Tencent's first survival game was launched, which may be the most authentic mobile game made by Photon.

At the market node in 2020, the highly realistic open-world survival mobile game has been refined to such an extent.

Text/Andrew

Photon, another masterpiece developed by unreal engine 4, has been tested.

On September 16, Dawn Awakening began the "Dawn Test". This new work is another game of photons, with huge investment.

Dawn Awakening is the first time that Tencent has independently studied the emerging categories of SOC (i.e. survival, open world, handicrafts). As a rapidly rising direction of play in recent two years, the theme of open world survival is not particularly common in mobile games.

Dawn Awakening is also a massive game.

From my experience in the past few days, whether it is the external art investment, the world construction in the game, the scale of the map, the background, the plot setting, and the presentation of details everywhere, Dawn Awakening is conveying a huge amount of content. Around the point of realism, the game has built a set of systematic and complete open world survival gameplay.

Combined with the past product experience of Photon and the game is not limited to the settings of local users, Dawn Awakening may become another product of Photon that has an impact in many regions and markets.

It may be the most realistic survival mobile game on the market.

Dawn awakening is a game with a sense of substitution in shaping the atmosphere.

This is my first hour's intuitive feeling. Frankly speaking, after playing some European and American games, I am a little biased towards the default setting that the initial role is too good-looking. I will worry that the external performance of the game will compromise the public aesthetic level too much. For example, the environment may be exquisite but the atmosphere is not enough, which will destroy the tension of adventure. Especially when I hold an uncle's face and open my mouth to talk, it is obviously a young man's voice.

But the process of teaching and plot in the first few minutes quickly dispelled my doubts.

"Awakening at Dawn" is not only for the accuracy of picture quality, but for making a sunny and gorgeous survival game. On the contrary, novice teaching brings players into a dark, groggy and even a bit extreme environment as soon as it comes up.

The story takes place in the post-disaster world. The protagonist survived the helicopter crash and needed to collect resources from the surrounding environment in time to survive. From getting the first weapon to repairing the motorcycle, the protagonist needs to go through dilapidated warehouses and abandoned gas stations, rummage through the cabinets to find materials, and face unexpected mutant enemies. At the same time, barren places everywhere are implying environmental dangers.

With the blessing of unreal engine, in addition to the realistic painting style and meticulous modeling, the atmosphere created by the game content also conveys the survival feedback with a sense of substitution.

For example, when night falls, the picture will darken quickly in a short time, and the characters can only see the scene within a few meters. Lighting with a flashlight can only illuminate a small part of the eyes. On motorcycles and other vehicles, the lighting range of headlights will be larger, but it is also quite limited. When crossing the forest at night, you can feel the tension of the game without any deliberately rendered BGM.

Of course, waking up at dawn is not always gloomy. When the weather is clear, sunlight will pass through the gaps between trees and shine into the shelter, showing a similar light sense to the real world, and will also add some adjustments to the harsh living environment.

There are also various landforms that restore reality. As the story progresses, players will also reflect more different landforms: woodlands, valleys, beaches, deserts, swamps and so on. Every landform will be like reality: the woodland is full of all kinds of plants that can be collected, and sandstorms will be raised from time to time in the desert.

In addition to the macro environment, many details of the game are set around the point of "real life experience".

The most direct possibility that each player feels is various survival indicators. After the story is advanced to the first time to join the stronghold, the system will unlock. The protagonist's survival indicators are divided into four dimensions: body, spirit, health and metabolism, which correspond to 12 survival indicators, including body shape, hunger and thirst, health and energy.

Bathing, sleeping, going to the toilet ... A lot of daily behaviors will affect these indicators-such as "manual work" such as cutting trees and mining will consume satiety; You can wash your face and clothes near shallow water, but if you don't wash it for a long time, it is easy to attract monsters; The duration and frequency of sports behavior will affect the physical quality of the character, and at the same time, it can also change the body's fat and thin. Overweight may affect the speed of the vehicle.

In addition, in order to be as close to reality as possible in different details, Dawn Awakening has also set up an authoritative team of expert consultants, such as Sang Zhu, an athlete who climbed Mount Everest that year, Shi Jianru, curator of geological museum, Shanxi Province, as a geographical consultant, Wang Xinjian, a professor of social psychology at Nankai University, qi zhou, a professor at the School of Architecture of Southeast University, as a game building experience consultant, and Peng Liang, a security officer of IDPA International Self-Defense Pistol Association, as a combat experience consultant.

These expert group members gave suggestions in their respective fields, and also provided guarantees for the authenticity of various details of the game.

Generally speaking, the initial experience of waking up at dawn is a process in which a highly realistic world is gradually unfolding. A few hours before the game starts, players are constantly unlocking new gameplay and discovering new systems. With the development of the story, Dawn Awakens shows players how much content it has step by step.

Use the plot, explore and fight

Fill the content depth of the existence of the big world

It is true that only "big" without corresponding content filling can easily become an "empty" framework.

The development team positioned the dawn awakening as SOC, which is the abbreviation of Survival, Open World and Crafting, that is, survival, open world and construction. This means that "Awakening at Dawn" should design the game content from several different dimensions.

The most obvious is the story. "Dawn Awakens" uses the main line to connect various playing mechanisms in the big world.

"How is it like a console game?" It is the discourse system when manufacturers promote mobile game products in recent years. It is usually described that the expressive force of mobile games has reached the top level. But this often leads to criticism because of exaggeration.

