Neverness to Everness Gameplay Details Revealed in Latest Interview
The World of Neverness to Everness
In the footage shared above, the dev team of Hotta Studio share more details about the gameplay demo they shared recently. Level Designer Skily first talks about the city of Hetherau and how the city is vast and freely explorable with its numerous districts and key institutions. As the forefront of anomaly management and esper ability utilization, the city also has commercial areas like ports, parks, beaches, and more, which are filled with various anomalies for you to interact with in different ways.
He stated that the team wanted to focus on "creating a more immersive and deeply engaging open city," with the goal of centering it on the presentation of the urban areas that you explore in-game. This, in effect, makes the city of Hetherau more realistic and dynamic without the need of adding and expanding the map.
Speaking of different anomalies, Systems Designer Parlo talks about the many unusual phenomena that you will be encountering in the city, like a snack shop where an octopus sells takoyaki to you, or an antique shop where the clerk is an otter with a TV on its head. He talks more about these anomalies being a normal everyday occurence, where these also vary in form, skills, habits, and more.
Some of these anomalies can co-exist with humans, while others are dangerous. These dangerous anomalies are then managed and dealt with by the Espers of the Bureau of Anomaly Control, by containing or nullifying them as needed to protect the peace of Hetherau.
Running a Business and Owning Properties
The city of Hetherau also has various restaurants, arcades, shops, and other places that you can trade in, where the game even allows you to run your own business like these and even own several properties. You will be able to increase your profits by promoting your businesses, managing inventory, and other daily operations. If being your own boss isn't your fancy, you can choose to work part-time in other businesses instead. The money you earn is yours to spend, and one of the ways to spend it is by buying real estate through the in-game housing centers to buy the house of your dreams.
Has Actual Driving and Car Modding?!
With a city like Hetherau which is way too big to navigate on foot, the game actually has driving to help you get around. Environment Artist Giroud talks about the game having actual driving mechanics which dynamically change with the weather as well. He also states that each vehicle has different handling similar to how it is realistically. Similar to realistic sandbox games like GTA, the game also has AI NPCs that drive around the city to simulate realistic driving behavior. Lastly, the game even has actual car modifications, where you can take your vehicle to a garage and tune the car to your liking, like changing the car's look through paint jobs, decals, and kits, and even the car's performance by changing its suspensions, chassis, engine, and more.
An Ambitious Project, Can It Be Done?
To end the interview, Giroud asks players to have faith in the dev team to pull all of this off. The game will run on Unreal Engine 5, which allows them to create the ecosystem for the game as well as the procedural building that it needs to speed up the efficiency of the team. He also talks about the engine's in-sampling system which allows to create models that are both of the quality and performance to the team's liking. The team also uses different professional tools to help them create vast cities and areas included in Hetherau, calling the whole project a "vast urban ecosystem with high efficiency and quality."
Additionally, with the support of the Nanite virtual geometry system, the characters' polygon count has greatly increased without the game suffering performance issues. Using this system allows the team for future adaptation and more optimization for platforms such as mobile, PC, and consoles. During the dev process, he reassures that they will continue to optimize the game for all platforms, so that everyone has the best experience playing NTE in any platform.
