Interviews

These are the interviews that Endnight Games has conducted with media outlets and content creators.

Interview 1 with Farket
'''1. You’ve said in a previous interview about working on something that has never been done before, are you able to provide any details about this? If this is no longer relevant, you can ignore this question.  ''We had originally planned to start on a new experimental project with a heavy focus on A.I., unrelated to The Forest. As we started to design this new title, we realized some of the new concepts would also work for a Forest Sequel. We decided to take the core DNA of The Forest; base building, fighting cannibals, looking for food, and then merge that gameplay with some of the new A.I. ideas we had been exploring, and Sons Of The Forest started to emerge.''

'''2. What’s it like working in the latest Unity engine? Is Endnight able to add features that weren’t possible in The Forest?  ''The new rendering and lighting in Unity allows us to produce a much more convincing world, along with more realistic shading effects. When it rains, small droplets will appear on your weapons. Water runs across terrain and rocks similar to the first title, but will now also freeze and have snow accumulate, allowing us to have seasons and major weather changes that affect the entire game world.''

'''3. What plans does Endnight have regarding SotF and its confirmed or estimated release date? Will it release in Alpha like The Forest did?''' We are aiming for a 2021 release and will have details about specifics closer to launch.

'''4. Will the building system be the same as The Forest? Please say yes...''' ''Like the first game, building will be a major focus. We’ve been working on making the building system more immersive and satisfying, as well as giving more options for player creativity.''

5. Upon release, Will Endnight be releasing experimental updates like most other survival games do or using the previous countdown system? ''We think showing a countdown worked really well for us. We’re not always great at communicating and so it was really helpful as a way to let players know a new patch was on its way and being worked on.''

'''6. The introduction of the worm to the forest was met with controversy overall. What are Endnights thoughts on it? Will it appear in SotF?''' ''Some ideas seem really cool until you actually put them in. The team here is split about 50/50 on it, and so as a compromise, we ended up making his spawn chance extremely low. Sons will include a brand new cast of creatures and cannibals for players to deal with, the worm (John) won’t be returning.''

7. When will Endnight be releasing more trailers, sneak peaks, etc? ''We are getting close to being ready to show some new footage. We had hoped to do so earlier, however, 2020 has had its challenges. We do hope to show some new things before the end of the year.''

'''8. Does Endnight plan to add an option for a censored version of Sons of The Forest? I've met quite a few children who love The Forest. Also, YouTube has become quite strict on the type of content that Youtubers upload, some of my videos have been demonetized due to some of the content in The Forest.''' We don’t like the idea of censoring the game - we’re big fans of horror here, including the blood and gore, and taking that out we think would change the game too much.

9. What gameplay, content or features does Endnight have ready at this stage? We plan on showing some new footage and features soon.

'''10. Does Endnight have any plans to add steam workshop to sons of the forest? To allow people to add their own buildings, mods etc.''' This will likely be in Sons Of The Forest.

11. What plans does Endnight currently have for The Forest? We’re currently focused on Sons Of The Forest.

12. Does the team at Endnight ever feel like Tony Starks dad, Howard Stark when he saids “I am limited by the technology of my time”? ''With the sequel we’ve started using Houdini for almost all aspects of world creation and effects, we’re constantly amazed at what’s possible and how fast content can be created. Artists can with brush strokes erode terrain, generate rocks, trigger water simulations that become flowing streams. Houdini modeling and fracturing tools allow us to generate hundreds of cut wood shapes in minutes that can be used in our tree cutting simulations along with a wave function collapse in Unity to give a unique cut result each time.''

'''13. Will Sons of The Forest have multiplayer and VR? And will it be available for PlayStation and/or Xbox?''' ''Multiplayer will be back and we’re really excited about some of the new features we are adding. We haven’t confirmed any other platforms yet.''

'''14. Some players, and myself are concerned about the player holding a shotgun in the trailer. Will SotF have a 'gun play' focus?''' ''With limited Ammo, a lot of the combat will still tend to be Melee focused. Players will have to decide if they use those few bullets they have on an easy to kill enemy or save them for an emergency.''

'''15. Defense in The Forest was mostly passive with the player relying on traps, and the catapults uses were often too limited. What plans does Endnight have to expand upon defense in SotF?''' We’re adding a lot more freedom in what types of traps can be built, and along with the other building improvements, we hope this will give players a lot more creativity as far as how they defend their bases.

Interview 2 with Farket
'''1. Are you able to provide more information about the woman in the trailer? Does the player need to protect her at all times? Some players are concerned that she might be needy and require a lot of maintenance. Or will there be a “Story Mode” and a “Survival Mode”?''' She doesn’t give you missions or anything like that; you can try to have her like you, ignore her, scare her off, how you interact with her is up to each player and we hope everyone will have really unique interactions with her.

2. How will solar panels be used throughout SotF? You will be able to use these to charge batteries for example for a battery operated chainsaw, or keep simple electronics running, such as lights or heaters.''

