that was a big achievement for us as well."

"Also with the new Undertow skins that just came out yesterday, where we are building our first skin line, so far, reception has been great, and I think those are the moments where the team is very proud of their work.
And you said, as we said before, it's been a long road to get here, you've been at the company for three years, it's been a big relief to see this game come to life in 1.0, and there's a lot of people who have been along for that ride as well in the community, but there's also a lot of people who will have seen the trailer last night, or will maybe have just gone, well I'll jump in when it's 1.0, when it's fully fleshed out maybe."

"How easy is it going to be for newcomers to get into the game, compared to the old veterans?
Because there's sort of a stigma around MOBAs, if you will, that they can sometimes be a bit hard for new players, but how is this going to accommodate new players with 1.0?
Yeah, that's a really great question, because we did a lot of work on our onboarding, and the reason for that is that we understand that, we understand that MOBAs have this inherited layer of difficulty and complexity to it, but alongside that, we also developed predecessor from day one with console in mind, so we understand that people do not want to be sitting around pages of Wikipedia for every item."

"So we did a lot of work with our UI, and our user experience as well, for them to very easily find the items that they want for their builds, but more than that, we introduced very early in the game an auto-buy system, so you don't need to worry about all the items for your build and stuff, you just, all you need to do is go and play, and we'll do that for you."

"Obviously, as soon as you feel more comfortable, you can toggle it off, and from there, there are no more assists, no more training wheels, yeah, exactly.
So we have done a lot in order to make the onboarding as welcoming as possible.
I think with this 1.0 launch, we have done a lot of things for our tutorial, a lot of things for our onboarding, to make sure that players can focus on having fun."

"Not really much from my side.
The goal was to get the entry level a bit lower, and have especially new players, and just purely focus on getting into the game, understanding the map.
As you said, MOBAs are very complex in itself already, and then slow but steady, have the opportunity to remove these automations for themselves and go over into manual, and it doesn't mean it has to be all at once, it can also just go only for the crests, only for the items, only for levelling the stuff."

"So step by step, they can get more and more used to it, because yeah, we know how complex MOBAs are.
Yeah, as a former Dota addict myself, I can sort of attest to the fact that trying to get into something new, but something that did sort of draw my eye, specifically my eye with Paragon was this, sorry, with Predecessor, was this visual style that you guys have."

"It is something that sort of defies the stereotype of MOBAs usually not being very pretty.
They're sort of quite grungy, or they're quite old, but this is a very, very good looking game.
Could you talk a bit more about the visual style that you guys have, and maybe some inspirations from it?
Yeah, 100%."

"I think, first of all, the decision that we had right from the beginning of like, we want this to be super pretty, and going to Unreal Engine 5, like right from like very early in the project, allowed us to really push the boundaries of like, what can we do in terms of visual assets and quality and textures and animation and everything."

"So yeah, for us, like the visual fidelity and like the high quality of the models, of the map, there are so many Easter eggs in the map.
Every time we go and speak to the sound team, they're like, oh yeah, like, by the way, now we have like butterfly sounds, like in a corner, like it's like, yeah, so there's a lot of passion involved as well."

"So the team is really passionate about like bringing the best they can, and we're super excited about it.
Also that we wanted to make the game that we wanted to play, right?
So that really allowed us to like sit together in a room, say, okay, what's the kind of MOBA we would like to play that had like really cool characters, really cool assets, like very like diverse characters, we have like aliens, we have like humanoids, we have like, I don't know, like a raccoon in a space marine suit."

"Yeah, so yeah, we can bring out like really fun characters, and I think that's one of the things that we're super proud, and especially now with our original characters as well.
I love explaining to people, Zerus is like, yeah, it's like a gladiator lizard.
What else do you want?
You know?
So yeah, so we're super excited."

"Exactly.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Is there anything else you want to add?
I think you mentioned already, Unreal Engine 5 was like a really conscious decision for us because we are building this for the long run, like it's a MOBA, we are building that for years to come."

"And switching over to Unreal Engine 5 early on in the process, like will allow us for the long term to make use of all the nice features that are coming with it.
And something you touched on there was like new character designs.
We talked about it before as well, of you guys bringing your own original characters to the game."

"What's the design process behind that?
How do you come up with sort of gladiator lizard, for example?
How do you go into sort of, okay, this is what we're going to do.
There's sort of, you know, big meetings where loads of ideas are thrown, or do you have a sort of sense of what you're going to do maybe a few months down the line?
Sure, I can."

