Mad Max’s Open World is Gloriously Free Form

In an interview with Magnus Nedfors, design director for the game, he stated that Avalanche opted to make Mad Max an open world because they wanted to give the players more options to play the game the way they like it. Looking at the environment, the large universe they’ve built for Mad Max, it just seemed to be the right thing for the game.

The look of the world was inspired by the Mad Max universe, which obviously exists in the movie. It’s not based exclusively on that, though. It’s kind of a wasteland, but then you’ll start to notice that a lot of it is based on real-world locations and occurrences as well. It’s going to be a dynamic world, which might best be described as a “beautiful wasteland.”

In the beginning of the game, Max gets attacked by wastelanders, and they take away everything. The game revolves around Max building a new vehicle – the Magnum Opus. Players resurrect a “dead” car, and as they go along, slowly upgrade it. This isn’t a simple case of maxed-out stats producing the best car, though. Players can customize the car to suit their in-game goals, slap on armor and weapons appropriate for what you’re about to do. Real-time physics simulation will make this part challenging, because anything you add or remove will affect how the car handles.  

There are a bunch of activities in the Mad Max game universe. You can take down convoys, wastelanders can attack you thanks to the random encounter system, and you can also compete in races. The car serves as more than just transportation, it is also be a weapon. When you’re out of the car, you can get into free-flowing brawls which look a lot more spontaneous than fighting gameplay in past games. Max doesn’t have a martial arts background; he learned to fight because he had to survive, and the developers have managed to integrate that, if we go by the gameplay footage. Looks pretty brutal, but Avalanche isn’t inserting violence just for the sake of having it there. It’s just how the in-game universe is.

After being delayed, it looks like Mad Max is pretty ready for release. All the work put into it so far looks phenomenal, and we’re waiting for it to drop on September 4^th for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.