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At Gamescom, we got to sit down with NCSoft's Jaehyun Bae to talk about the upcoming shooter Cinder City.
"And we are live. Hello, I'm Alex. I'm here with Gamereactor. We are here at Gamescom. I'm talking about Cinder City today, a very, very exciting new shooter because I've just seen sort of, I've got out of the presentation on it, I've been looking at gameplay and it really does seem like something that's entirely unique. Could you come up, could you talk to me a little bit about how you came up with the sort of concepts and ideas behind Cinder City and what made you go for it sort of right now? Was this time to step into the shooter with something, the shooter genre with something pretty unique? So basically, Cinder City is based on my idea and my aspiration for the PvE shooter. I'm a huge fan of PvE shooter myself. I've been dreaming of building a game where a massive amount of players are shooting in the same vast field against an enormous amount of enemies. And I chose the city because it has a lot of elements that is suitable for shooters."
"There are buildings, hovers, a lot of small and big elements in it and heights as well. So that's the background of why we chose the city. We also combined the different elements to give it uniqueness like sci-fi and the concept of ruined city with some destructed and collapsed. All those ideas combined leads to the Cinder City today. There are a lot of concepts in Cinder City, something that feels pretty clear from the get-go. There's almost zombie-like monstrosities, there are mechs, there are futuristic weapons, there are helicopters and vehicles and things like that. How, I guess, do you stop a player from becoming overwhelmed when they first step into a game like Cinder City? If you watch just a small clip of a trailer, it might have a combination of a wide array of things. But players, when they actually get to play, they will experience them step by step. So first of all, you will just walk around the world and shooting guns and you get used to the environment. Secondly, you will walk into even a wider place and for you to have the freedom of movement, you will be introduced with the vehicles, helicopters and cars. And then you walk into the enclosed environment inside of buildings, underground, the subways where you will encounter the creatures. So that will be a gradual expansion of experience rather than all of them coming at you all at once. But at the same time, I also feel like being overwhelmed isn't necessarily a bad experience. So yeah. And also, as for the types of enemies, we initially started with just a few types of enemies. But as we try to diversify the experience and the places, we came to develop a lot of different factions. So we first started out as just a small number of types of super soldiers that we fight against. But as we get too used to them, we felt like we need some more varieties. So we got some weaker but larger numbers, the gang members that you encounter in the demo that you can play in the Gamescom. And thirdly, we introduced creatures as well that are more lethal and that are slow but lethal. And they will be for the melee action in the enclosed environments like indoors. And it also adds the element of horror, which also gives a different spice. So that's how all the types of enemies have expanded in our game. I like the point about the gradual storyline that you were talking about, because I think in the presentation as well, it was said that multiplayer and single player are going to play into the same story here."
"How does that work in terms of, is it more of a parallel progression where we will see a multiplayer story and a single player story set within the same world? Or are they going to converge to one point? Yeah, the storylines of the single player and the multiplayer will ultimately merge into the single same conclusion. So in the demo, it started out as a smaller tutorial, but as it has expanded, it now has turned into a campaign mode where you get to experience individual stories of each hero in our game. But they are not the main storyline of the game, but it gives bits of information that helps you understand the world building of the game. And ultimately, you will experience an epic storyline in an open world. And with all those bits of stories combined, it'll lead to the same storyline that penetrates the whole game. From a design standpoint, is it difficult to balance that in a sense that some players like playing multiplayer games more, some players like playing single player games more? How do you make it exciting for both types of player? I guess, yeah, it really is a great, great question. And it's also one of the challenges we have to face. But we're thinking, I think we should probably take more of a traditional approach where for the multiplayer in the open world, they'll have an identical difficulty for all the players, while for the single players, they will have the campaign mode or some, and there can be some other like instance dungeon mode where you have to match, you can match make with a certain number of players to play together. For that, you can adjust the difficulties to some extent, etc. So that way, we can, to some extent, satisfy both segments, multiplayer and single player. In the single players, especially, how much is, how defined is your protagonist and how open are they to sort of player made decisions? Because in the multiplayer, I'd imagine that the player is making all the decisions, but how much control do they have over that single player story?
So when it comes to the freedom of choice in a single player, it would be inevitably linear, they will follow the defined storylines, and it'll be rather closed, like the demo you get to play today, while in the open world, the players will follow along the epic storyline."
"But aside from that, there will be a lot of side quests, smaller stories and other branches, they're not linear at all, you can always choose what to do and how to approach and how to strategize. So in the open world, you get a high level of freedom.
Just got one last question for you, when can people expect to see Cinder City, and what can they play it on?
As for the release window, we're thinking of second half of next year, 2026, and the platform, we are aiming for PC and console. For the console, there isn't no specific platform that is decided, so all of that is open, but we're thinking of PC and console launch."
"Perfect, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you.
Thank you."
