EVERSPACE™ 2 a fast-paced single-player action RPG has just left early access and is now available on GOG in its full glory! We couldn’t be more excited to jump into our spaceships, explore its vast world and thoughtful story, start mining, crafting and of course… shoot and loot!Moreover, we had the absolute pleasure of talking with
ROCKFISH Games’ team to learn a bit more about the game itself, development process, which elements were the most fun ones to work on, and much more!
So just before you embark on an incredible space adventure in
EVERSPACE™ 2, we hope you’ll enjoy our interview as much as we’ve enjoyed making it.
It’s been almost 7 years since the release of the original EVERSPACE™ back in 2016. It’s a title highly-praised both by critics and players – was that something that impacted the development of EVERSPACE™ 2? Bigger motivation or perhaps more stress due to high expectations?We were very excited to see the positive reception of EVERSPACE™! This motivated us to continue expanding the universe we’ve created—first with EVERSPACE™ - Encounters, and now with EVERSPACE™ 2. The game we’re making now is much, much bigger than anything anyone at ROCKFISH Games has made in the past and this kind of open-world action RPG is very much what we wanted to create with our first title.Of course, our prior success does bring some pressure for this sequel to surpass the original. While the two games are different genres, we believe our space game fans will find EVERSPACE™ 2 to be bigger, more polished, and better in nearly every way.
From the raw idea behind its gameplay to the audiovisuals, EVERSPACE™ 2 seems like an amazing game. Could you shed more light on ROCKFISH’s thinking and development process to achieve that?While developing EVERSPACE™ 2, it was important to us that players would be able to blow things up within the first few minutes of gameplay while also enjoying gorgeous space scenery when exploring. Ensuring that players could jump directly into the action was a big part of our tutorial area design, and that threads through the rest of the game. At nearly any point, you can zip away to a new area to find new puzzles or a new fight. We’ve also included many radiant quest jobs that restock over time, allowing a never ending way to earn loot, XP, and credits.
For all the game looks like a space shooter, EVERSPACE™ 2 is very much an action-RPG. As players acquire new spaceships, they can create different builds to fit their preferred playstyle. Someone who loves being able to tank damage while throwing big punches might gravitate towards the Bomber or Vanguard while speed-focused players will feel right at home in an Interceptor. Similarly, middle-of-the-road types will enjoy the Sentinel or the Striker, but any one of these ships’ feel can be further changed by the gear it’s loaded up with. Our gameplay designers have built systems that allow players to create synergies that work well in many situations and that gets cranked up to eleven when legendary equipment, each with a unique perk, becomes available.We want space to be packed with excitement. On top of fast-paced moment-to-moment combat, we’ve hidden secrets, puzzles, and challenges in every corner of the hundred plus handcrafted areas throughout the star systems of Cluster 34.
Now we get to experience the game in its full glory, but EVERSPACE™ 2 has been in its early access since early 2021. How did this time frame change the ultimate outcome of the title? What were the improvements implemented due to early access’ players feedback?Over the course of EVERSPACE™ 2’s early access, the game has changed significantly. What began as a very polished twelve hour experience in two star systems has become a massive adventure that will span across six star systems in 1.0. Since the first time players have been able to jump into the cockpit, we’ve added voice acting, localization in a dozen additional languages, features like crafting, puzzles and racing, and so much more! At launch, there will be more than 100 handcrafted locations for players to explore.It’s been more than two years since players first got their hands on the first iteration of EVERSPACE™ 2 and during that time our community of dedicated space game fans have shared valuable feedback and suggestions, much of which the team has implemented with each major update.
It’s a massive project filled with content and stuff to do. Which element turned out to be the most problematic to work on, and which turned out to be the most fun one?It’s tough to separate problematic from fun because we’ve been working with so many new features and systems! Each was challenging to design and balance while being rewarding to complete. I’m very proud of the team for all the work they’ve put into EVERSPACE™ 2 and I think their dedication really shows in what you see in-game.Technically, the semi-open game world combined with over 100 hand-built locations was probably the biggest challenge for our development team. Not only do all successful open world games have to produce an extremely large and varied amount of content, but space games in particular have to work on a very different scale than running around on just one planet or in one city.Making it all look correct was very tricky as well, especially while flying in Supralight. To make the game experience work properly and be fun when fast-traveling from planet to planet, we actually work with two game worlds. When moving from fast-travel to close range orbit or planetary surfaces, the two game worlds are actually scaled differently by a factor of 10.In each location, there are extremely complex light calculations that are subsequently "baked" into the game world—calculating these takes over 48 hours even on the fastest PCs available. In return, however, the visual experience is truly stunning. This is true even for procedural events, whose levels are based on global illumination and hand-crafted graphics. You won't find that in any other space game.
Another major challenge was balancing complex loot tables, especially where everything fits together in the endgame with the addition of legendary equipment with unique perks. The weapon and ship attributes for nine different classes on five different difficulty levels are something you can tweak endlessly. In addition, in an open world you don't know what players are doing when, where and with what equipment. We also needed to add a certain amount of level scaling so that returning to prior areas is not totally pointless. We spent a significant amount of time juggling those alongside in-game economies based on trading and also making sure crafting was useful, but not so powerful that collecting loot felt pointless. All not so simple.The main story campaign of EVERSPACE™ 2 is about 30 hours not including all the exploration and side quests you can do. That's more than some current AAA action RPGs offer and was a mammoth task for our creative team. Similarly, EVERSPACE™ 2 features more than two hours of cinematics and cutscenes, together with dozens of side missions we come to more than four hours of dialogue with 20 professional voice actors in both German and English versions of the voiced script. At launch, EVERSPACE™ 2 will be available in 13 different languages and we’re now planning to add dubbing in both French and Japanese.
Ship customization is also worth mentioning! There are 144 wing types in EVERSPACE™ 2 which can be combined with different cockpits, fuselages, and drives on each of the four tiers of each ship class. We’ve added a wide variety of paint schemes, insignias, and colors for features like the drive beams and control nozzles—all looking at a AAA level of quality. With all this, players can really make their ships feel like their own.Is there anything you’d like to tell our community? What can they expect before jumping in their spaceship and immersing themselves in EVERSPACE™ 2 world? EVERSPACE™ 2 is bigger than you’d expect! The main campaign with minimal side exploration takes about thirty hours to complete and a 100% playthrough takes more than ninety. That doesn’t include the intense push-your-luck for awesome loot endgame combat that can be found in the Ancient Rifts, a callback to the gameplay of the original EVERSPACE.For space game fans new to the series and wondering where to start, playing the first EVERSPACE will fill in a few gaps in the story, but EVERSPACE™ 2 explains much of what happened previously, so feel free to jump right in. But take your time and enjoy the ride, there’s a lot of stuff to discover and be ready for a massive finale that will blow your zero-g socks off!
We’d like to thank ROCKFISH Games very much for both speaking with us and having a title as fun as EVERSPACE™ 2 in our catalog. Check out this gem right now and enjoy a -10% launch discount available until April 13th, 5 PM UTC. Epic loot awaits! 