Sometimes it's the little things that make the biggest difference. Like letting players know they can sprint through a large and non-linear environment, for example. That's the hard lesson learned by Everybody's Gone to the Rapture development studio The Chinese Room this week, as the post-apocalyptic, narrative-driven game hit PS4 without clear instructions on how to run.
First, the good news: yes, you can sprint in Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. Simply hold R2 and over a few seconds, your walk will build into a sprint. As to why almost no one knew about this, The Chinese Room has an explanation: "A couple of weeks before the game went to final, Santa Monica did a last round of playtesting. At this point, the game included an autosprint. ... The problem was, playtesters wanted to be able to trigger it themselves. It didn’t matter about the speed, it was the psychology, the choice."
The Chinese Room implemented the R2 mechanic, but missed the detail of noting the button's use in the options manual. The simple addition of an icon doesn't seem like much, but localization takes 24 hours, and due to the code used for the game's user interface, it needed to be rebuilt and re-submitted for quality assurance, adding another 4-5 days to the timeline. In other words, there simply wasn't enough time before release to notify players of the feature.
For what it's worth, our Everybody's Gone to the Rapture review noted the run button, but advises against using it. Still, for those who feel compelled to speedrun the end of the world, The Chinese Room is working to get the icon and instructions patched in - it's just going to take some time. For now, the studio admits that it "messed up," and asks you to forgive them their sins. And hey, no better time for that than the Rapture.
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