The MOBA shooter Gigantic will be released for Xbox One and PC, but how do you balance mouse and controller? And what do we know about the release date?
“How does one even come up with the idea of developing a MOBA?”, Creative Director James Phinney is asked in an interview with Gamingbolt. And he responds: “Actually not at all”. You can certainly call Gigantic a MOBA; it has elements from it, but one sees it as a MOBA shooter.
Primarily, they wanted to create a “competitive game” that is a lot of fun. They included elements from console action games like fighting a large boss monster, but also packed in some MOBA ideas in Gigantic.
They speculate a bit on eSports, but whether a game will succeed there is decided by the eSports players. That is not something the developers can control, it is stated further.
16 playable characters with very different traits
The big thing that they want to talk about in Gigantic right now are the 16 different fighters, each with their own design; there are brawler/tank types like The Margrave. He has no ranged combat options, but a huge demon fist.
“Tyto the Swift” has the potential to become the mascot with his owl mask and red cape.
“Imani”, on the other hand, is a typical shooter character where you shoot with the left mouse button, and with the right, the player zooms in on their target. Imani also has a selection of special ammunition as an RPG element, but Imani is clearly a shooter character.
… but the stars are the creatures
But the player characters are not everything. The game is supposed to revolve around the “Guardians”, the giants after whom the game is named.
They fight alongside the players, giving the gameplay concept of Gigantic its own twist.
Control advantages in crossplay
Gigantic aims for crossplay, but how is that supposed to work with Xbox and Windows? Don’t PC players have an advantage with mouse and keyboard? “Yes,” replies the Creative Director. They don’t delude themselves. With some characters, PC players have significant advantages due to the controls, but not with others like “The Margrave”.
Still, it will be a pure “can” situation. Any console player can only compete against other controller players.
Release thoughts for Gigantic
They aim for 1080p resolution on the Xbox One and try for 60fps. However, they cannot guarantee that yet, but are aware of how important that is for action games.
A closed beta is coming in August. If they are satisfied with the quality, an open beta will follow. A release relatively early in 2016 is considered a possibility.