Dawn Awakening has never promoted itself like this, but I did experience a similar immersion in the process of pushing the main line, which most other heavy mobile games have never experienced. The immersion I said mainly comes from the various animations interspersed in the plot advancement and the skillful performance of the mirror in the editing animation.

For example, the first time I came to Raven Shanzhai, when the doctor took the protagonist to visit the Shanzhai, the performance mode of switching back and forth between the distant view and the close-up; For another example, when the protagonist first saw the residents spontaneously gathering to mourn the dead, there were several blank lens languages that "only heard their voices". In the previous story, these are probably the two places where players can have an immersive experience.

As you can see from the system menu, there are several sections related to the plot, which must be one of the focuses of future updates.

In addition to rendering the atmosphere, the plot also plays a role in guiding players to understand various mechanisms. After helping Sequoia Post out of trouble, the protagonist got his own manor address and the construction system was started.

This is a system in which players can exert great autonomy. Players can choose their own house as needed, unlock more options in the subsequent gameplay, and enrich the appearance of the manor. In the huge seamless world, residence is one of the few safe places.

But out of the house, survival in the wild is still harsh. At the same time, it is also a space for the game to fill in the details of the content.

On the one hand, in the process of the plot, the higher degree of freedom allows players to pause the main line at any time and explore anywhere nearby at will, judging from the scale of some scenes at present. Subsequent updates may have more sideline businesses along the way and along the way. On the other hand, the various realistic details mentioned above also make the exploration in the game interesting. For example, if you travel in a rainstorm, your clothes will get wet and then dry slowly; When crossing the desert, it becomes difficult to move forward. At the same time, more than half of the buildings in the wild can be accessed, which makes the exploration even more unknown.

And living in such a big world and exploration space, if it is too easy, it is difficult to bring challenges. In fact, this is also the logic that I felt from the early experience of Dawn Awakening-different from the games that usually have adventure elements. Even in early battles, waking up at dawn is not very simple.

When advancing the task alone, if you meet a group of mutants, it is easy to be besieged on all sides because you are in a dead corner, lack of weapons and ammunition, or lack of medical care and medicine. Coupled with the limitations of various physiological indicators mentioned above, after the earliest teaching tasks, the survival of awakening at dawn is very oppressive.

Lack of initial skills and limited variety and intensity of combat props are all difficulties that a single person has to face in order to survive. The pressure of survival will naturally remind people of teamwork.

In the game, players can join the camp, form a survival team with friends, and participate in the PVE/PVP multi-mode challenge. You can also rebuild your home together and participate in non-hardcore games such as bonfire parties. Judging from the video released by the previous anchor camp, a more severe and large-scale multiplayer copy appeared in the later period. The content of team participation is also like the plot, which is divided into gradual changes according to the process.

In addition, Dawn Awakens, as a SOC game, has different growth and operation dimensions in the combat mechanism.

There are many kinds of weapons in the game, including shotgun, submachine gun, crossbow gun, sniper rifle, gatling and other common weapons in shooting games. Auxiliary weapons such as mines and automatic batteries can also be made of materials, and recently there are high-tech props such as drones and foam bombs. These can be gradually unlocked and strengthened in the talent system.

Dawn awakening also pays attention to the details of firearms, and the recoil of different weapons is obviously different. At the same time, all kinds of weapons have different loading actions, for example, the loading time of each gun is different. In addition, when players are in different scenes, the sound of gunshots will be different, which further combines the environmental changes in the open world.

At the combat level, Dawn Awakens also added a set of tactical actions, such as tumbling, sprinting, sliding shovel, backstab, etc., to increase flexibility. Players should be able to learn this from early battles. When encountering siege, tumbling can often help the character get out of the encirclement.

From plot to construction, exploration and fighting, all elements of the game are connected in series under the system of developing the world. With the filling of these contents, the skeleton of the "big world" in Dawn Awakening has become flesh and blood, and it has not become a survival game of "just a big map".

Behind an open world survival mobile game, the ambition of photons

Dawn Awakens is probably not only aimed at the domestic market.

The survival and construction of the open world is a hot topic in the industry in recent years. As a theme originally originated from film and television works, it has been more reflected in some mobile games in recent years. Moreover, many games with these themes can form differentiated advantages by virtue of their themes and open up the situation in overseas markets. This must be the reason why some details in Dawn Awakening have an international look and feel. The setting of related tasks and plots also takes into account the preferences of overseas users.

In recent years, with the progress of hardware and technology, more and more developers began to explore the open world system from mainframe and PC platforms. The open world has gradually become a way to expand the boundaries of gameplay, which can accommodate huge content and complex gameplay settings, and can be recognized by players who pursue diversified experiences.

Choosing a world-popular theme, coupled with the game design system highly respected by the industry, and using unreal engine 4 to enhance the look and feel of the game and various realistic details, the expectations behind these combinations are self-evident.

Photons have been successfully released in many areas before, and the dawn awakening should have similar goals. Combined with their previous technical foundation in unreal engine and accumulated experience in global simultaneous distribution, this highly realistic open-world survival mobile game will have the opportunity to become another product that can influence multiple markets and different player groups.

Publishing Dilemma | Dialogue with Ma Xiaoyi | Wild Fight || Epic

Black Myth: Wukong | Two-dimensional Game Dilemma | Game Design Books