“Every system, over time, demands greater effort to maintain order, until one day it loses stability and gives way to chaos.
Peace gives way to war. Yet even war itself… beginning with bold speeches, powerful armies, and unwavering confidence in a swift victory, quickly descends into ruin. The first shot is fired. A bullet tears through the thin wall of someone’s home, now turned into a defensive position. An explosion blows out the windows, and fragments rip into a soldier’s body. His clothing soaks with blood, while a rifle fresh off the production line jams after several hundred rounds fired without pause.
Order breaks down gradually — but the less effort is made to preserve it, the faster it collapses. That is entropy.”
The “Entropy System” ties every layer of the game together through the same principle: surrounding, bodies, weapons, and the world itself all change, lose their former integrity, and maintaining order always requires effort.
Destructibility
In the never-ending race for better graphics, Entropos puts its emphasis on physics and world interactivity. Maps in Entropos are almost entirely destructible and filled with a vast number of physics-enabled objects — elements that directly affect gameplay rather than serving as mere decoration.
Destruction prototype from an early version of Entropos
The battlefield changes. And you are the one changing it.
The destruction system in Entropos allows players to reshape the space around them and use those changes to create tactical advantages for themselves and their team.
Cover made from different materials has different levels of durability. Most objects on the map can be penetrated by ordinary firearms, so defenders need to choose their cover carefully. A wooden table or thin metal fence may conceal you from view, but it will not protect you from enemy fire. Brick walls, on the other hand, can stop most bullets until they are eventually destroyed. Structural elements of buildings can only be destroyed with specialized means, such as C4 charges or improvised explosive devices built from anti-tank mines.
Using a sledgehammer or breaching charges, a squad can open up better lines of sight or create new passages. This is especially useful when actively assaulting heavily fortified positions. Less powerful tools may not allow the squad to alter the environment as significantly, but they make it possible to enter positions more discreetly and operate more effectively in close quarters.
How to approach a particular situation is up to you, based on the task at hand and the tools available.
Destruction prototype from an early version of Entropos
Defenders can prepare their positions in much the same way, breaking through walls to create more convenient routes inside buildings and opening firing ports to give snipers and machine gunners better control over the battlefield. At the same time, they can reinforce the building with anti-drone nets, electronic warfare systems, and other defensive equipment.
Destruction prototype from an early version of Entropos
Human body
Wounds
If war changes the world around us, why should the people themselves be any exception?
Characters are just as much a part of Entropos’ physical world, and they are affected by dust and dirt, explosions and gunfire in the same way. Even a minor injury can alter a character’s condition and appearance: facial expressions change, the skin becomes covered in abrasions, and clothing soaks with blood. More serious wounds leave even greater consequences.
Early concept of an injury involving limb loss.
Equipment
However, Entropos’ grounded nature begins to reveal itself long before the first shots are fired. One of its core principles is to avoid anything feeling staged, and instead convey the natural irregularity or, once again, the “entropy” of military life, gear, and equipment.
Real equipment looks perfect only on parade grounds. In actual use, some things crease, some shift out of place, and some are adjusted by the soldiers themselves to better suit their comfort and the task at hand. Entropos accounts for details like these as well, not least through our work with experts and people with practical experience. The goal is to make the equipment feel like it truly belongs to a real trooper in a real world, in a real war.
Stress
The extreme conditions of war leave their mark on the human mind as well. Accumulated stress manifests itself in tremors, less rational behavior, and visible emotional reactions.
That is exactly what we aim to convey in Entropos: from the planned suppression system to special weapon reloads that take the effects of stress into account.
World
The universe of Entropos follows the same underlying idea of “entropy”. A world brought to order through enormous effort soon begins to unravel faster than people can react.
World War III is on the horizon.
