The highly-anticipated PlayStation 4 exclusive Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture will officially debut on the console on August 11 of this year. Publisher Sony confirmed the news on their blog today from a post by The Chinese Room’s creative director, Dan Pinchbeck.
“Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is the culmination of journey Jess and I started back in 2006, when we asked the simple question “what happens if you remove traditional mechanics from a game world? Will that be something people will want to play?,’ Pinchbeck writes. “The answer to that question, the last nine years have proved, is a pretty emphatic YES. Dear Esther stood on the shoulders of giants, drawing on the long, proud design history of first-person gaming, to just try side-stepping into an area we believed was worth exploring. We look back now at the number of story-driven, exploration-driven games that have been produced since and that’s an incredible thing to be part of. We stand alongside studios and developers who are committed to pushing at the boundaries of what games can be, and that’s being part of a tradition as old as gaming itself. This medium has always been about those boundaries, that pushing out, that bending and breaking of rules to do new things, and we hope Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture will earn its place in that.”
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture tells the story of the inhabitants of a remote English valley who are caught up in world-shattering events beyond their control or understanding. Made by The Chinese Room – the studio responsible for the hauntingly beautiful Dear Esther – this tale of how people respond in the face of grave adversity is a non-linear, open-world experience that pushes innovative interactive storytelling to the next level.Over the course of the game, the player slowly pieces together the fate of the valley from the fragmentary memories of the people who made it their home. By finding and interacting with the traces of these lost lives, the player gradually learns about the stories and relationships of the inhabitants – how they lived, and how they died. All this is accomplished through revolutionary environmental storytelling – what you see and hear in Rapture is just as important as what you do.
