Off the Grid is a third-person Battle Royale game with a narrative twist, mixing PVP and PVE story mission gameplay. In Off the Grid, Mega Corporations are fighting for power in a cyberpunk, dystopian future, and players join the Zeros to combat them.
Game ZXC recently spoke with District 9 director Neill Blomkamp, who is the chief visionary officer at Gunzilla Games and built Off the Grid's game world from the ground up alongside other leading names in narrative and scriptwriting, like scriptwriter Richard Morgan. During the interview, Blomkamp revealed exciting new information and previously unknown details about Off the Grid's cyberpunk setting and AI technology in the exclusive interview.
Neill Blomkamp Explains More About Off The Grid’s Cyberpunk Setting
When asked about Off the Grid's approach to the Cyberpunk genre compared to other cyberpunk-style video games, Blomkamp spoke to the "huge importance of cyberlimbs," but also added,
Off The Grid aims to explore the cyberpunk genre in a tropical setting with a dystopian twist; this makes things a bit different. Players will be able to encounter new conceptual structures, like a space elevator, which will be realistically portrayed and explored.
Blomkamp also explained more about how cyberlimbs are linked closely with Off the Grid's vision of space exploration and how this impacts the game's cyberpunk setting. As Blomkamp said,
Off The Grid is set in a distant dystopian future where many new advancements in material sciences are because of metals brought down from outer space. The cyberlimbs and some of the weapons players will encounter on Teardrop Island are built from metals found in distant asteroids and moons. The space elevator brings down massive wealth by harnessing unlimited amounts of rare earth materials or superconducting materials. However, this space elevator has created mass wealth and mass social stratification. People who come to the island are looking to get rich quickly, but really it’s the main corporations that profit. Everyone else on the island is in varying degrees of poverty.
Although the specific timeline of Off the Grid's dystopian world setting is currently unknown, this new information suggests there's been a lot of advanced space exploration that explains how the game's cyberlimbs and some other types of advanced weaponry came to fruition, along with a significant rich-poor social divide.
Neill Blomkamp Talks About Off The Grid’s AI Technology
Humanity's relationship with technology also looks to take a dark turn when looking at Off the Grid's AI technology. Off the Grid's SWITCHER Part 1 cinematic released at Gamescom 2022 showcased an artificial intelligence character or cyber mind later revealed as Voyance, who looks to be pulling the strings of one of Teardrop Island's Mega Corporations, Cascadia Global. Blomkamp revealed more about the role of Voyance in the game. As Blomkamp explained,
Voyance is that AI, the leading "board member" of one of the mega-corporations. In essence, this Mega Corporation has assigned all big decisions to this AI, hoping it makes wise business decisions and obviously leads to greater profit. However, it doesn’t take long before it becomes clear. It also has other things on its silicon mind.
There are some scarily advanced technology in sci-fi games about AI, but perhaps none as potentially frightening as Voyance, an AI that's maybe a real possibility on planet Earth, if not already in existence in some form or another. For those keen on following the latest AI developments in modern technology, it will be fascinating to see more of Voyance and how other types of AI and cyberpunk-themed technology are explored in Off the Grid's cyberpunk setting as players learn more about the game.
Off the Grid is in development.