'I expect a lot of people will hate it': PUBG creator Brendan Greene doesn't care if his new game is too hard for players to handle as long as it 'elicits a reaction'
Survival games aren't known to be easy; that's kind of the whole point, especially when you often find yourself in remote, unforgiving locations where you need to keep fed, hydrated, and protected from the elements and maybe some hostile mobs. But Prologue: Go Wayback! takes its difficulty to a whole new level.
«I like brutal games,» PUBG creator Brendan Greene tells me. «I grew up with Doom and spent weeks trying to get past its levels. I want to make a space that is hard and difficult, because I do think a lot of gamers like that. Like, there's too much hand-holding, which is fine. But just my game won't have that option.»
Danger is around every corner in Prologue. But unlike most survival games where there are hostile enemies who deliver the finishing blow, the real risk comes from making the wrong choices. Most of my decisions in Prologue directly led to my death sooner or later. Whether it was trying to climb a mossy rock for a better view of the river, only to slip off and bash my head on the way down, or deciding that I could tough out swimming across a cold river (I froze to death). These are all mistakes to learn from, but one aggressor that I never seemed able to best was the weather.
«Some people wanted, like, a big bad or an enemy that was not predictable,» Greene says. «It's like in Battle Royale when you come across another player that you can't really control, and it's not something you can predict. It's the same with the weather. It's just a constant tick. So it's up to you to survive against this. And it's more that it's a constant threat, rather than something you can predict easily. It just feels fairer.»
While you can sort of predict the weather with the help of a handy radio that you can find in the starter cabin, this isn't infallible, and carrying it around with you takes up most of your backpack space. I ended up leaving it behind, so I had more space for blackberries. But even with the radio in my possession, the weather was still a massive
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