Planetside 2 dev: Modern Warfare and Battlefield are "like Checkers where we're sort of like Risk"

Planetside 2

In the latest issue of PC Gamer UK , we took a look at the vast new free to play sequel, Planetside 2. Developers, Sony Online Entertainment told us its battles will rage across " eight-by-eight kilometre continents " and take place on a different scale to the shooters we're used to.

"I always like to say that Planetside and Planetside 2 are sort of like, they're to Battlefield and Modern Warfare and those FPS games - and don't take this as a denigration at all, I love those games, I play those games - but those games are sort of like Checkers where we're sort of like Risk," says creative director Matt Higby.

"The mechanic is the same. You pick up a piece and you move it, you pick up a piece and you move it, but the vastness and the strategy of it is so much different when you're playing Risk than when you're just picking up a Checker piece.

"It feels about the same as shooting a gun in both games, but there's a lot more to do, and there's a lot more possibilities..."

Higby tells us about some of those possibilities. Planetside 2 will have "massive continents to support that kind of warfare." They will be "dozens of square kilometers and there's multiples of them that each have their own biosphere and their own specific look, atmosphere."

"There's a whole territory control mechanic," Higby continues, "so as you conquer bases, towers, bunkers, even just ridges, like out in the wilderness, ridge lines and mountains and stuff, you can capture all these things and capture nodes for play resources."

Find out more in our six page Planetside 2 preview in the latest issue of PC Gamer UK , which is available in stores now, online and digitally through Zinio and Apple Newsstand . You can also subscribe and get issue earlier, for less money, and clad in our super-special subscriber covers.

Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.

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