Inside Xbox One X Enhanced: Fe

Many of gaming’s most compelling stories come from those who’ve helped to create our favorite Xbox One games. In our Inside Xbox One X Enhanced series, these creators will share the behind-the-scenes accounts of the work involved in enhancing these epic games for Xbox One X, how they’ve helped chart the course of the world’s most powerful console, and what that means for the future of gaming. Today, we’ll be chatting with Johan Fröhlander, Lead Programmer at Zoink about enhancing Fe for Xbox One X.

What specifically is your development team doing to enhance Fe for Xbox One X?
On Xbox One X, this is the first time we are able to create an experience that is running in a native 4k resolution. This has allowed us to create a great visual console experience for our players.

How do these enhancements impact the gaming experience (visuals, performance)?
As you probably can surmise, the visual feel and quality is very important. We’re hoping that by increasing the resolution we can immerse and awe the player even further, enabling them to further enjoy the world we have created. The environment is more detailed than one might think from a first glance at the crude geometry, and these enhancements will enable players to take in more of the detailing of our canvas.

Why did your development team choose to focus on these enhancement areas?
Thanks to the brute force of the console it was no problem to ramp up the resolution to the maximum, relatively quickly. It was important to us to take advantage of the power of the Xbox One X to enhance the visuals of the game because Fe is an audiovisual adventure, and as the creator of any creative piece of work you want to give whoever is going to partake in it the best possible experience. By enhancing the visuals, finding that nice lookout on a ledge or exploring the nooks and crannies of the environment becomes that much sweeter.

How do you expect fans of Fe will respond to playing it on Xbox One X with these enhancements?
We’re hoping new visitors of the forest can take in all the impressions the forest has to offer in the best manner possible. We’re proud with how it looks in any format, but for the players who enjoy a higher resolution, we’re hoping that this will increase the sense of wonder and immersion even more.

How has the process been to get the game up and running on Xbox One X?
Using Unity, in our case it was only a matter of ticking some boxes and adjusting some settings to make use of the basic improvements the Xbox One X provides, so that part was painless and straight-forward.

What enhancement were you most excited about to explore leveraging for Fe on Xbox One X?
It’s always exciting, but intimidating, to see how players reacts to the decisions you’ve made, especially when it comes to sheer quality. We’re looking forward to seeing players enjoy the enhanced visuals and are hoping for lots of shared images. It’ll be fun to see which parts players enjoy the most.

What does 4K and HDR mean for your game, games in the future and development at your studio?
We’re excited about it. We enjoy any new visual tools we can use to further enhance the experiences we’re trying to create, and 4K and HDR might further enable us to do just that.

Thanks to Johan for taking the time to chat with us about Xbox One X Enhanced. We’ll be bringing you more interviews with more developers in the future, so stay tuned to Xbox Wire!