"So for the design process, it's usually we are going from like a game design side of things.
So we're looking really at like, okay, what is missing in the game?
Or what is a gap that we want to fill?
What kind of role maybe needs something new as well?
Or what could be mechanics or whatever that could be really interesting to try out?
And we usually take it from there."

"It was like a lot of iterations and really try to find the right thing that feels good, that is fun, because fun will always be at the core of it.
And then from there on, we usually take a look at like, okay, now we know all of this about the character or like the kit that we are building, what kind of like personality would fit to us?
For skins, it's a bit of a different run, right?
Because we are looking at like, what kind of like fantasy do we want to like bring to the game?
So if you like Zeros or whatever, like, you probably like like the lizard kind of stuff, but not everyone likes maybe playing a lizard, but really likes his kit."

"So that's why there's like skins coming in as well that then change the fantasy completely to make it open to like a wider audience as well.
Yeah, I don't have a lot to put on top of that.
But yeah, I think, as Simon mentioned, the most important thing for us is to like to bring new and fun things to the game that also reflects not only on the new character that we're doing, but how we're deciding to use some of the old characters that we got from Paragon, right?
Predecessor has a really big emphasis on verticality."

"So some of the characters have like a massive change and updates to their kits in order for them to play in a unique way in Predecessor, right?
Like I love what we did with Aurora, where she can like, she builds like an ice bridge, like the whole team can climb it, like jump over walls."

"So that kind of stuff, like you can only work in Predecessor.
And that's kind of the thing that we love making.
And something as well that I was going to sort of mention before, when we were talking about sort of newcomers as well, is the idea of sort of balancing that and maybe more in a sense of, because a lot of MOBAs sort of, again, have this idea of like they're really competitive because people spend hundreds and hundreds of hours in them learning and honing their abilities with these characters."

"How do you sort of approach that from a design perspective to make sure that maybe like the casual player isn't lost along the way?
Yeah, there are a few things I think we already mentioned.
There's like auto-buy and auto-skills that allows you to don't worry too much about like those aspects when you're just starting."

"So I think the first thing that's important when you're jumping on like a new MOBA is like to find the characters that resonate with you, like to find like the play style that resonate with you.
So by allowing players to just focus on like jumping in a match, like using the skills and then see what sticks, you know?
I think like the first time you play like Serath and then like you jump into someone and like it explode them like, yeah, cool."

"That's what I want to do.
And then you can like start slowly building the complexity with other things.
I think that really helps.
There are a few characters that we understand that have like a higher complexity to start."

"Some of them that we understand are like easier to first play or we introduce like in a tutorial, for example.
So like the first hero that you're comfortable with, we already understand that it's on a...
I don't want to say he's easy, but it's more accessible, yeah."

"But he has like a really high ceiling, I think.
So those are the kind of things like we don't want to assume those players are not capable of like executing all of that.
We just want to put in a front and center, the fun part of it."

"And then they can like start slowly bringing the more complex and more like unique aspects of it, like their own builds, their own crests and that kind of stuff as they keep playing the game.
Yeah."

"And with 1.0, we pushed a little bit on that one as well to like help players again, not only the auto stuff, but also when it comes to the role select and hero select.
So we added now that new players, for example, get like specific roles recommended at the beginning."

"So a supporter role might be way easier than a jungle.
And then even inside those roles, there's probably heroes that are way easier to play.
So those get like more highlighted to new players.
So they have an easier time probably and a more enjoyable time at the beginning."

"And last but not least, there's also like modes where it's like less on the line, right?
Like Brawl is a good example when you learn to like play certain heroes and you're not like comfortable to go into like an actual 5v5 with a new hero.
Just jump into Brawl, pick the hero that you want to try and just like spam those abilities and like see how it actually feels and learn it first before you go further."

"Something that you guys talked about as well was the sort of intention for consoles to be sort of not prioritized, but definitely at the heart of predecessor.
Did that pose any challenges or what benefits did you see from that when you were going through the game, especially in early access?
I think yes, for both."

"There are certain challenges, but also some like really good things that come on the back of it.
Obviously, like launching a patch in multiple platforms, it's trickier than just releasing on PC."

"But it gets easier the more you do it.
Also another thing is that when you have a very like control agnostic kind of game design, that usually helps you in the long run.
Like when you're designing and developing all the heroes, having both controller and keyboard and mouse in mind."

