Off The Grid: Neill Blomkamp shares details on \u201cunique\u201d battle royale from Gunzilla Games Gunzilla GamesNeill Blomkamp is one of this generation\u2019s finest sci-fi filmmakers, but his latest venture with Gunzilla Games has him fuelling the chaos of Off The Grid, a brand new battle royale experience. We had the chance to sit down with Neill Blomkamp to talk about Off The Grid, a new contender entering the battle royale genre from Gunzilla Games. Blomkamp, who has helmed sci-fi favorites such as District 9 and Elysium, is no stranger to the world of 3D creation. Joining Gunzilla Games as their Chief Visionary Officer back in July 2021, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter gave us an insight into the world of Off The Grid, before it releases in 2023 for next-gen consoles and PC. \u201cI\u2019ve been interested in games for a long time,\u201d says Blomkamp as he explains his \u201chistory in 3D graphics.\u201d While he has a passion for the ever-evolving world of VFX, Blomkamp admits \u201cI wouldn\u2019t necessarily say like I\u2019m an avid gamer.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m someone who appreciates the artistry of building 3D environments and 3D characters. Lighting them and dropping the characters into these 3D spaces and then seeing how they interact with the world.\u201d Having directed multi-million dollar blockbusters, the skillset transition from filmmaking to game development isn\u2019t as steep as some may think. \u201cIf it\u2018s a science fiction film, you\u2019re probably building the world and there\u2019s a lot of common skillsets. I think that they just carry over for directors, from making films to making games and fleshing out the world. I\u2019ve always been interested in trying to do games\u201d Blomkamp explains. \u201cI just needed the right opportunity to kind of start doing it, which is what\u2019s happened with Gunzilla and Off The Grid.\u201d Blomkamp working with a \u201cveteran team\u201d on Off The Grid It\u2019s no secret that the battle royale genre is saturated with heaps of competition to stand above. While Warzone and Apex Legends have forged their path, Blomkamp\u2019s arrival into the genre was purely down to fate: \u201cit was actually Richard Morgan, who is writing Off The Grid, he contacted me\u2026and said, \u201cHey, we\u2019re making this battle royale, do you want to be a part of it?\u201d \u201cSo for me as someone who wanted to get into games, it wasn\u2019t like I was sitting around going, like, what kind of game would I make and who should I approach?\u201d Blomkamp says that he\u2019s joined \u201ca really experienced kind of veteran team\u201d and that \u201cit was less about me generating the core game structure and more about being approached and seeing how I could fit in.\u201d Off The Grid has been described as \u201cbattle royale 2.0\u201d by Gunzilla Games, with a \u201cnarrative-driven\u201d hook at its core. \u201cIt really is about a battle royale, so those elements of gameplay have to just work. Players can choose to engage with the story elements or not.\u201d \u201cThe way that we\u2019ll try to construct the gameplay will be battle royale first and narrative will be there in a supporting kind of supplementary way, hopefully, to expand the feeling of the world and let you meet the characters,\u201d Blomkamp says of Off The Grid\u2019s promising premise. However, it is imperative for Gunzilla Games that the story isn\u2019t necessarily \u201cgetting in the way of the battle royale experience.\u201d Off The Grid has a \u201cunique\u201d mechanic up its sleeve The world of Off The Grid will evolve and change over time, as player progression can \u201ctake on a life of its own, changing in unexpected ways each time a player rejoins the game.\u201d When asked whether he could reveal any specific examples of this, Blomkamp jokingly kept his cards close to his chest: \u201cNo, not yet.\u201d However, any seasoned FPS player knows the meat of the game is combat. \u201cThere is one element in the battle royale combat stuff that is very unique and very cool, which I won\u2019t give away, but there is definitely something that is a slight tweak to battle royales that have come before, which I\u2019m pretty excited about.\u201d It remains to be seen what this \u201cunique\u201d feature could be, but players hoping to dive into Off The Grid in VR may need to wait longer: \u201cI love VR. I don\u2019t think that this will necessarily port over to VR. I need to check that out with Gunzilla.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m curious what they would think about that, but that currently isn\u2019t in the planning\u201d adds Blomkamp on the notion of a VR port. Neill Blomkamp places Off The Grid into \u201creal-world cyberpunk\u201d Despite Blomkamp\u2019s past in cyberpunk-inspired filmmaking, projects like District 9 or Elysium aren\u2019t fuelling his inspiration for Off The Grid: \u201d I\u2019m not thinking about those films. I mean it\u2019s the same in the sense that it\u2019s real-world cyberpunk. So you have like grungy tech that\u2019s placed into our very real-world environments.\u201d \u201cThis version that he [Richard Morgan] and I are both sort of responsible for generating and bringing to life has a very serious and very large world. It has satire in it, but it\u2019s also, it may be slightly less satire than something like Elysium.\u201d As Off The Grid\u2019s release approaches, Blomkamp adds that they\u2019re keen to explore the vast character they\u2019re building in other mediums: \u201cwe want to go out beyond the scale of just the game.\u201d For now, we\u2019ll be eagerly anticipating the first gameplay reveal. Off The Grid releases in 2023 for next-gen consoles and PC alike.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Off The Grid: Neill Blomkamp shares details on \u201cunique\u201d battle royale from Gunzilla Games Gunzilla GamesNeill Blomkamp is one of this generation\u2019s finest sci-fi filmmakers, but his latest venture with Gunzilla Games has him fuelling the chaos of Off The Grid, a brand new battle royale experience. We had the chance to sit down with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}