Announced in June 2022 during the Xbox & Bethesda Game Showcase, Ara: History Untold is one of the big releases expected this year from Xbox Game Studios Publishing. We had offered you a complete article detailing the principle and development of this 4X designed by Oxide Games and the developers are just back with new information concerning the microflora and the visual aspect of the vegetation in Ara: History Untold.
A lot of optimization work to give the illusion that each area is unique
The Oxide Games team has been working hard to improve the graphical quality of the living world of Ara: History Untold and wanted to share their progress via a blog post published on the game’s Steam page. Specifically, they focused their efforts on improving the in-game terrain by increasing the resolution of textures and adding an element called “microflora”, which consists of small herbs and plants scattered throughout the landscape.
While the name might be misleading, the addition of microflora made a big difference in giving each area a distinct look and feel based on its biome. This particle system scatters thousands of blades of grass across the entire landscape, helping to ground the other elements of the world and creating a more immersive gameplay experience.
To illustrate these improvements, the team shared comparative images of the forest terrain before and after the additions. These adjustments have made the world of Ara even more vivid and realistic for players.
Ara: History Untold will launch day one in the PC Game Pass and it will also be available on the Microsoft Store and Steam. For the moment, no release date has been communicated by Microsoft or Oxide Games.
