During development of Hell Let Loose on PC, we’ve been fortunate to experience an expanding audience, and interestingly many new players from different gaming backgrounds - from AAA military shooters like Battlefield and Call of Duty, to strategy games like Hearts of Iron.
When the next generation consoles announced, we realised quickly that Hell Let Loose would be technically achievable on the new platforms, and that it might be a great opportunity to introduce the realistic shooter to a much larger audience who have never had the opportunity to experience this genre.
As a result, we’re excited to announce that Hell Let Loose will be launching on the Playstation 5 and the Xbox Series S and X later this year as one of the first large scale military shooters for the next generation, and one of the only hardcore realistic FPS games available on console.
As a team, we felt that if we were to take Hell Let Loose to consoles, we’d need to make sure that there were several things in place so that the PC version of the game was not only unhindered, but benefited from the process.
Fundamentally, Hell Let Loose was only possible due to the grassroots support of our PC community and we are deeply committed to fulfilling the promises we’ve made - both in final quality, optimisation and continued development for years to come.
Ultimately, launching on consoles will establish a larger playerbase for the title, as well as the financial resources to enable us to continue scaling the team to support the ongoing development. We’ve said elsewhere that we don’t think of Hell Let Loose as a title that would be finished and abandoned - but more as a continually supported and expanded title - with fixes, optimisation, new fronts, new Commander abilities, new vehicles, new weapons and much more.
A Separate Team
As a studio, we’re very keen to be able to continue to focus on polishing the PC title and working through community feedback. Although Black Matter has grown over the course of development, we’re still aware that Hell Let Loose on PC alone is a mammoth game that demands full-time attention.
Due to this, we’re working very closely with our friends at Flix Interactive - a fantastic development studio who work closely with Rare on multiple aspects of Sea of Thieves, including console development. They have a dedicated team working full time on the console conversion of Hell Let Loose in conjunction with us here at Black Matter.
For those of you who are console players and interested in jumping into a realistic game on next generation platforms, please be assured that we won’t be altering the Hell Let Loose recipe of time-to-kill, minimal HUD and all the other aspects that define the game. We’ll talk through some of the key additions or changes to the Hell Let Loose console experience below.
Crossplay
We want to assure you that the PC player base will remain separate from the console title, but that there will be crossplay for both Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X and S so that both platforms benefit from the larger playerbase.
Benefits to the PC
Many may be concerned that launching on consoles may negatively impact the PC title. We want to assure you that we’ve taken great care to make sure that the positive additions for the console title will be incorporated into the PC title, including:
- Gamepad Support and Accessibility
We’ve had requests for gamepad support from players who struggle to use a mouse and keyboard due to preference or disabilities. As such, we’re beginning to implement some of this functionality to better enable these players to enjoy the game. Simultaneously, we’re not removing or degrading any functionality that mouse and keyboard players currently enjoy.
- Optimisation Benchmarking
A huge benefit in taking a title to console is the need to conform the game to specific framerates on both consoles - effectively benchmarking the title. As a result, large scale rolling optimisations done for consoles are being implemented into the PC version of the game. These optimisations are specifically graphical and will not degrade the look of the game, or the gameplay itself.
When?
The exact date is going to be announced in the coming months, but it will follow our release from Early Access as we feel it’s important to attain a base level of quality and optimisation across the entire title, as well as polishing and fixing outstanding bugs and issues - both technically and in the metagame. As we’ve said before though, our release from Early Access will signify another step on the ongoing development journey of Hell Let Loose. We’re excited to continue working with the community to expand and refine the experience.
An Expanding Community
We’re very fortunate to have such a vibrant and active community supporting Hell Let Loose. As players from other platforms start to join the community, we’d love for you to help us make them welcome. At the same time, we’re fleshing out in-game education to better enable new players to join the experience in the most useful way possible.