The October newsletter is out for Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, and in it, the team outlines what's going on with the game, including the change to truly open world and an updated roadmap.
The Vicarious Visions team announced in a developer stream that Pantheon would be using new streaming technology that will let the game live as a truly open world experience without loading screens or waiting time when traveling.
The intent is to make the game flow and feel more like an adventure and exploration based experience. While many in the community were receptive and excited, some were concerned that the NPCs would respond differently, not chase, and in general, just change how the game feels, but in the October newsletter, they reassure that the new immersive Terminus will have the right flavor, and the open transitions might even allow for more NPC interactions. Right, now, NPC combat awareness is live and they're consistently measuring how to improve this.
Combat will also be undergoing a series of improvements and a new standard, of which they revealed little detail, but the objectives point to making combat more intuitive and the variety of options flow better. Which is something we've been seeing come to various games recently too.
As for the updated roadmap, the October update shows all of the items into a color coded system, which notes the progress on that item, whether notes have been updated since the last newsletter, and what priority something has to get a release into alpha. There have been some delays to certain class releases, pending the network change. The team is also working on a new player experience overhaul, a trend we’ve been seeing a lot lately.
You can check out the full list of in process updates on the Pantheon roadmap here.
