Earlier this week, PUBG creator Brendan Greene officially revealed that he has left Krafton to form a new studio, which the South Korean company holds a minority stake in. Greene didn’t give away a heap of details on what he was getting up to, though we did find out in a press release that he formed the new studio this year and that the team is “exploring the systems needed to enable massive scale within open-world games”.
Now, though, Greene has flung a few more details our way, dipping into what’s going with the project Prologue. In a video posted to Twitter, Greene explains that Prologue will see players stumble their way across a “runtime-generated wilderness”, using tools to gather resources to survive on a journey where you’re constantly battling the elements. “There will be no guidance, no path for you to follow,” Greene says. “Just a world, a spot on the map to reach, and the tools needed to get there.”
Greene also dips into the tech the team are putting together to power the game. He says that he’s long held a deep fascination with sandbox-style, open-world games and the freedoms they give you, though he wishes they were bigger. Naturally, creating such a world proves challenging, so the team is leaning on “neural networks” to help generate a massive, realistic open world.
That brings us back to Prologue. Essentially, it’s a tech demo that’ll serve as a taster for the kind of world Greene wants to create. As it’s a demo, you can pay what you want to try it out.
“This is just the start of the small glimpse of that technology that will eventually power a much more extensive experience,” Greene says. “Prologue is our first step on a multi-year journey towards creating what we hope will be rich, interactive, open worlds.”
— PLAYERUNKNOWN (@PLAYERUNKNOWN) September 3, 2021
We first caught a glimpse of Prologue at The Game Awards in 2019, though details have been thin on the ground. Greene has, however, previously said this won’t be PUBG 2, so don’t expect another FPS game here.