‘Conan Exiles’ Early Access Release Delayed To Make It ‘Well Featured’
It was just two weeks ago Funcom announced a September Steam Early Access release date for Conan Exiles. The developer has now thought things over and elected to give the open-world survival game set in the Conan universe a little more time to cook before serving it up to PC gamers.
Conan Exiles is now targeting a January 2017 launch on Steam Early Access. Creative Director Joel Bylos shared the news and an explanation of the decision in a post on the Steam forums.
“Almost two weeks back, we revealed that our plan had been to bring Conan Exiles into Early Access in September this year. Since then, we have looked closely at the game and our production schedule, and we have been reading all of the feedback we have received from you as well as the feedback and expectations we have received from fans of the genre,” Bylos explained.
“We have come to realize that we would like to spend a little more time creating our vision of Hyboria before we release it into Early Access. Having very recently secured additional funding for our studio which has made our financial situation much more flexible than even just a few weeks back, we want to take advantage of that and move Early Access to January 2017. With the extra time in development, we believe we can make a better game for you, the fans.”
Funcom released an early alpha gameplay trailer of Conan Exiles and hosted a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA), where it revealed more details about the game such as purges, sacrifices, and more. The reaction to the trailer was mixed, with detractors mostly focusing on the game’s graphics, which are understandably not complete at this stage. The Reddit AMA mostly consisted of those curious about the game’s mechanics, features, and how it will differ itself from other open-world survival games such as Rust, ARK: Survival Evolved, and others.
The feedback from the AMA and trailer combined with seeing how Early Access has worked out for other games led to Funcom opting to delay the Conan Exiles to ensure it was a better experience from the start.
“Our observations of Early Access are that it tends to run in two directions,” the creative director noted. “In one case, the games are buggy, unstable and unfinished. In another case, the games are stable, well featured and the community and development team work together to map out the future of the project towards a successful launch. Our aim is to deliver a game that is firmly in the second situation and creates a quintessential Conan experience.”
Conan: Exiles comes with all the trappings of an open-world survival game. Players will be able to gather resources to build tools, weapons, and bases in a large open-world based on the harsh land of Hyboria from the Conan franchise.
Players will have the option to join multiplayer games on both public and private servers, or they can do it alone in a single-player mode. There will be both PVP and PVE servers, but there is a definite PVP focus with players able to sacrifice enemies to the gods for added power.
The game also features human NPCs that players can kill to take over towns, and they will have to defend their fledgling bases and villages against. Conan Exiles introduces the Purge System to keep a server from becoming stale. The system will occasionally introduce invading NPC armies to the game world that will attack players and their structures.
Other twists include graphic fatality kills during combat, combat options with multiple different attacks available based on the weapon used, and a 53 km world size with multiple biomes – desert, highlands, snowy mountains, jungle, forest, swamp, and more.
PlayStation 4 and Xbox One launches are planned for Conan Exiles, as well. There’s no word yet on if it would appear as part of the Early Access-like Xbox Preview Program.
Did Funcom make the right decision in delaying the Steam Early Access launch of Conan Exiles? Sound off in the comments below.
[Image via Funcom]
