Huxley Q&A - Settings, Factions, and the Basics of Huxley

Online role-playing games are easily the rage right now, especially considering that a game like World of Warcraft has more than 6 million subscribers. However, online first-person shooters are an entirely different story. We're not talking about conventional shooters that can be played online with 16, or even 64, players. Rather, we're talking about online shooters that allow thousands of players to interact online and potentially hundreds to battle it out among one another. While there have been a handful of attempts to date to make an online first-person shooter, none have taken off. However, there's a new game on the horizon from South Korea's Webzen that has captured a lot of attention. Huxley is an online first-person shooter that has an unusual name, as well as some amazing visuals, judging from the early screens released thus far. Based on Unreal Engine 3 technology, Huxley looks to meld first-person shooter gameplay with the scale and scope of an online game. For details, we turned to Kijong Kang, the producer in charge of the Huxley team at Webzen.

Go ahead and admire the gorgeous graphics, courtesy of Unreal Engine 3.

GameSpot: What exactly is Huxley? Is it an online shooter with persistent role-playing-game-like character advancement? How did the team come up with the idea?

Kijong Kang: For many years now, I have been asking myself how to make first-person shooters even more exciting. I found the answer in blending them with online role-playing games.

GS: What kind of inspiration did Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World provide for the game? (We don't remember too many rocket launchers mentioned in the book, for instance.)

KK: Overall, the novel served as an inspiration for some elements of the game, like the in-game society and classes; however, it was just a part of what went into creating this game.

GS: The major question on most people's minds when you say "massively multiplayer online first-person shooter" is how can you keep the action manageable on such a massive scale? Will we see firefights with hundreds of people, or will the massively multiplayer part mainly be for neutral social areas where players can arrange themselves into smaller groups for instanced missions (a mission created just for a single group of players)?

KK: Gameplay in Huxley will take place both in one of the cities and in battle areas. In the cities there will be upward of 5,000 people who can be together at one time, while the battle areas will support several hundred. Of course there will be multiple battle areas in which people can challenge each other.

GS: What sorts of races are in the game? The screenshots so far show humans, as well as some really big humanoid figures, which we assume are some kind of genetic mutation.

KK: There are two different playable races in Huxley: alternatives and sapiens. Alternatives were created when a mysterious material known as nuclearites caused "allopatric speciation" of the human race. Unaffected humans became known as sapiens, while affected humans are alternatives. As time went on, the human evolution path was once again interfered with by fragments of the moon, known as lunarites. The sapiens were divided into the factions One and Syn, and the alternatives were divided into the factions Alteraver and Alternix.

Vehicles will play a role in battles. They're not just for transport in this game.

GS: We've already seen some of the impressive cityscape environments in the game, but what else will the world of Huxley offer? Will you be able to go into the surrounding countryside, and if so, how far? Will there be underground/sewer-type levels? Just how big will the world of Huxley be?

KK: The world of Huxley has suffered destructive earthquakes, massive tidal waves, and dramatic climate changes. Each major city is also pretty isolated. The human race will have two camps: The sapiens live in Nostalonia, and the alternatives live in the city Eska. Meanwhile, the hybrids [a hostile, nonplayable race] live outside of the cities alongside the heathen troops of the Hybrid Liberation Organization. You will be able to explore areas in the control of each of these various entities. It's kind of hard to say how big the world is, but I can say that it's pretty large, and it will be a lot of fun to fight in.