My first appointment at this year's E3 conference in Los Angeles was with SOE. Specifically, I spoke with Adam Clegg, game designer, as I played a bit of Planetside 2. While I played the PC MMO shooter on live PC servers to see the state of the game, I was able to talk about the PlayStation 4 version of the game with him.
Planetside 2 will be a direct port of the PC game to the PlayStation 4. The same amount of players will be able to play in each area on the PC will be able to do so in the PS4 version. I was told that was around 400. Just so you can understand the scope of how big this game is, it was explained to me that a tiny section of part of one of the regions on a huge map (of which there are three) was about the size of a large Battlefield 3 map.
Adam Clegg also said that the goal with the PlayStation 4 version was to have it look better than most high-end PCs. It very well might, as he said that right now they have to optimize Planetside 2 for computers differing in quality. With the PlayStation 4, however, they only have to optimize it to run excellent on one next-gen console.
There was no mention of how the PlayStation 4's controller would be used — specifically the touch pad portion of it — but I would assume that the controller would function like any other next-gen shooter.
Since I played it with a keyboard and mouse on the PC, it would be wrong of me to not mention how the game was. It's been a year since I last played Planetside 2 — also at E3 — and it was in beta at the time. The game was fast-pace, fun, strategic, and massive. There were so many battles going on between the three factions on the map that I could have my pick of where and how I want to fight. Planetside 2 rewards you the more you play, as you get better weapons and perks for your loadouts/classes.
Planetside 2 is a free-to-play game on the PC that'll make an excellent addition to the PlayStation 4 library as a massively multiplayer first-person shooter. My time playing it made me want to play the Steam download of it that I have, so I'll probably spend some hours with it when I get back home. For now, I eagerly wait and see how it shapes up on the PlayStation 4.
You can follow Senior Editor Lance Liebl on Twitter @Lance_GZ. He likes talking sports, video games, movies, and the stupidity of celebrities. Email at [email protected]
