In case you were wondering what Kintsugiyama's upcoming open world survival multiplayer game was all about, Jeff Kaplan has sat down and gone through 213 rapid-fire questions via an interview with MinnMax and boy, do I know a lot about cowboys in California now.

For those who don't know The Legend of California is Kaplan's next big game, set in gold-rush-era California (1849-ish). It's an open world survival game (not really a sim, to be clear) which is also definitely "not an MMO" but is "definitely an FPS". So that should clear it up.

It's an open sandbox world where you can do whatever you think a cowboy should be doing, whether that be trading with fellow players, fishing, mining, riding around on your horse, becoming an unofficial sheriff, or just tinkering around with your ranch, which you can set up anywhere and then build on.

There'll also be private servers, and "yes you can customise your server to be PvE only," according to Kaplan. Which is helpful, because it sounds like anything goes on the 100-player public servers. Players can kill each other or their horses, so no one's safe. The only exception to the violence seems to be buildings: "Players cannot destroy each others' stuff, unfortunately." Kaplan says unfortunately because, as he keenly reminds everyone, "I'm a Rust player so I like destroying other people's stuff."

To keep things fresh "server resets are going to happen every month," Kaplan explains. "California retains its shape, but the points of interest that we call 'strongholds', they move around. Company and ranch progress resets, and your gear resets, but any unlocks are persistent."

As for things that Kaplan wishes were in The Legend of California, there's a long list. Apparently, holiday events, pets, and horse breeding are all on the table for future patches. Toys to life (think Spyro and friends) are even on the table, there's just one small hitch: "I would love that but we're cheap and poor, so not at launch."

It sounds like there'll be plenty of time for all these wonderful features to make their way into the game, as Kaplan believes "we could make this game to infinity, this is the dream game." But again there's a catch: "We will be supporting the game with live updates, but live service has a bad connotation so I'll act like it's not live service for now." It's not like any of this is pressing news, though. The Legend of California apparently has "at least two more alphas" until it's ready for early access, and there's no indication of exactly how long that'll take.

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Elie is a news writer with an unhealthy love of horror games—even though their greatest fear is being chased. When they're not screaming or hiding, there's a good chance you'll find them testing their metal in metroidvanias or just admiring their Pokemon TCG collection. Elie has previously worked at TechRadar Gaming as a staff writer and studied at JOMEC in International Journalism and Documentaries – spending their free time filming short docs about Smash Bros. or any indie game that crossed their path.