Realizing that there was a “shocking absence of games that didn’t primarily focus on violence in order to tell a story,” Australia’s Loki Davison decided to create Wander, an MMO that is scheduled to release for the PlayStation 4 in March 2015.
Allowing you to explore the environment in several different forms, Wander sees you waking up in a forest you can’t remember. Exploring the area to find clues about where you are, you’ll meet others like yourself, with the songs of opera singers leading you to new discoveries, such as the ability to change your shape.
Wander Writer and Character Designer Crystal Flinn continued:
Playable characters in Wander include the Oren – a walking, sentient tree, and the form you occupy at the beginning of the game; the griffin – with the power of flight; the azertash – with the ability to swim and breathe underwater; and the swift and agile hira. Each of these forms has several unique and gorgeous variants, all with their own cultures, backstories, and specific ways of interacting with other forms and tribes. Along your way you’ll discover lorestones, mysterious records that teach you bits of the history of the planet and its inhabitants. Eventually, if you’re lucky, you might even learn the ultimate secrets of this mysterious and beautiful world.
Flinn then explained how big the game world is:
The world is 64 square kilometers or around 40 square miles. You can explore on land and also underwater. The rain forest and the reef both have cities for the different cultures.
And here’s what the MMO aspect brings to Wander:
The basic thing is that you get to share beautiful places you’ve found with other people, and they share ones they have found with you. An idea we call collaborative exploration. There is more to it than that though. You also can discuss and try and piece together the narrative. The narrative quite mysterious, as each culture has different ideas about what is really going on. Imagine if you went back 1000 years ago on earth and asked in different countries what is thunder. The Norse and Japanese would give totally different answers. In Wander the different cultures explain shape shifting differently. Different forms have different ways of collaborating as well.
Wander will be playable at PlayStation Experience next month, where they also hope to show off the Azertash underwater city. If you can’t wait that long, they will be showing off Wander at 4pm PT/7pm ET on Twitch.
[Source: PS Blog]
