The conspiracies aboutleavingare really spectacular. We've seenHideo Kojimalinked to the game while fans speculate it could be nextsilent Hillor even a new onemetal gears. You couldn't be further from the truth.leavingCreator Hasan Kahraman struggles with this on a daily basis. Now he wants to set the record straight.
leavingis definitely notsilent HillGame... and NME has the proof.
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„leavingis a shooter/survival game,” he told NME. "It has some horror elements, but it's not really a horror game. It's not what people think - it issilent Hill.“
In fact, we know exactly what it is. Hasan gave us an exclusive review ofleavingincluding plot details, how it plays - pretty much everything we could ever want to know.
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We can finally debunk these rumors - it's notsilent HillGame. It is notmetal gears.
After giving us a lengthy breakdown of the game's storyline, Hasan asked us to keep it to ourselves. But we can say one thingleavingis absolutely not what you think. Not even close.
"At first we said it was going to be an open world game," he explained. "But with the high quality graphics we have now, we had to sacrifice that. It's not really open world anymore - it's a linear story.”
leavingfollows the story of Jason Longfield after he wakes up in a strange forest - that much has already been revealed in onePlayStation-Blogwhen the game was first announced. Gloomy overtones and some spooky looking trees immediately suggest itleavingis a kind of survival horror. But after we've discussed Jason's backstory in detail, it's clear that this isn't a horror game at all. It's something completely different.
"The special thing aboutleavingis that it has a new game mechanic.”
Kahraman has addressed this before. Everything you do in the game affects the player character. When you sprint, Jason gets out of breath, which in turn affects his accuracy. When he's scared, he gets nervous... and it all affects how you can play.
"The way you explore, how you take damage, how you just play the game is in a very different way," he explained. “This is achieved through high-end motion capture. We do motion capture ourselves and create systems for the game based on animation data.”
Survival will be a big part of itleaving. That much is clear. But as far as horror goes - there isn't much of that to be seen. Certainly not to the extent thatsilent HillorAlan Wake.
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“I think this mechanic is something really great. What we have so far isn't ready for the public just yet, but once it's finalized we'll definitely be showing some footage. That's why I'm so hypedleavingbecause it's new."
It's not just Kahraman that's been hypedleaving. Subreddits are teeming with conspiracy theories and snippets of information about the game, which everyone thinks is a Hideo Kojima project.
Kahraman insists that Hideo Kojima had nothing to do with itleaving. "No," he said when asked directly. "No, absolutely not."
But Koj himself didn't exactly help.
"A few days ago, Hideo Kojima posted a doll on Twitter of himself standing with his mouth closed on a blue box and he was really vague about it," Kahraman said. "Because of that, a lot of people assumed he was working on our Realtime Experience. That was after the delay and he said, "I was going to change a few frames on the trailer, but everyone stays calm." I think it was his way of trying to deal with the weirdness of keeping everyone calm, but otherwise working we don't really date Kojima."
Start trailer. I tweaked a few frames and played around with it a lot and it might have changed my impression. let's stay cool 🌈🦀🐟🐬🐋🦈☔️🌱👻🌪💀⛱👶👍pic.twitter.com/FlbmQ7N4zn
— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN)11. August 2021
The real-time experience was a real pain point for Kahraman. Originally touted as a "trailer app," it was built to deliver experiences to usersleavingFootage in-engine withPS5Hardware.
The idea is that it's better than just a video clip. "What you see is what you play". But after a series of delays, the app has received a lot of criticism - mostly for not really giving much away.
"It was a really big disaster," admits Kahraman. "People are really disappointed."
This disappointment is largely due to the fact that the newly revealed footage was revealed as a four-second video on Twitter before the Realtime Experience app launched.
Are you ready?pic.twitter.com/4oI5FjgDFE
— BLUE BOX Game Studios (@BBGameStudios)10. August 2021
But Kahraman explained that this was all done with the best of intentions:
"Basically we had to cut some footage from the opening teaser and I knew it wasn't a good idea to take the same footage we had on Twitter and paste it in there because it's literally four seconds of footage and there isn't a lot ago. But we had to do that because people wanted a patch, right? That was our first priority - just get the patch out because we'll be adding more content later."
It seems the troubles started with some technical hiccups... and that left Kahraman facing the heartbreaking decision to put everything they could online.
"It started with engine issues when we had the patch delay and we couldn't really solve that," he said. "We weren't alone - we had some other teams working with it, so it really got out of hand. Maybe it's because we're using Unreal Engine 5, which is in Early Access, which isn't really recommended for a project like this. But we did it anyway because we needed the features it had.”
"The start didn't go well," he admitted. "But definitely we will add more content in due course and people will be able to see that."
With this new content, users will notice a number of additional sections in the Realtime Experience app - namely a cinematic trailer and a playable prologue. And it seems that both will come soon.
"The cinematic trailer will be out very soon... like,Yes, reallysoon,” revealed Kahraman. “First we wanted to present it at GamesCom, but we just have to see if we can pull that off. GamesCom is about in a week? We don't want to make the same mistakes - we don't want to announce a date and then make it really tight for us again. 'Cause if we screw it up, I think it'll screw up forever. We want to make sure we don't announce a date just yet, but the cinematic trailer won't be online until very soon."
"The playable prologue will take place shortly after the cinematic reveal," he added. "But again - we don't want to announce a date. The only thing I've learned is not to announce something too early, you don't want to make it too tight. But it will be soon, yes.”
Both experiences will likely helpBlue-Box-Game-Studiosto ease the tension surrounding this project - so players can get a better idea of whatleavingis really all about. Currently, the gaming community only has their own ideas. And none of them come even close to the goal.
"The eye patch," Kahraman said, shaking his head. "The eye patch. Everyone immediately associated it with Solid Snake. But I was like, 'People think it's Silent Hill, so it wouldn't make sense for people to associate it with Snake'."
Are you ready? We are!pic.twitter.com/dQJwjot99S
(Video) Blue Box Head Hasan Kahraman On Abandoned Trailer App Launch: "It's Been A Really Big Disaster"— BLUE BOX Game Studios (@BBGameStudios)July 27, 2021
The now infamous image was revealed on Twitter - it shows a blurred shot of a man wearing an eye patch. Unfortunately, fans jumped at someverywrong conclusions.
"I have to admit that was a big mistake," he said. “But there is no change now because it is too late. Once it's up, it's up."
While we can't say too much, NME can confirm that's absolutely the caseNota picture of Solid Snake. In fact, it depicts the villain of the game. It's also not stock imagery, as many fans believed.
"People were like, 'No, that's a stock image, it was ripped from this site, I can see that'. The thing is, it's actually a MetaHuman powered character. He looks bald, but he actually has facial hair, and he has some hair too. But it's so blurry you can't see it. The reason it's blurry is because we want to surprise people – we didn't want to reveal it, but people got that wrong, so we're not going to blur anything from now on."
In fact, misunderstandings seem to plague Blue Box. The studio has received a lot of criticism in recent weeks,labeled as a "cheater".due to a series of failed game launches.
"Team members at Blue Box, as well as freelancers we work with, aren't comfortable showing their face right now," he revealed. "It's no fun being labeled a cheater, is it? So, yeah, that's why people aren't feeling comfortable showing their face right now, or even publicly announcing that they're involvedleaving.“
"I'm really depressed right now," Kahraman added. "I can't sleep, I can't eat. The biggest thing that annoys me is that people call us scammers. That's the big thing that really, really hurts me. Because that's not my intention at all, you know?"
leavingSlated to release on PS5 sometime in 2022.