The Wayward Realms is to combine a gigantic game world with pen&paper elements to offer an unpredictable gaming experience.
Some might be surprised that an unknown indie title like The Wayward Realms is currently getting so much attention. But behind the huge open-world RPG are not young, ambitious up-and-coming developers, but genuine industry veterans. And they have no less ambitious plans for their game.
Giant game world thanks to procedural generation
The studio OnceLost Games was founded by some former Bethesda employees. Julian LeFay, Ted Peterson and Vijay Lakshman were involved in some The Elder Scrolls games as well as The Terminator: Future Shock.
However, anyone now expecting The Wayward Realms to be based on the still semi-modern The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is mistaken. Already in 2019, they announced the game as a successor in the spirit of The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall – and that has mainly to do with the huge game world.
The game world of The Wayward Realms is called “Archipelago” and is supposed to consist of one hundred islands, some of them huge. Of course, it is not possible to create so much terrain by hand if the game is to be released in this century. Therefore, procedural generation has been used, which produces a natural-looking land mass on the basis of fixed parameters.
Different factions are to vie for influence and power on the islands. While old dynasties strive to maintain the previous conditions, other parties strive for change. You too want to have a say in the fate of the world, but to do so you must first prove yourself worthy by visiting the numerous islands.
In addition to a first trailer, there are also some screenshots, which we present to you below in our gallery:
There you will meet humans, dwarves, elves and much more unusual races and experience numerous adventures. The cities are supposed to be populated by hundreds or even thousands of NPCs. The announcement trailer doesn’t give you an exact look at the islands, but it does give you a foretaste of the scale we are aiming for:
Pen&Paper elements are to provide variety
Besides the huge world, the focus of the game shall be especially on the freedom of choice of the players as well as the resulting consequences. Accordingly, the class system does not offer any prefabricated roles such as warrior or mage, but should allow you to create your very own character. According to the developers, it will even be possible to create your own spells and potions.
The previous game wasn’t ambitious enough for you? Then the virtual Game Master might be something for you. Just like in a pen-and-paper role-playing game, an AI watches your every move. Individual characters or even entire factions will react to your actions, which means that two players will never have the same game experience.
This sounds too good to be true? And until we can determine whether these big announcements will actually be implemented in this form in the finished game, it will unfortunately still take some time. So far, the Steam product page doesn’t even mention a rough release window.
How do you like the ambitious plans of The Wayward Realms? As role-players, have you already got moist eyes, or are you sceptical whether it can all be realised on this scale? Let us know in the comments!
