What exactly is Ion, the new sci-fi sandbox being developed by Dean Hall in collaboration with virtual world firm Improbable? We still don’t really know, though Hall did drop a few cryptic hints in a recent interview on the PC Gaming Show.
“It’s not Star Citizen, it’s not Elite, it’s not EVE,” he said, before elaborating about a third-person isometric setup akin to Diablo. “We’re sketching together regions and letting players have their own regions. It’s a 3D environment, but it’s not true isometric. There’s an offset camera,” he explained.
Hall also responded to accusations of abandoning his ultra-popular zombie sandbox mod for Arma 2. “It comes down to learning the lessons and I think that when I first came up with DayZ, it was an accident,” he said. “It was a mod I thought 50 people would play, but a lot of people played it. I didn’t have the resources [to develop it alone] so I sold it to Bohemia, and I stayed for a lot longer than I intended.”
And speaking of DayZ, current project lead Brian Hicks also visited the PC Gaming Show and said that single-player is in the works, as are more vehicles and repair resources.
