Welcome back to the latest entry in our SITREP developer diary series!
Our next big game update is coming next week, right before Thanksgiving in the US and “Black Friday” in many other countries. As promised, this update will include improvements like the Command Overlay, Wounded State, and Fireteam AI Pathfinding and Behavior. Lots of info about all of these is available in our earlier SITREPS.
We’ve also completed a substantial amount of work on our progression system, the first parts of which we will be releasing in the spring. We’ll be adding the M4A1, M14, M240B, M590A1, and G19, as well as new attachments, new player abilities, and some interesting (and authentic) ways to customize your character.
In the meantime, we’d like to announce here that next week’s release will also include two totally improved campaign missions—Vigilant Resolve and Operation al-Fajr—and we’re taking a dive into them today. This means next week’s release will include:
- Improved Campaign Missions
- Wounded State
- Command Overlay
- Improved Fireteam AI
- Improved Enemy AI
- Updated Training
- Updated Mission Pacing
- Gameplay, Graphics, & Animation Improvements
- Hundreds of bug fixes
Please remember all assets shown are currently a work-in-progress.If you’re new to Six Days or haven’t experienced our narrative campaign missions, Vigilant Resolve brings you to Fallujah in 2004 to experience how ISIS was formed and Al Qaeda took root. During Operation al-Fajr, you take part in the initial hours of the largest urban assault in half a century.
Both missions are told through a mixture of game missions, documentary footage, and interviews with people who were there. These were the events that redirected the course of history and established how much of global terrorism works today, and you experience them for yourself while playing the campaign.
DEVELOPER COMMENTSix Days is a “sandbox”—a play space in which Procedural Architecture modifies the game world every single time you play. A play space in which emergent objectives are randomly generated. A play space in which insurgents take up scattered positions throughout an urban environment, Six Days cannot be predicted, anticipated, or memorized.
This sandbox directly contradicts traditional campaign mission design. Unlike Procedural Architecture, traditional story missions follow a linear path, with clear-cut beginnings and ends. These story missions are designed “on the rails,” often with onboarding and tutorialization built into the mission process.
The first iteration of Vigilant Resolve and Operation al-Fajr adopted this design philosophy. While our missions told interesting stories from real-participants in the battle, gameplay proved to be less interesting with linear phases and GO! Command tutorials that quite literally paused combat. We were forcing players to do very specific things in very specific places in our sandbox. And, it wasn’t working (at least as well as we would’ve liked).
The first solution was a simple one—extract tutorialization from the two missions completely and reincorporate them into Training. This allows two very important things to happen: the first, mission pacing improves without jarring interruptions. Campaign missions now exist on their own with proper flow and active gameplay beats, making them more fun to play. The second, our Training has never been better, with player onboarding consolidated in one place. There is now a distinguished separation—instruction and mechanics are now learned in Training and executed in the Campaign.
The second solution required more manpower—take a close, second pass at our campaign missions to improve their overall quality. Vigilant Resolve, for example, is now set in a completely new location with new geometry and buildings to tackle. This larger, more open mission design offers more player choice in how to accomplish objectives. The objectives themselves, too, are clearer and require fewer actions.
Operation al-Fajr, in contrast, had stellar geometry and visuals, but gameplay improvements were sought after. As a result, elements from Northern Train Station are now incorporated into al-Fajr. Players can expect Armory objectives and improved difficulty with this mission refactor.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]Here’s a full list of changes coming to our two narrative campaign missions:
- Vigilant Resolve
- Completely new location with new buildings
- More open mission design
- More player choice in how to accomplish objectives
- Improved objectives
- Clearer direction
- Fewer required actions
- DShK gunner can now be eliminated by the player
- Improved mission pacing
- Removed active GO! Command tutorials from campaign gameplay and placed in new Training
- Removed slow, paused tutorialization in favor of active gameplay beats
- Operation al-Fajr
- Northern Train Station now integrated into al-Fajr
- Removed Northern Train Station as an isolated mission from the campaign timeline (still available in Cooperative Menu > Mission Settings)
- Streamlined mission flow and difficulty
- Clearer objectives and map flow
- Improved mission pacing
- Removed active GO! Command tutorials from campaign gameplay and placed in new Training
- Improved difficulty
- More consistent challenges
- Less spikes
To wrap things up, we want to say thank you to everyone in the community for your patience and support through these development milestones. As a reminder, progression is still coming to Six Days in a future update. We know it’s been a long wait so far, but we’re beyond excited to introduce the first iteration of an expanded retention system into Six Days and hear your thoughts.
Join the community conversation and offer us feedback on our official Discord server!
https://discord.gg/SixDaysGame
