District 9 Director Neill Blomkamp Reveals New Video Game

Developer Gunzilla Games has officially revealed Off the Grid, a new battle royale game slated to release in 2023. District 9 and Elysium director Neill Blomkamp joined the studio last year as its chief visionary officer, but the studio's first project was simply teased as a multiplayer shooter. Now Blomkamp and the rest of the team have revealed a lot more information about the game, and how it will set itself apart from other battle royale titles on the market. In an interview with GameSpot, Blomkamp hinted that Off the Grid will put a much larger focus on narrative.

"I think with [script writer] Richard Morgan and I, one of the things that's really sort of bubbling to the surface is this idea of creating an incredibly deep narrative and sort of lore history of how this whole place came to be," Blomkamp told GameSpot. "So on this island, you have corporate sabotage and espionage and things that are happening that result in the hiring of assassins--those are basically the players that you embody--and through doing that, you can see how this world of refugees and contractors and mercenaries-for-hire and corporate elites all create this really interesting bubbling powder keg of conflict and layers and layers and layers of characters and stories that you can go into in different ways in the future."

In Off the Grid, players will have the option of creating a character that belongs to one of three different factions. The factions will apparently be competing for control over a "space elevator," that's being used to mine asteroids for valuable resources. Players will have the option of completing narrative goals during the battle, and those accomplishments can have an impact on the storyline over time. Information about each of the factions in the game has not been revealed, and Blomkamp and the team would not tell GameStop whether players would have the opportunity to switch between them.

So far, Off the Grid sounds like an ambitious battle royale! It remains to be seen whether Blomkamp and his team will be able to deliver on the game's promise, but if successful, it could push the genre into an interesting new direction. For now, fans of the director will just have to wait and see what the future holds!

Are you excited to check out Off the Grid when it releases? What do you think of the concept? Let us know in the comments or share directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!