Hey there, it's finally time to lift the curtain on the full patch notes for Unknown Origins Part 1 launching tomorrow! (Friday 26th). The game will also be going on sale when the update launches tomorrow.
You can read a full list of the patch notes at the bottom of the page but first I want to highlight some of the big features of this update.
Overhauled immersion
For this update I have spent a lot of time focusing on improving the level of quality found in terms of graphics, audio improvements, weather improvements, general ambience, lighting and much more. All of these combine together to create a far more immersive environment then ever before. 3D audio has been adjusted for a range of sounds meaning characters and undead will now be audible at a realistic level in relation to their distance from the player. General ambience has been overhauled with new dynamic tracks playing depending on which zone the player is in as well as the time of day.
Lighting has been massively improved. you will now see better volumetric lighting effects, improved sky colours throughout the day, darker and more immersive night time, lighting flashes during acid storms and much more. Nothing beats wandering through an acid storm in darkness while hearing the distant screams of the undead wondering where your next safe stop might be.
Voice acting
Unknown Origins begins implementing something I have wanted for some time, voice acting. For now this is limited to dynamic world AI and not story characters. You will now hear AI reacting to being shot, covering each other, shouting words of encouragement, taunts or cry's for help as a nearby ally falls. Liberty will have their own unique radio static voice lines to reflect the often covered up helmets they wear. AI will also have a variety of greeting voice lines when starting a conversation.
Runners Travel Service
You can now pay any Runner found out in the world a sum of credits for safe passage to a variety of locations across the Barrens. Need to get to the new Plains area but find yourself stuck far away? Find a Runner and get there fast and safely.
New gear and characters
Equip yourself with a variety of weapons and gear used by members of Liberty. New crates can be found around the Plains containing tons of new loot including new weapons, the P90, MK14, G36C and the M22 heavy machine gun. You can also find 3 new Liberty suits and 4 new Liberty helmets.
New enemies and dangers
A new weather type can happen at random across the Barrens, the acid storm. In order to survive this new environmental threat you must either equip yourself with protective gear or find shelter, alternatively you can just keep chugging alcohol to lower your toxicity levels! Speaking of toxicity, infection is a new value that can now be impacted by taking damage from undead characters. High infections levels will impact your characters overall health and extremely high levels will incur periodic health loss. Combat this new danger with antibiotics also added in this update. As well as all this you will now have to deal with dangerous mutants that now inhabit the world as well making the Barrens more dangerous than ever before.
New features and QOL's
With the new update you must now consider the weight of your equipment as your backpack is no longer the only thing that can slow you down. Equipping heavy armour may make you far more likely to survive a long range shot however it will come at the cost of your ability to move quickly. The idea behind this is to begin adding more reasons to mix and match gear for different situations.
A new largely requested QOL now added is the ability to see what attachments are equipped to a weapon from within the inventory. This will make it easier when sorting through stashed weapons or selling items to know which are your most important weapons.
A huge amount of new locations
This update brings with it the largest expansion of explorable locations to date with a large new terrain exactly half the size of the base game map that contains over a dozen new POI's ranging from small encampments to large sprawling train-yards.
New weapons, animations & legendary gear
Continuing from Trials Of The Hollowed, the remaining weapons have received the revamped animations and in some cases audio treatment bringing them up to standard with the rest. As well as this both unarmed and melee weapons have received reworked animations. On top of this several new weapons have been added in both the gun and melee categories. You can also hunt down a selection of new legendary items such as the guarded axe, commanders slasher and a range of rare masks.
New quests
With the release of part 1 quests were not the primary focus however that being said this update still doubles the count of available quests in game. Part 2 will have a larger focus on quests and will be right around the corner but for now you can complete a long quest chain to build the legendary Liberty Elite Defender suit as well as several other smaller quests scattered around the map. You can also complete activities at Camp Bravo for the military and the Liberty Science HQ for reputation with each faction. Be warned though Liberty and the Military do not get along and earning rep with one will automatically lower your rep with the other. Choose your side carefully or go it alone!
Improvements to AI
Part 2 will feature the large AI overhaul that I have been promising and will my entire focus once part 1 is released however part 1 does still include some out of combat improvements to the AI. The idle code has been cleaned up and improved meaning AI will be more dynamic and active when out of combat. This will result in seeing more movement from the AI around the map. On top of this they can also now loot fallen enemies even beating you to it meaning you may have to kill whoever looted the body you wanted to get the items. There are also several new idle animations to add to the feeling of the NPC's actually doing things outside of combat. Stay tuned for part 2's new soon to discuss the big changes coming to combat AI behaviour!
What's next
As I have mentioned a few times now this is the part 1 release of Unknown Origins. Going forward you will start to see far more regular content and bug fix patches as well as the part 2 release very soon! I want to make sure I am getting content out more regularly meaning I will be sticking with the title Unknown Origins for a while and releasing new content under this name. I can't wait for you all to jump and try out the new content and to get even more coming out soon! Thank you to you all for being so patient with me, this update has grown in size far beyond the original scope but hopefully it's worth it!
Speak to you all again very soon.