"So that definitely helps and we can see that being reflected in our community.
Even before we had the PlayStation and Xbox version live, I think around like 10 or 15% of our players were already playing with controller because they preferred.
So yeah, I think we also did a lot of work with UI and UX to make sure that the UI is very accessible and it's fun to play regardless of the controls and how you decide to play."

"And we are seeing a lot of good results because of that.
Once we launched on Xbox and PlayStation, we are seeing like a really good feedback from our community, for like console community, because of like how well thought for consoles the game is."

"Not much yet really from my side.
It's definitely like as Olivia already said, you have to keep all the controls in mind whatever you do.
Like it goes not only from the hero and gameplay perspective, but also UI, literally anything in the game has to work for both."

"And so far, I think we did a great job on that one that now that we don't even need the virtual cursor anymore anywhere in our game, everything should be like flawless when it comes to like navigating with a controller and multiple platforms.
Obviously adding more platforms is good, but also challenging for the team, but we're getting better and better at it."

"Just something else in the gameplay that I found interesting when you were talking before was the verticality element.
How do you think that sort of makes Predator stand out from other MOBAs, but also what goes into sort of, does that allow you to maybe think of extra abilities that maybe aren't just this guy shoots an arrow really far and it'll hit, or this person can hide in trees and how does that allow you to sort of think outside the box in game design?
Yes, I think like verticality unlocks a lot of things for us game design wise."

"Not only, oh, you can go high, but it's like, how does that impact the pace of the game?
How does that impact jungle?
How does it impact support?
For example, sometimes I love like playing like Muriel just because I can fly everywhere and they're like, yeah, cool."

"It makes me feel more special.
I think at the end of the day, it's one of the things that after you play with some heroes that have that kind of verticality, you cannot go back in how you see the matches going, right?
Because nowadays I have to take a conscious decision, it's like, oh, I'm going down this slope or down this valley."

"I'm in a bad position, if there's someone like on top that I cannot see, but they can see me, so you have to start thinking not only on the micro level of the game, like the 1v1 kind of situation, and not only on the macro side, it's like, oh, are we invading above or something like that?
But also on this like geographical way, like topography way, it's like, oh, I need to make sure that if I go down this alley, either I have my blink back to make sure I'm going to survive or I'm committing to it, you know?
So it does allow us to, I mean, challenge the players about it, so you really need to consider that when going there, because you could be ganked at any point, or you could fly away and shoot rockets from the air, which is always fun."

"That's my take on the verticality.
Yeah, I think I agree with that one.
I think verticality gives you an opportunity to create really unique and interesting gameplay, but it comes with these challenges that you have to keep in mind, not everyone has verticality, like a melee hero might just look into the sky and ask himself, like, how do I get there now?
So you need to kind of like keep everything in mind."

"But I think if you can pull it off in a really good way, it creates really interesting and fun moments.
Yeah, I think like, I love seeing like when in our communities, and there's like some clips where there's like three people just like flying around, and they're like, it's amazing."

"Yeah.
That's weird.
A good old Richter poll.
Yeah.
Brilliant."

"That's almost about all I have for you.
But I just wanted to ask what excites you about 2024?
What excites you about seeing the version 1.0 release and going beyond that?
Yeah, what excites you about sort of 2024, the version 1.0 release and going beyond that?
So I think as I quickly mentioned at the start, we have been working with predecessor for quite a few years now, but this is actually the start for us."

"So now we are actually starting, you know, like, like looking at roadmaps, okay, so we're here to stay.
So like, a big pipeline of new content, new, like, that's, that's coming.
And always good to like introduce a brand new community, because like, it's one thing when you're like on open beta, there's this whole like open beta vibe to it, you know, like people are just like, kind of like a small party kind of feeling, but now it's like, okay, now, now we're fully, you know, available and open 1.0."

"So we are already getting like a huge influx of new people that's going to like refresh the community.
And they, they usually bring a lot of changes, like in the meta of the game.
So we're super excited to see where the, where our community is going to take us pretty much."

"It's definitely with everyone that comes in, like the community starts to grow and starts to go in different directions.
And yeah, I'm super excited just to see where it goes next with 1.0.
Brilliant."

"Olivier, Simon, thank you so much for your time predecessor version 1.0 is out now.
Thank you again, guys.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much."

"Transcribed by https://otter.ai"