The Vanishing of Ethan Carter won't contain any combat
Bulletstorm lead describes his latest as Dear Esther with "gameplay, murder and corpses."
Yesterday Bulletstorm creative lead Adrian Chmielarz announced his new PC "weird fiction horror" game, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, and today he has detailed the mysterious title in an exchange with Eurogamer.
The most notable points are that The Vanishing of Ethan Carter will be in first-person and won't contain any combat - a big shift after Chmielarz's work on Bulletstorm and Painkiller.
"It's not about shooting monsters," Chmielarz explained. "Not that there's anything wrong with that. After all, I did design Painkiller and Bulletstorm and I enjoy grinding meat with bullets as much as the next guy. But I wanted to make a different kind of game for a very long time, and now it can finally happen."
When asked about the gameplay mechanics Chmielarz said, "The focus of the game is its escapist factor: the immersion, the exploration and the discovery. But it wouldn't make much sense to play as a detective if you weren't doing any detecting, would it? So there's a little bit of that, but again, the focus is not on mind bending puzzles, but on unsettling discoveries.
"Take Dear Esther, add gameplay, murder and corpses. That's the closest to what The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is."
Regarding the first-person perspective, Chmielarz told me, "A few amazing games like The Walking Dead or Journey have already proven that third-person can work perfectly fine for emotions, but I think that when it comes to immersion, it's hard to beat first-person perspectives. This may be just me, but I get a better sense of presence in the virtual world if it happens in first-person. And that sense of presence is exactly what we are after. We want the players to feel like they're really there, shiver when it's cold and lower their heads when it's windy."
He also noted that he would like to support Oculus and other 3D devices and displays - something that's well-suited for first-person games.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is due out this year on PC.
