OlliOlli World’s Void Riders DLC Is “As Weird As It Looks” (Exclusive)

OlliOlli World is already one thing of a wierd, cartoony sport, going down in a world constructed for skateboarding. It’s additionally one populated by people, frog businessmen, fortune-telling fish, and skate gods, whose primary teachings embody grinding and kick-flipping. With its upcoming DLC growth, Void Riders, the side-scrolling skateboarding platformer is taking issues a step additional with a cosmic theme and the addition of a complete bunch of aliens.Though developer Roll7 hasn’t revealed a lot in the way in which of particulars about what gamers can anticipate for the primary story growth for OlliOlli World, GameSpot received an unique have a look at the DLC’s key artwork, which provides a number of clues.”Yes, it’s as weird as it looks,” stated John Ribbins, Roll7’s chief inventive officer and co-founder, in an interview with GameSpot. “DLC is an opportunity to, as developers, have fun–we already know how to make the game now. And it’s like, what cool twists can we put on it, and stuff like that?”The twists in Void Riders primarily appear to concern visits by extraterrestrials, whose ships might be seen within the artwork sucking up objects, characters, and cows, thereby altering OlliOlli World’s skatable panorama. Aliens beforehand made a number of cameos in OlliOlli World’s Burntrock ranges, principally hanging round within the background as a kind of working Area 51 joke. They’re an enormous a part of the foreground in Void Riders, composing a skate crew of their very own that you’re going to work together with, very like these situated all through the totally different ranges of OlliOlli World.The key artwork for OlliOlli World’s first growth, Void Riders, suggests that it will make the bizarre skating platformer much more delightfully bizarre.The prevalence of alien guests affords a way of the sort of gameplay expertise Roll7 goes for. When it involves its skating, OlliOlli World is not intensely sensible, of course–you can land ludicrous methods, grind rail after rail with out stopping, and fall tons of of toes with out injury–but the collection has put a premium on some parts of realism, like the kinds of methods skaters can pull off. With Void Riders, Ribbins stated the builders had been thinking about exploring an expertise that provides a bit extra freedom.”[With OlliOlli World], it has been like, ‘let’s try and focus on things that actual skateboarders do,’ and so it’s been fun with the DLC to go, ‘Okay, the DLC, let’s free ourselves from that. What would just be a cool game mechanic or like a cool thing to do because it’s a video game?’ As opposed to being, like, ‘I also saw that on Thrasher last week,'” he defined.”And so what we are adding is probably more at the fantastical end of the scale, I suppose, than like more at the skating end of the scale. But I think that’s fun; I think it would potentially be a little bit stale if we were just like, ‘Oh we’ve added another skateboard trick,’ or something like that. It’s been cool to be like, let’s just be really out there with this one and do some crazy stuff.”Void Riders brings a brand new biome to the skate-obsessed setting of Radlandia, the spaced-out alien artwork model of which is hinted at in the important thing artwork. It comes together with new customization choices and a few new gameplay mechanics–Ribbins advised that these alien tractor beams in the important thing artwork are for extra than simply sci-fi set dressing. But considerably notably, it is a story growth to OlliOlli World, which itself has a story working all by means of its many ranges of skating mayhem. In addition to the Void Riders skate crew you possibly can anticipate to work together with, the important thing artwork additionally reveals an enormous purple blob creature referred to as Nebulord taking middle stage.Aliens are part of the degrees of Burntrock, however in Void Riders they seem to be a a lot greater deal.Something notable about OlliOlli World’s story is how constructive it is–there’s no antagonist, and the characters who present up all through the sport are encouraging of your journey to turn into a skate wizard. Your chief opponent in OlliOlli World is your self, as you push to extend your talent degree. A skate wizard is not decided by a selected rating or excessive diploma of aptitude, nevertheless, however by the non-public satisfaction of enjoying the sport and exploring the sensation of skating. Thus, the presence of the spooky-looking Nebulord instantly appears at odds with that method.”You put a big, spectral, purple-looking character in the background, people are going to think there’s an antagonist,” Ribbins joked. “While we want to do different stuff in this [expansion], and tell some other stories, and have new places and characters to see, we didn’t want to change [the tone] that much to be like, in this DLC, there’s a baddie who you are trying to beat. He’s not a baddie, he’s just quite selfish. He’s quite self-centered. And so that kind of brings a different spin, because you don’t really meet any characters like that in the main game.”One of the challenges Roll7 wanted to handle, Ribbins stated, was figuring out the place the story of Void Riders would match into OlliOlli World, because you spend the sport with a crew of characters whose story already has a set chronology. Roll7 landed on making Void Riders an “adjacent” story to the principle sport, he defined. You needn’t have completed OlliOlli World and turn into a skate wizard with a view to entry the DLC, however that additionally means Void Riders isn’t caught to a selected level in the principle sport’s story.Being adjoining implies that Void Riders has its personal new characters, however it additionally connects to the remainder of OlliOlli World and options a few of the people you meet as you journey by means of Radlandia. There had been a number of characters in the principle sport who gamers solely interacted with briefly throughout a number of brief conversations on the beginnings and endings of ranges. Ribbins stated that because the staff was making OlliOlli World, the concept of spending extra time with a few of these characters and digging into their personalities turned seeds for DLC–although he stated precisely which characters you may discover within the growth is “a surprise for later.”Expect some new methods to skate, a brand new biome, and new customization choices in Void Riders.In addition to new ranges to skate, new characters to fulfill, and new mechanics to grasp, the growth additionally brings new equipment with which to customise your skater. Some will likely be appropriately space-themed, it feels like, and Ribbins stated Roll7 took into consideration how the OlliOlli World neighborhood used and interacted with the customization choices within the base sport in constructing the brand new ones. The builders discovered, as an illustration, that gamers typically did not like onesies as outfits for his or her skaters, since they tended to restrict customization choices. The new garments and equipment coming with the growth had been created with that in thoughts, providing extra probabilities for gamers to combine and match.And although the growth was deliberate earlier than the discharge of the bottom sport, information and suggestions about how gamers took on OlliOlli World affected how Roll7 approached setting the issue of the brand new content material.”[The main game was useful for] being able to look at how people have gone on with the game, where people have struggled, and then to try to map that to where we’re pitching the difficulty of the DLC,” he defined. “So we try and strike that balance between like, if you are halfway through the game, but you are having a good time, the DLC doesn’t require you to finish all the rest of the game and master all the mechanics to have a good time in it. It’s still a good time to be had with, like, an average player’s skill level, but there’s still a ton of challenges and side bits that you can do in there if you finished the game and mastered everything–that’s still going to really push you.”There’s rather a lot about Void Riders we do not know, however this preliminary have a look at the growth gives the look that it will be one other delightfully unusual foray into Radlandia. The DLC is ready for launch this summer time and is the primary of two deliberate story expansions. Both expansions are included within the Rad Edition of OlliOlli World on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, and Nintendo Switch, or as a part of an growth pack that can run gamers $15 USD.