Watery Wandering: Abzu Announced
Devs lead by Journey's art director
We gushed a little about Abzû in our E3 chat yesterday but in our fawning, er, hadn't actually got around to posting about it yet. (The same thing happened with Cuphead.) That may because we don't much at all about it, other than it's a gorgeous undersea game and that developers Giant Squid are lead by Matt Nava, who was previously art director of thatgamecompany's acclaimed console wander 'em ups Journey and Flower. It's not much to go on, but certainly is enough to pique my interest and fill our heads with fanciful dreams.
Just about everything we know about the game is contained within the following press blurb:
ABZÛ will take players on an epic adventure into the depths of the ocean, where they will encounter majestic creatures and discover long lost secrets. The game draws inspiration from a deep, innate story that we all carry in our collective subconscious, a universal origin myth that resonates across cultures. As such, the name ABZÛ references a concept from the oldest Mesopotamian mythology: it is the combination of two ancient words Ab, meaning ocean, and Zû, meaning to know. Essentially, ABZÛ is the ocean of wisdom.
That'll do nicely, thank you. I have no idea what players will be doing in the game, other than being in water, but I'm quite keen to find out when it arrives in 2016. Assuming my hopes that it's a lovely spot of exploring are correct, I'd like to state for the record that "walking simulator" can still apply to games where you swim. For now, this trailer is a beautiful evocative thing that lets me imagine that Abzû's exactly what I'd like it to be, which is the whole point of E3 really: