SOE are ploughing ahead with the development of H1Z1 at a fast pace it appears based on comments from the development team in tonight’s live stream.
H1Z1 has only been in development since January this year but due to the resources available at SOE they are actually getting ready for an early access release. Tonight they revealed that early access is launching in about four weeks time and it will cost $19.99.
On the stream the team showed some of the environments, bashing zombies over the head with axes, and driving a Jeep. The fact that there are already vehicles in the game pushed it slightly ahead of DayZ which is currently focusing on implementing survival features. There’s no doubt that H1Z1 has been influenced by DayZ, the atmosphere and environments on show look very similar.
When it comes creatures in the game world there will be wildlife such as deer and wolves. Wolves will hunt the deer, zombies will try and hunt both, and we can assume players will hunt everything, including each other.
There will be strategic gameplay required, players will have to work together to avoid things such as hordes of zombies using distraction techniques which would be like an episode of the Walking Dead. What is sounding good is the construction system which was demonstrated very briefly by placing a door on a shed with the door snapping into place.
Day and night cycles were also demonstrated and it gets very, very dark. Pulling out a torch lit the area up rather nicely. Hopping in a Jeep with the headlights on the it looked great and then the sun came up in this accelerated time demo It all appears to work as intended.
It was a fairly brief demo but we did see another player get set alight by a torch which was worth watching. At least we know they’ve managed to get fire working.