Bulletstorm lead announces The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
A "weird fiction horror" game for PC.
Last Autumn the creative lead on Bulletstorm, Adrian Chmielarz, left Gears of War: Judgment developer People Can Fly to start a new studio with his colleagues Andrzej Poznanski and Michal Kosieradzki. The newly formed outfit, dubbed The Astronauts, has revealed its first title, a "weird fiction horror" affair called The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.
Inspired by macabre early 20th century pulp, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter casts you as a detective with the supernatural ability to visualise the scenes of crimes (sound familiar, Zack?). Tasked with saving a young kidnapped boy, you'll discover the horrifically mutilated body of one of the kidnappers leading to a larger mystery involving a "trail of corpses" and an "ancient evil," not to mention the missing boy.
"What we care about the most is that the players feel like they're really there. Immersion is our number one priority," said designer Adrian Chmielarz. "It's a game about exploration and discovery. We're not abandoning the gameplay - on the contrary: we're trying to strip it down to the bone and make sure it's always meaningful and truly makes the experience better."
"There are lots of great things about the big world of AAA games, but there's even more appeal to us in making games that feel and are personal, and where the only censors are the creators and the public. We want to make games which we are 100 per cent responsible for. By starting The Astronauts we went back to the way we were ten years ago, when we were making Painkiller and were doing it completely our way. The game that we're making right now could not be more different, but the studio spirit seems to be exactly the same."
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is being developed with Unreal Engine 3 for a PC release sometime this year. Check out the teaser trailer below.
