Some may remember Patrick Söderlund from his former digs at EA/Dice, which he left sometime last year. He was a member of the publishing giant for nearly two decades. Since he has been relatively quiet and hasn’t mentioned what he would be doing next.That all changed today as he resurfaced to talk about his newly formed company and an ongoing project.
Embark Studios, is the name of the studio and it would appear that they have been busy. According to Patrick, the company has hired over 50 people and even managed to move into the studio’s new home. Now that the groundwork has been laid, Embark Studios wanted to let the world know what they’ve been working for the past few weeks.
This project, while currently has no name, has been described as a “cooperative free-to-play action game set in a distant future”. This new game is being developed with Epic Games Unreal Engine, which Embark has settled on after checking our multiple game engines. Even now, the team is getting to know the engine and has produced a terrain test. A test that looks very photo-realistic and for good reason.
Patrick states that this short piece of footage was the work of three people, that over the course of three weeks used data scanned from read-world scan data. Which explains the photo-realism. For now, the team is going to continue to get acquainted with the Unreal Engine.
It would also seem that the studio’s name has more of a symbolic one. The forming of the company and working on this new game has been a challenge for Embark. per Patrick. They’re not only trying to build a game, which will take some time. They also want to help blur the line between making games and playing them. To which they’re hoping to empower others to follow suit.
Just like anyone today can produce their own videos, write their own blogs, or make their own music, we imagine a world where everyone is able to create and share meaningful interactive experiences. Our belief is that the more people that are empowered to create, the better, more interesting and more diverse games will become.
While there’s not much to show or talk about right now, Patrick assures us that we’ll hear more about the studio’s journey in the upcoming months. They might even have a name for their currently in-development game as well.
To follow the journey of Embark Studios, you can check them out on Twitter, Instagram and Medium.
Source: Medium