3. How has your experience differed from working on SotF to The Forest? Compared to the first game, we feel we are now able to do so much more, better visuals, more complex A.I. And since we are coming into it with a better idea of what we are making, we’re also able to dedicate time to tools, so the development itself feels a lot more structured and sane than on the first project.

4. In the second trailer, a guitar can be seen leaning on the wall of the log cabin in the snow, will players be able to collect props in SotF? The guitar is usable as a weapon, and our composer Gabe Castro even made some riffs you can play on it.

'''5. All of the combat in the trailer involved guns and no melee combat. Do you have something special planned for melee combat?''' ''With the latest trailer, we wanted to focus on new things players hadn’t seen before in the first game, and so showing gun combat was important. Melee combat has been improved substantially, with much more accurate collision on the weapons, better blood and damage effects and also smarter enemies.''

'''6. I received quite a bit of concern from console and VR players from the Q and A last time that they won’t be able to play for a long time. Are you able to provide any more information for them to put their minds at rest?''' We haven’t announced any platforms other than PC yet.

7. How does the team feel about reusing assets and textures from The Forest? ''Since we are aiming for a much higher fidelity in the new game, we revised and updated almost every asset that’s making a reappearance. There are still some placeholder assets from the first game that can be seen in the latest trailer, but those will likely be replaced.''

'''8. One of the most common questions I have ever been asked is how to brighten caves and nights. From what I have observed, some devices cause more darkness than others. This must be hard to approach as the darkness adds significantly to the horror theme of the game. Do you have plans to add options for this or do you have recommendations for players? (Sorry about the wording of this question)''' We haven’t gotten to this yet, but plan on improving gamma settings for the sequel.

9. Can we have chickens? I think the closest we can do is ducks.

10. Has the pandemic influenced development on SotF? We have a pretty small team, and so switching to working mostly remote hasn’t been too bad for us.

'''11. What details can you provide about the map? Are you able to give an indication of the world size compared to The Forest? Also, in The Forests ending, you showed a map of site 2. Will this be a similar map for SotF? (Sorry about this question too, I wanted to keep all the map related questions as one instead of 3 separate questions)''' ''The new map is about 4-5 times the size of the first game. It is set on site 2, however since we drew that map before starting development on this game, the map and that drawing won’t match exactly.''

12. What names or placeholders do you have for the woman and other creatures shown in SotF? We do call her Virginia, you also see Twins and Fingers towards the end of the trailer.

13. Do you have plans to combat cheating and griefing in multiplayer? We are exploring some options for this.

14. The movements of cannibals look very realistic, are you using motion capturing? ''We are using motion capture for almost everything this time and worked with a really great studio called ‘Beyond Capture’ for the recording. By comparison the first game was entirely hand animated. We also expanded our animation team and so for things we can’t mocap, such as the more distorted creatures we still do hand keyframing.''

'''15. You’re using Unity and Houdini, what other tools are you using or experimenting with. What are your favorites?''' We experimented briefly with photo scanning for world assets in the first game, but now use this for almost everything in the world; instead of hand modeling things like stumps or even sticks, we now go out and scan them.

16. What inspirations have you drawn off for SotF? As a sequel, We’ve taken a lot of inspiration from the first game, and looked at things that worked well, and tried to expand and improve on those ideas.

'''17. What details are you able to provide about the 3D printer? Sidenote: The attention to detail in that scene is simple amazing.''' ''A bunch of us on the team have 3d printers, and we thought it would be a fun way to expand crafting, letting players print additional items that can be assembled into more complex items. To use the printer you will need to find resin, which comes in different colors also allowing you to print multicolored items to make things look really unique.''

'''18. Will SotF have raytracing? How did you make the snow reflect light off the top of the log in the trailer?''' ''The light reflecting effect is actually a bug with our snow shader on the dynamically moving log. We don’t currently use ray tracing but plan to experiment with it.''

19. What games does the team play in their spare time? It’s pretty varied, everything from the big new releases to the more niche simulator games on Steam.

'''20. Will the sanity system be returning? if so, what plans do you have for it?''' ''We never found a great use for it, eventually limiting it to unlocking certain building types. We don’t currently have plans to implement it in the sequel unless we come up with an idea of how to use it.''

21. What is digging with the shovel used for in SotF? ''In the trailer the player uses it to find a bunker. We took inspiration from watching The Curse of Oak Island on history channel (at least the commercials, have never watched a full episode), where they seem to always be digging something up. That seemed like a really fun thing to do, find a patch of loose dirt and try and find something cool. Certain traps will also benefit from digging; you can also dig into some cave entrances, and possibly bury bodies if we can get that looking good.''

'''22. Will you be adding a colorblind mode to SotF? Some players have advised me that survival games are quite difficult due to the large number of green colors involved.''' We will be expanding the UI options menu for the new game, so hopefully this is something we can add.

23. Is there anything you want to ask us, or tell us as your customers? ''We watched a bunch of breakdowns of the trailer, and it’s always really cool to see people try and find everything. There is one clue at the start of the first trailer that we are pretty sure everyone missed, I think due to the compression on the IGN upload, but very clear on the 4k upload on our youtube channel.''

