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Mark Parker is a video game industry veteran with 17 years of experience playing multiple AAA games as well as some great indie titles. This time we count on him to tell us a little about the world of game development in The Bearded Ladies, creators of Miasma Chronicles and hear first-hand how work is going on this new project.
Mark is also a huge fan of the Unreal engine, and is a core creator of the Miasma Chronicles. He has worked in the past on high-profile projects like Payday, Hitman, Far Cry 3, and The Division among others. With Miasma Chronicles getting closer to its release, scheduled for May 23, 2023, we will review the title and the way of working that the study has. I invite you to continue reading, since the interview has had very interesting points that will surely be of interest to you.
Interview with Mark Parker, developer and one of the main creators of Miasma Chronicles
SomosXbox: As a consolidated study in the world of videogames, you will know first-hand the work it takes to get a title like Miasma Chronicles out, I would like to start this interview knowing What have been your biggest challenges in developing the game?.
Mark: A major challenge when creating new games is finding ways to extend or enhance some of the already well-established features of tactical games, many of which have been a part of the tactical genre from the very beginning. We have thoroughly studied the mechanics and, in some cases, we’ve narrowed them down to remove the less fun aspects, and in other cases, we’ve expanded them. Skill decks, for example, they do not punish the player for making decisions at the beginning (as many skill trees tend to do). Instead, we let you recover skill points and spend them again as you progress through the game and come up with new tactics.
SomosXbox: Same Chronicles aims high, and bets on a mixed game style, in which exploration is mixed in real time, with a turn-based combat system.C.What was the main decision that was made to mix both styles in the game??
Mark: The answer is simple: it works fine.. Stealth gameplay becomes a joy when the player can approach combat from any direction. Rewards for exploring an area, such as upgraded weapons or other useful items they take players further into the game world and, in turn, learn more about the lore and history. We’ve included a lot of detail in the world that we think players will enjoy exploring.
SomosXbox: I am very interested in the origin of everything, the moment in which the first lines of this new title were written. whatHow the idea of creating Miasma Chronicles came about?
Mark: We wanted to make a game with a lot of MYZ DNA as we really enjoyed making it and we know our players enjoyed it too. So we decided to expand what we did at MYZ and take it much further. A new version of the Apocalypse, set in the southern United States. But instead of one of the well-established “reasons” for the collapse of society, we wanted to find something new and use it to shape the world we explore both visually and narratively. I risk making spoilers, so to know more about what it is you will have to play the game 🙂
Corruption 2029 is exposed in a first gameplay
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We are Xbox: Mutan Year Zero (MYZ): Road to Eden and Corruption 2029 were your previous titles, have you served from this experience to develop some aspects of Miasma Chronicles?
Mark: Of course. During Corruption 2029 we started to refine our engine (we used a custom version of UE4) and made many improvements to the tactical systems that all three games share to some extent. Moving towards Miasma Chronicles, we further refined our base systems and added a ton of new features aspects such as shooting/movement, locomotion, etc. Of course, we have created a lot of completely new features for Miasma that extend these features even further.
SomosXbox: The gaming community is hard to please, what do you think I would highlight Miasma Chronicles from other games of its style?
Mark: We shook things up a bit, adapting to the needs, and we allow a lot of emergent play which I think all tactical players will like. We’ve made more sense of weapons and abilities so there’s less menu work and more tactical decision making in the game.
SomosXbox: Considering that you have created titles like Corruption 2029 and Mutan Year Zero: Road to Eden, do you think Miasma Chronicles is your most ambitious game to date?
Mark: Of course! It’s a much bigger game than our previous two titles, both in quality and length. We took note of what players really liked about our previous titles and have expanded on almost everything.
Those responsible for Mutant Year Zero present their new project, Corruption 2029
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SomosXbox: Miasma Chronicles is going to arrive for various platforms.It has been a challenge to optimize the game for each hardware?
Mark: It’s always a bit difficult to work with fixed specs, especially on consoles.. The latest generation of consoles are powerful, but you can’t tell users to buy a new GPU or add more RAM, on a fixed platform like this. So yeah, it’s been a challenge.
SomosXbox: As developers, I imagine that you want the game to reach as many people as possible, have you focused on a more casual experience or you aspire to mainly reach a specific niche of players?
Mark: Like any challenge, we always want to have some more hardcore settings so that expert players can put themselves to the test. So that’s something we keep for the hardcore. Having said that, we’ve added features that will help less experienced players get deeper into the game, such as the possibility of simplifying the probability of success of RND. We went a bit further with RPG-style elements to have a slightly broader appeal. One thing we noticed with MYZ was that it brought new decks to the tactical genre. Something that, of course, we want to encourage!
SomosXbox: I have taken a look at the apocalyptic setting of Miasma Chronicles and its artistic and graphic section and I must say that it attracts a lot of attention.Which Do you think they are the greatest strengths of the title??
Mark: Visually, I think the game will continue to be very interesting from start to finish. we wanted to have a living world with a lot of movement and entertain the player’s eye. exploration will be rewardedand in some levels there are entire subsections that the player can find.
SomosXbox: Finally, and as a player who is looking forward to your title, Miasma Chronicles plans to release on PC and Xbox Series X among other platforms, but whatDo you think it will come out on Xbox Game Pass at some point??
Mark: Por the moment We have no official plans to release the game on Game Pass..
If you want to know more about the creators of Miasma Chronicles and its title, you can take a look at its official page on Steam, and the website of its developers, The Bearded Ladies. The game is scheduled to arrive on May 23, so we only have to wait and be aware of the latest news for the launch. We hope you liked the interview and feel free to leave your opinion in the comments.