E3 2014: Everybody's Gone to the Rapture and Left This Trailer Behind

It’s been quite a while since we last got a glimpse of Brighton-based developer The Chinese Room’s forthcoming PlayStation 4 exclusive Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture – and it looks like you may have to wait a little while longer for a proper look at the next-gen release. The company’s released a brand new trailer which shows an abandoned bike, a field of wheat, and, well, not a lot else.

Fortunately, composer and co-director Jessica Curry was on hand to share some more details on the PlayStation Blog. “Rapture is set in a remote valley in June 1984, and is a story about people and how they live with each other,” she explained. “But it’s also about the end of the world.” We’re off to an uplifting start, then.

She continued: “There’s a very particular English feel that we wanted to capture in the game, a combination of the epic and the intimate. Rapture also came from our obsession with post-apocalyptic gaming, and the simple idea that, while we normally play as the hero, in reality, most of us would be the piles of ash and bone littering the game world. That’s an interesting place to start.”

As such, the release will be all about immersion. You’ll have the freedom to explore the title’s abandoned open world, and the moment-to-moment decisions that you make will adapt the way in which the fiction unfolds. “It’s a type of storytelling that is completely unique to games,” Curry continued. “The choices that you make as a player have a direct impact on how you understand the story.”

Unsurprisingly, the audio will play a big part in the experience as well, and it sounds like the developer’s plumping up for a mix of the classical and the ethereal. You can hear a short sample of one of the title’s tracks in the trailer embedded below, but head over to PlayStation’s official Soundcloud page for the full thing. Has this sneak peek increased your interest levels? Let us know in the comments section below.