Tony Zurovec · Persistent Universe Director

Yeah, I think the environment in many situations should be at least as big an opponent to you accomplishing your objectives as other players or AI NPCs would be. It will be much more than just sandstorms that can impede visibility or that could potentially actually cause you to lose health. We'll have on these planets volcanic vents, some ships, some armors. Some sandworms.

Chris Roberts · CEO and Project Director

We're definitely going to have dynamic weather, and weather that can impede or affect you or hurt you. Like we showed in the demo we did: you arrive in your Constellation going to the beacon, and then there's bad air basically over that desert, and it was unsafe to fly, so you had to find a landing pad that was safe. So that's going to be much more systemic. I mean, that's our goal, right? Obviously for that particular case we'd set up some of the events that would happen, but they were sort of on triggers when you're in that event. Actually, I mentioned it in a Gamers Nexus interview, we are looking at doing full cloud weather simulation based on, here's the planet, here's the hot, here's the cold areas. And we want to have that entry into a planet, if you think of Prometheus when they come in, the entry to the planet in Prometheus. Have all these things, and also have encouragement for players to use different suits, environment suits, or vehicles. You can't always fly somewhere and get out. Maybe you have to land, take your rover to go somewhere, which is kind of what we did.

Tony Zurovec · Persistent Universe Director

That's exactly it. Some of the ore that you'll attempt to mine will give off so much electromagnetic interference that you effectively have to touch down in your ship, and now all of a sudden you've got a real reason why you want to have that rover to make that last 10-kilometer trip. But of course that opens up many more gameplay possibilities, now that you're traipsing around.

Chris Roberts · CEO and Project Director

And if you're caught in the wrong area when the bad weather front hits and you're not prepared, like a sandstorm.

Tony Zurovec · Persistent Universe Director

Acid rain, heat, electrical storms, impaired visibility. There's a whole slew of things that we want to put into the system.