Warface Mars Update, Cross-Play, Next Generation Consoles Interview

November 21, 2019 at 1:56am
By Jason Stettner

Interview with Ivan Pabiarzhyn, Warface Franchise Lead at myGames

A staple I do in all interviews in order to start things off is to ask that you elaborate a bit about your game (s) that people might not know?

Ivan: Warface is a free-to-play online military first-person shooter, which puts players in the middle of a massive war. The dynamic universe of the game engages players with constantly updated Co-op multiplayer with challenging PVE activities and a rich variety of PVP-modes with league system, hundreds of unique types of weapons and extensive personalization and customization opportunities.

Just to give a bit of numbers: we have more than 100 types of unique weapons, 10 PvP modes, 11 co-op PvE raids and more than 170 different maps in the game. Warface is available for free download on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and gathers 80 mln players around the globe.

With Warface being out on consoles for a year, what sort of updates are being worked on for the near future?

Ivan: Recently we have added a new, 5th class of characters which is a humanoid robot we call SED (Synthetic Engineered Double). It has arrived to PC version of the game with our latest update Warface: Titan, which we are now bringing to consoles. In addition, one of our major achievements this year is a new movement and hit detection system, which we have built from scratch and already released in the game.

There’s a roadmap, what sort of long term updates should players be excited to see arrive?

Ivan: I believe cross-play between PS4 and Xbox One is one of such updates. It will come to Warface in Q2 next year. Moreover, our holiday-themed updates are rolling out too - with Halloween update having been released at the end of October, Christmas update coming soon by the end of December. Players may also expect new maps and a new mode, but those announcements will happen when the time is right.

Cross-play is coming, could you tell us a bit about that and are there any plans for a port to Nintendo Switch for Warface?

Ivan: Nintendo Switch is so unique, flexible to use in many ways and especially comfortable to play while traveling; its game library is so diverse that without any doubts we consider Nintendo Switch a great device. While we cannot announce anything regarding Switch at the moment, we are keeping a close look on what’s happening around that platform.

Looking at what’s available now, players can head to Mars. Could you tell us a bit about that experience and what players should expect when they head to the Red Planet?

Ivan: This is for the first time when Warface features extraterrestrial battles and when players are able to try themselves as SEDs robots with their unique modular weapon Arcus.

During the playthrough, players will experience low gravity and explore vast open locations of the Martian desert as well as interiors of the Earth colony on the Red Planet. Apart from the weaker gravity, which seems obvious for such a setting, the raid on the Red Planet will also introduce completely new enemies including heavy mining droids Antaeus-6 firing machine guns, Martian SED-2, spider mines that follow the target upon detecting it, and the final unique boss, larger than anything players fought in the game.

Mars is a really neat setting, how did the team come to the decision to make an update featuring this unique location?

Ivan: Well, we are always trying to make interesting content for our players. Mars exploration or traveling to Mars – is one of the most popular topics nowadays, so we added Mars to the lore while elaborating on the next chapter of the game. You might not have known but Warface lore is huge, which is not typical for FPS games.

Moreover, the mission to Mars was conceived to be made a long time ago and is related to the Sedrium chapter of the game, which comprises three consecutive special operations: “Chernobyl”, “Sunrise” and “Mars”. It all begins in “Chernobyl” when Warface troops find out the reason for Blackwood’s activity in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and destroy the Sedrium mining facility, which is producing evil humanoid robots SEDs.

In the next spec-op “Sunrise”, Warface squad lands on one of the Japanese islands where Blackwood has a secret facility. When Warface troops take over the facility, they discover the SEDs control room and its purpose – it is from this room that Blackwood sends SEDs to Mars to attack human colonies. Being the only opposition to Blackwood, Warface takes a task to save human colonies and this is how the players appear to be sent to the Red Planet within the special operation “Mars”.

What was the process like in bringing Warface to the current generation platforms, are there plans to place the game on next generation consoles Xbox Scarlett/PlayStation 5?

Ivan: We’ve already started communicating with the Sony and Microsoft about PlayStation 5 and Xbox Scarlett. For obvious reasons, we cannot announce anything solid at the moment. The engine that powers Warface, CryEngine, was heavily modified by our team to be able to run smoothly on a vast variety of systems, including consoles. With that in mind, we are definitely looking into what the next-generation consoles can offer us, especially in terms of increased performance and graphical fidelity.

There was an infographic about the year in Warface on consoles, is there a particular stat that’s your favorite in the listing?

Ivan: We are excited to reach over 13 mln players on consoles within just a year since Warface release on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Taking into consideration that the development of the project was executed by the Allods Team, an internal development team within Warface franchise publisher MY.GAMES, these numbers show that our team has done a splendid job.

We are also pleased by the fact that around 40% of our players are from the US. This gives us a great motivation to keep moving forward – push the game boundaries further and continue to develop our franchise to deliver the best FPS gaming experience possible.

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