Ubisoft has belatedly jumped into the increasingly crowded battle royale space with their upcoming title Hyper Scape. Announced at their Ubisoft Forward presentation, the game looks to be adding a different twist on traditional battle royale games by incorporating an interactive response between players’ live streaming matches and the streaming audience.
Hyper Scape is set roughly thirty years in the future, where the Internet has become the immersive VR environment predicted by novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One, as well as countless anime titles. Called (naturally) the Hyper Scape, one of the many activities individuals can engage in is a battle royale called “Crown Rush.” The trailer Ubisoft showed set the stage for some sort of ongoing story within the game’s universe, but the gameplay they showed off appeared to be a pure battle royale.
Within the game, players will have the option to pick up a variety of weapons, as well as power-ups referred to as “hacks” which will let them perform unusual actions like leaping between tall buildings and encasing themselves in giant hamster balls.
As an added measure, a Twitch plugin will allow people to view a match to vote on a mutator to throw into the game, such as infinite ammo. The intimation was that the mutator vote would likely be happening every few minutes within a given match. However, the details of what mutators are available at any given time were not explained.
Another element that was not explained was how exactly Ubisoft plans to let players explore the storyline they laid out in the trailer. There was no mention of a single-player campaign, but Ubisoft may take a page from Apex Legends and layout missions for players to explore outside of a regular match. Whether they would be presented as a coherent campaign or simply unlock as players progress through the rankings is unknown at this time.
Ubisoft is operating on a “better late than never” premise. Players who aren’t getting what they need from Fortnite, Apex Legends, or Warzone can jump into the open beta (on PC) right now. Console players will have to wait until later this summer.