24. What happened to the wardrobe in The Forest? It was one of those ideas we experimented with, but didn't really feel fun or work well.

'''25. Is my obsession with the female in the trailers unhealthy? Can I please have a high quality wallpaper image of her?''' ''Our character artist on the sequel is really amazing. We may release some high resolution character screens at some point.''

'''26. Are the cannibals actually mutants? What you prefer to call them? I think there’s confusion as the community calls the mutants, cannibals and the creepy mutants, mutants. When I did the wiki for The Forest, I decided to go with the “proper name” of mutants and creepy mutants. Though “common name” would be cannibals and mutants. This led to people trying to change it a lot.''' We call the regular ones ‘cannibals’, and the distorted ones ‘creepies’

27. Why can’t I find another survival game as good as The Forest? We hope Sons Of The Forest will be a massive improvement.

'''28. What’s the reasoning choose Sons of the Forest instead of The Forest 2? Also, do you call it “Sons” for short?''' The name ties into the new story, and we feel it is a bit more interesting than just adding a number at the end.

Interview with Escapist
Escapist Interviews Endnight

'''1. Congrats on announcing Sons of the Forest. How have things been going since you launched The Forest? It’s hugely popular on Steam, so what kind of changes has this brought to the studio?''' We’ve stayed relatively small but moved into nicer and bigger offices and have been able to hire some of the best developers in the world as a result of the success of the first title.

2. The trailers for Sons of the Forest have been pretty cryptic, so maybe you can’t answer this one yet, but are you able to tell us a little bit about the narrative of this game and whether it’s a sequel or prequel to The Forest? It’s a sequel, but we can’t go into much detail as we want to avoid spoilers.

'''3. It looks like Sons will have a bit more of a direct narrative / more scripted moments than the original game had. Can you expand on this a bit without getting into spoilers?''' It’s an expansion on the type of visual storytelling we did in the first game; there will be very little dialogue and a focus on players uncovering the story versus being forced to sit through long cut scenes.

'''4. Where does the game take place? Will there be more varied environments with things like dynamic weather for players to survive in this time around? And will these different environments force the player to move around the map a bit more?''' ''It’s based on the Site 2 map, which is briefly glimpsed on a wall at the end of the first game. This time we’ve added dynamic seasons, which affect every part of the map. In winter, snow covers everything; in spring, maple leaves turn orange and fall from trees. In summer, salmon jump upstream, and turtles lay eggs on the beach for example. How to survive, what food sources you have, and the world visuals all change dynamically, giving a different experience as the seasons come and go.''

'''5. Can you describe some of the big gameplay changes coming to Sons of The Forest? The trailers show off some more advanced looking survival mechanics (The digging mechanic looks especially good.) and new types of weapons including firearms, but they also hint at potentially more peaceful ways to deal with the AI than the first game offered.''' ''For the sequel we wanted to take the next step in what a survival game could be. Digging is new, along with 3D printing to augment the crafting system, but beyond that we have attempted to refine and improve every system. Building is more satisfying and immersive, crafting is more visual, and guns and other non-lethal weapons add more interesting combat options. We’re also focused on the interactions between the inhabitants and this world you’re exploring.''

'''6. For many the AI was one of the most exciting aspects of The Forest. Can you talk a bit about the advancements being made there and maybe describe some of the new peaceful and violent interactions players might have with them?''' A.I. is the main focus of the new game; for Sons we have created a new A.I. tool that we call V.A.I.L. This tool allows for the creation of some extremely complex behavior, and characters can now become afraid, tired, angry, hungry, thirsty, bored, etc., and these feelings influence their decisions. We’re really excited for the players to get a chance to experiment with the inhabitants.''

7. Are you continuing to lean heavily into the survival horror roots of the original game? ''Sons of the Forest exists in the same universe as The Forest, so we’re bringing back a lot of the same themes and feel to this game. We’ll be expanding on some of the ideas we introduced in The Forest and adding some new ones which players should find unnerving.''

'''8. Enemies seem to interact with your base in a much more advanced way in the new trailers. I noticed enemies stealing resources, working to actually break into your cabin, etc. How are the base mechanics evolving with the rest of the game?''' ''In addition to stealing logs, the new A.I. allows for much more coordinated attacks on your base and more interesting interactions. For instance, the A.I. can use ziplines to get into your base, they can steal resources from you, or may just want to torment you. They make decisions based on their individual objectives and experience, making them feel much more alive than in the first title.''

9. Will Sons of the Forest contain cooperative play at launch as opposed to being added later? Yes, it will have the full multiplayer experience on launch.

10. Will this launch as an early access title or a full 1.0 release? We will announce more details about the release closer to launch.

'''11. You supported The Forest for quite a few years even after 1.0. Is the plan to do the same with Sons of the Forest?''' Definitely.

12. Do you have a more specific timeline for the release of Sons of the Forest other than just 2021, and what platforms is Sons of the Forest coming to? ''We’re not ready to announce a more specific date yet. We have only announced the PC release so far.''