Zombies may not be entirely new to Robert Bowling, who having left Infinity Ward has now started his own game company Robotoki, but the team’s first project Human Element already looks to be a far cry from the Call of Duty mode. With survival as opposed to slaughter at the fore, as his interview with Game Informer revealed, Human Element looks set to define itself through brains as opposed to body count.
Reinforcing the bylines rather psychological slant, the interview revealed that the game will focus upon the main threat of a zombie apocalypse – The “unreasonable fear that leads us to do unreasonable things to survive”. Combine this with the touted three different character classes, Action, Intelligence and Stealth, and the three different identities one can choose, Survive Alone, Survive with a Partner and Survive with a Young Child, and it sounds somewhat like the game that the infamous Dead Island trailer never bore.
These choices will “[impact] the scenarios you will be presented with on a physical and morality level”, but as a fan of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road I doubt that my choice will ever be anything but a stealthy, child laden survival.
Human Element is stated for release in 2015, and is destined for the next-generation of consoles as well as PC, mobile and tablets. This apocalypse may not be upon us for a while, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t begin putting together your survival plan.
