The recent rebooted Planet of the Apes film trilogy is nothing short of a masterpiece, blending themes from the original movies together with issues more relevant to our current geopolitical climate, but the story of Caesar and his ape followers won’t be limited to film for much longer. Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier is a story-heavy adventure game that expands on events from the trilogy, and it’s made with much of the same technology as the films.
Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier is set in between the events of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes, but it doesn’t center around Caesar himself. According to IGN, the game will instead focus on a “breakaway faction of apes” living in the Rocky Mountains, and it will allow you to play from the perspective of both humans and apes as you work toward multiple endings based on your decisions.
Unlike The Walking Dead or Life is Strange, however, the choices you make won’t be spelled out for you from a moral sense, so you’ll have to approach every situation organically. Key points will have you encouraging or dissuading your fellow apes from attacking a human base, for instance, and it isn’t clear if the outcome will be worth the risk. You can see a few of these decisions in the gameplay video above.
The game is being made with the same performance-capture technology used in the films, and it’s being developed by Andy Serkis’ Imaginarium studio. Serkis played Caesar in all three films, and there is a push for him to receive an Academy Award for his role in War for the Planet of the Apes. Though he speaks in the previous two films, he has far more lines in the third installment and is the sole protagonist. Serkis also played Supreme Leader Snoke in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier will take between two and three hours to complete, with an important choice happening every 15 to 20 seconds. It will release this fall on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. War for the Planet of the Apes is in theaters now.
