WORLDS APART

JOHN GONZALEZ LEAD WRITER OPM: You’ve had to design two different versions of the future, one in the far future and one in 2066. How did you approach that?

John Gonzalez: One of the things that really attracted me to the project was this kind of idea. How exactly did this world, that has a juxtaposition of elements that you normally wouldn’t expect to occur together, evolve? How do you end up having people who are living at a tribal level alongside these high-tech beasts? Why is it that they do not have high tech themselves? And so that’s where we actually began – in the ancient past. The ancient past of these characters, of course, is actually in our future. So that was really interesting, imagining our world from where we are now, forward to some kind of cataclysmic event, and then how this world arises from that. And there are a lot of deep threats as you play the game and you go and discover. As you play this game through to conclusion, you will understand a lot about where Aloy came from, what her origins are, who her parents were, things like that. You’re going to understand how this world came to be and I’m not going to say that every single mystery is going to be solved, because personally I think it’s best when there’s still some kind of mystery. You solve a mystery, but that gives you an even greater vantage onto a mystery beyond it.