Seven: The Days Long Gone Interview

Epic Games' official Unreal Engine website is featuring an interview with Jakub Rokosz, Karolina Kuzia-Rokosz, Krzysztof Mąka, and other members of the Fool's Theory team about their upcoming RPG, Seven: The Days Long Gone. Topics include the team's decision to use Unreal Engine, their approach to open-world design, inspirations they're drawing upon, and more. A snip:
The environments are particularly eye-catching; familiar, yet exotic. Tell us more about the setting and the design influences behind the world.

Art Director, Krzysztof Mąka - We've always had a weakness for stylized graphics in games, and taking that approach allows us to show off our talents much more than a photorealistic approach would. Plus, what is photorealistic today will be outdated a few years from now due to technological progress. Stylized aesthetics age more slowly, so even older games can still look beautiful today. This also gives us creative freedom to establish the rules of Seven's world and how things work.

The setting can be described as "beyond-post-apocalyptic." We draw the most inspiration from literature, because we believe there are only a few games with similar world creation. The aforementioned "Gentleman Bastards" and "The Broken Empire" book series had huge influences on us. Ancient technology in those books is something mysterious and incomprehensible. People are using it as much as they are able, but their beliefs and lifestyles correspond more to medieval times, hence the feeling that the world of Seven is something familiar, yet exotic. We're all used to post-apocalyptic, science-fiction, and fantasy as individual settings, but in our opinion, their fusion is a breath of fresh air.