Bohemia Interactive, the studio behind Arma and DayZ, is working on a new survival game called Vigor.
Vigor is set in Norway during the ’90s. Well…not the ’90s as we know them. Instead, this version of the ’90s is a decade that has seen parts of Europe engage in nuclear war. Such as it stands, Norway is one of the few safe harbors left in the region. That’s theoretically good news, but as a horde of survivors descend upon the region and squabble over the remaining resources, it becomes clear that this region will soon host a war of a different kind.
Based on the information made available thus far, it doesn’t seem like Vigor is a battle royale game. Instead, its combat seems to be instance-based, meaning that battles will be based on arranged conflicts featuring eight to 16 players. Said players will wield a variety of military weapons as well as melee items that were scrounged from the area. It also seems that there will be some kind of crafting and base building mechanics incorporated into the experience somehow.
Still, it’s not entirely clear what other games Vigor is most easily compared to. It feels like there is more to this title than some pre-arranged fights and scrounging for items, but it’s a little too early in the game’s development cycle to say for sure what the full experience is going to be like from the moment you pick up the controller to when you set it down.
One interesting thing to note, though, is that Vigor runs off of the Unreal engine. Previously, Bohemia Interactive has relied on a proprietary engine for most of their games. The use of the Unreal engine in this instance might mean that Vigor will run a bit…smoother than some of the other games that we’ve seen from Bohemia in the past.
It’s also worth noting that Vigor is currently set to be released exclusively for Xbox One via the Game Preview system. Given that Vigor is set to release via a premium model sometime this year, that means it could actually beat the long-digesting DayZ to consoles. Vigor is also expected to go free-to-play sometime in 2019.