Grasshopper Manufacture's upcoming game, PlayStation 4-exclusive action-survival title Let It Die, will be free-to-play and completely online, according to CEO Goichi Suda.
While Suda could not reveal details about the game's premise, plot or objectives, he did say that players will take on the role of the nude man who features prominently in the game's announcement trailer (above). Starting out as a man in his underwear wearing a gas mask, players will have to find their enemies, beat them up and take their weapons and gear. Players can then put those items on themselves and "build" their character by collecting items from enemies.
Suda told Polygon the studio decided to take the game online to leverage its parent company's expertise in the field. Gungho Online Entertainment, the company best known for the Ragnarok series and mobile game Puzzle and Dragons, acquired Grasshopper Manufacture last year. Gungho's most successful titles are free-to-play. Suda said Let It Die's monetization strategy is yet to be determined, but the game will not be pay-to-win, and microtransactions will likely revolve around the game's items system.
Suda also said the game has to be online because when the player's character dies, the data from that character becomes part of a data pool from which new enemies are generated. "That player data becomes the enemy data," he said. "So you're basically going to be fighting against human data. They're going to look different, they're going to fight different, and it's going to be different every single time."
Let It Die will be a departure from previous Grasshopper games. According to Suda, this will be the first game from the "new" Grasshopper. This means instead of following the format of its past games, which all involved quirky lead characters who followed a path and fought boss battles, Let It Die will place greater emphasis on the game's online component. The game will still feature flamboyant characters, though, like the Grim Reaper on a skateboard.
