Jeff Kaplan may see Rust as the pinnacle of video games, but even if its influence is obvious, his new project is not trying to trace over it line for line.
Jeff Kaplan has returned to video games. The former director of Overwatch, who also spent a stretch of time leading Overwatch 2, founded Kintsugiyama in order to step away from major publishers and, apparently, give one of his long-standing passions more room to breathe: open-world survival games. The Legend of California, his first project since leaving Blizzard, is a Wild West survival title set during the Gold Rush, and it clearly carries echoes of the game Kaplan considers the peak of the medium – Rust.
In a recent interview with noclip_2, Kaplan explained that he has a deep admiration for Facepunch Studios’ 2013 survival hit, which he sees as a truly singular experience within competitive online gaming. In his eyes, Rust is basically a long-simmering battle royale, one where matches can evolve into wars of attrition that last for weeks. That idea has had a major impact on how he thinks about the genre. In fact, his affection for the game goes so far that he admitted he has already put more than 5,000 hours into it, and still is not done.
Rust May Be His Favorite, but The Legend of California Will Be More Relaxed
That does not mean The Legend of California will simply reproduce the same formula. Rather than leaning into nonstop, aggressive PvP, Kaplan’s new game is aiming for a calmer experience built more around base-building and exploration, drawing inspiration from games such as Valheim and Subnautica as well. Even so, he is not ruling out tougher survival mechanics entirely, and he has suggested that some servers may still offer more punishing setups for players who want a harsher experience.
Another major influence comes from Kaplan’s past on World of Warcraft, where he worked as a quest designer from 2002 until making the jump to Overwatch in the following decade. From that background, he wants to recover the feeling of a massively multiplayer open world where all kinds of players interact, collide, and create their own stories inside the same shared space.
There is still some waiting to do before we see how all of this actually comes together, but The Legend of California is currently planned to debut in early access later this year. The project is aiming to strike a balance between the freedom and social interaction of large-scale online worlds and a more approachable survival structure, effectively positioning itself as an alternative to the harsher, more competitive direction that defines so much of the genre right now.
Source: 3DJuegos
