The Ascent – Xbox Wire Interview

Neon Giant and Curve Digital will be releasing their next-gen multiplayer action-RPG The Ascent sometime around this holiday season. The game will be coming to PC and the new Xbox Series X console, and as a result we can now check out this official Xbox Wire interview with Neon Giant’s creative director Arcade Berg. Understandably, the interview focuses on the game’s console version and its unique features.

Here are a few sample questions:

In addition to benefiting from the power and performance of Xbox Series X for quicker load times etc. what Xbox Series X features were you most excited to explore leveraging in the development of The Ascent?

It’s still early days for us with the hardware and we’re experimenting weekly trying to figure out what we can and cannot do. It’s like a new big box of toys and we want to try and play with all of them before saying which one is the favorite. But we’re of course very optimistic about ray tracing and being able to push the envelope even further! It really adds that extra oomph to the world and everything in it. And our cyberpunky sci-fi world is an excellent use case for it as well with all our lights and reflective surfaces. In addition, it feels good to be able to offer crossplay and Smart Delivery to give everyone a richer experience and making sure every version is the right version.

How will these enhancements impact a player’s experience with The Ascent?

More than anything, it makes for a much more responsive gameplay experience. Everything from snappy input to more interactivity in the world makes it nicer. And faster loading means less distractions and it allows the player to focus solely on the game and never have to have the fourth wall of reality hit you in the face when playing. Once in, you can roam around doing what you want to be doing, and we can fill the world with objects and surfaces that react to your every action with physics and by breaking if you stir up mayhem.