Everspace 2: “Everyone Gets a Better Game Because of Xbox Game Pass” | Gaming – Buy Aussie News

Until one of us masters the art of interstellar travel, humans will always have an innate curiosity about space. We pore over fictional portrayals of astral colonization and visualize futures where Earth is just one port of call on our starlit adventures.

The standard view of a sequel is that it’ll do what the first game did, but bigger. Everspace 2 is different.

Yes, like the first game, this is a third-person, space-based looter-shooter. But where Everspace was a roguelike, Everspace 2 is full, open-world action-RPG. Everspace focused on short runs through increasingly difficult trials – Everspace 2 boasts a 30-hour campaign. Everspace was all-action – Everspace 2 has a more expansive mood, preserving those bursts of combat but slotting in gentler exploration, trading and story beats.

Games just don’t make this kind of shift very often, especially when the originals had already built a loving fanbase. So why did developer Rockfish decide to make such a drastic change? Ahead of the game’s launch on Xbox Series X|S on August 15, we had the opportunity to sit down with Rockfish CEO, Michael Schade to discuss the studio’s ambitious move, how it was always part of their plan, and how Game Pass helped it become a reality.

Schade tells us that the decision to build the original Everspace as a roguelike was driven by two main factors – creative direction, and resources.

“When we made the first Everspace, we actually didn’t have the budget to really follow the vision that we had to make an open-space action RPG,” Schade tells us. “We delivered on that vision, but it was a compromise.”

Fortunately, the success of Everspace allowed Rockfish to craft a prototype for Everspace 2, and really lean into the open-world approach that the team had envisioned for the first game. With more emphasis on exploration, the roguelike elements made less sense, according to Schade.

“Everspace has a procedurally generated course…