Full patch notes
Current patch notes
Animations & Interactions
-Reworked PM-5 (new audio and animations)
-Reworked Hunting Rifle (new audio and animations)
-Reworked Qbec (animations)
-Reworked Nova-33 (animations)
-Reworked glock animations and sounds
-Reworked VSS animations
-Reworked Ret 51 animations
-New interaction sounds, eating, opening bag, healing etc…
-New/reworked melee animations
-New/reworked unarmed animations
Mechanics & Difficulty
-Added swimming
-Added infection amount from zombie attacks
-Gear weight system added that affects player movement speed based on the weight of equipped gear
-Hunger and thirst rates are now affected by the player's movement penalty meaning carrying a high amount of items or a high gear weight will increase the rate of thirst and hunger gain
Weather
-Toxic rainstorm weather
-New dynamic lighting system
New Faction & NPC’s
-New character, Liberty soldier
-New character, Liberty scientist
-New character, Liberty heavy unit
New quests
(Many more coming very soon!)
-Build the liberty heavy suit questline (9 quests)
-Various other smaller quests
New areas
-New entire terrain/zone (The Plains, home to Liberty)
-New underground labs & sewers (Hazard Zone)
-New area Trainyard (The Plains)
-New area Liberty Base (The Plains)
-New area turbine farm (The plains)
-New area sunken fuel depot/tunnels (The plains)
-New minor zone The Misty Forest (The Plains) -New safe zone Submarine (The Plains)
-Camp Bravo (The Plains)
-New area fishing village (The Plains)
-Farm (The Plains)
-Various other smaller POI's (The Plains)
New enemies
-Scalper (Mutant)
-Scratcher (Mutant)
New items
-New weapon P90
-New weapon MK14 marksman rifle
-New weapon MGK heavy machine gun
-New unique melee weapon Commanders Slasher
-New unique weapon Guarded Chopper
-Night vision goggles
-Binocolours
-Craftable weapon cleaning rag
-Antibiotics for lowering infection
-New Liberty evo helmet
-New Liberty Defender helmet
-New Liberty Basic helmet
-New Liberty Elite Defender helmet
-New special forces mask
-New liberty eco suit
-New liberty defender suit
-New liberty elite defender suit
-New backpack Liberty
-New data pad model
-New liberty-themed containers & crates
Graphical improvements
-Ray-traced screen space reflections (first version)
-Added metallic reflective properties to weapons
-Added metallic reflective properties to various metal surfaces throughout the world
-Lighting is now better adjusted throughout the time of day making nights darker and daytime brighter, this also allows for better nighttime gameplay in tandem with the new night vision goggles
-Reworked skybox lighting
-Reworked certain weather effects
-Dynamic fog
-New post-processing effects to better emphasise dark environments
-Hugely improved the player's flashlight making it far more useful
-Introduced a new distant fog technique
-New & improved nighttime lighting, night time is now actually dark and requires the use of a flashlight or NVG
-Tweaked terrain materials properties to look more natural during a range of different lighting types
-Improved textures for snowy trees
-Improved visual clarity via post-processing
-Clarity improvements to many textures
-Improved clarity of volumetric lights
-New screen overlays/effects for gas masks, each mask now has a unique overlay texture when worn
-Improved clarity of red dot and holographic sights
Enhanced audio
-Replaced various weather sounds with improved ones
-New dynamic environment sounds play throughout the day, morning, day, night
-Newly composed music made specifically for Fargone
-Added voice lines for dynamic AI during combat and idle situations
Quality of life improvements
-New QOL weapon attachments are now displayed inside the inventory slots allowing players to easily see what weapons are customised
-Journal now displays currently tacked mission
-Inventory slots now display a weapons equipped attachments
-You can now click on a mission in the journal screen to display detailed info on that mission
-Improves clarity of hud warnings such as carry capacity, bleeding, broken bone etc…
Performance
-Optimised initial loading times by streaming world items dynamically and not all at once on load
AI
-Improvements to ai Idle behaviour making them less static
-New ai idle animations
-Improved performance concerning certain IK elements
-New walking animations
Changed
-Leaning adjusted to be more useful
-Lowered HZ protection requirements slightly
-Improved sun/moon orbit making a full day-night cycle more realistic
-Weapon muzzle flash is now hidden when a weapon is silenced
Fixed
-Infected deer mission pathfinding issues
-Fixed several instances of floating grass
-Coughing spam
-Fixed important characters not saving & loading correctly
-Fixed a bug that allowed the player to change fire mode even when the weapon only had one available fire mode
-Fixed AI getting stuck standing still when idle
-Fixed crashed helicopter in HZ causing player to get stuck
-Fixed various bounty board bugs with loading and saving
-Fixed a crash caused by a bounty board
-Fixed lumber hunter quest trigger error
-Fixed various cases of floating items in the world
-Fixed throwables going into negative value
-Fixed wooden base wall not displaying or being placeable
Supporting the game (and me!)
If you are interested in helping to make these updates bigger and more frequent and believe in the project as much as I do then you can support me directly on patreon. Post Unknown Origins I will begin sharing more upcoming unannounced content, preview builds and also be preparing some of the unique in game items for patreons. Thank you!
https://www.patreon.com/RedDotGames