14 DAY TRIAL // The team working on Satellite Reign, including Mike Diskett, has answered a number of questions about the spiritual successor to Syndicate Wars just as it enters the final days of Kickstarter funding.
Q: When did the idea that a Syndicate Wars spiritual sequel would be interesting for a modern audience first emerge?
Mike had been sitting on the idea for quite some time and had mentioned it to us quite a number of time, we were all very keen but at that stage happily employed.
The employment situation changed and we took it as a sign from the gaming gods to take a shot at going indie.
Also when EA made the fps Syndicate it became clear there was demand for a return to the original style RTS.
Q: Why choose Kickstarter and not go for a large publisher? The quick answer is we wanted to be completely independent.
However it is also not a matter of simply emailing a publisher and getting funded, it could take months of negotiation/pitching with us having to build contacts/relationships as well as having to get work during that time...and in the end it may still not pan out for us.
Kickstarter is our phone line to God, we can pitch straight to the people who will be playing the game.
Q: Were you influenced by the success of other Kickstarter spiritual successors, like Project Eternity?
The success of the recent batch of titles such as Star Citizen, Project Eternity, Massive Chalice etc where a big nod to us that Kickstarter was a viable platform for game dev. funding.
There were many lessons to learn from how they approached it as well.
We are 5 passionate game developers with a tonne of experience behind us but the reality is we aren’t a big name company, so we knew we needed to wow people to win them over, we weren’t going to get $3 million on a smile that many of the proven developers could.
We were also very keen to be as transparent as possible and engage the backers as often as possible. Having their feedback is immensely critical to our success.
Q: What’s the balance between classic game ideas and modern concepts, given the involvement of Mike Diskett, lead on Syndicate Wars?
Mike Diskett: It’s interesting to actually play Syndicate wars now and it feels very, very old, and it’s not just the graphics, its 15 years of gaming advancement and evolution, When syndicate wars was made W,A,S,D for scrolling hadn’t even been invented..
In many ways SW was ahead of its time, full dynamic lighting, destructible scenery, ambient occlusion, environment maps, city simulation. But 15 years is a long time and just making the same game in HD would be a big mistake there’s so many areas that need improving. It is very much a balancing act though, for Satellite Reign we have a lot of fans of the Syndicate Series on board and they can be anti-anything that isn't from the original Syndicate so we have to sell every new idea quite hard.
Q: How familiar will the game world be to Syndicate fans?
It’s the same genre and a set in a Dystopian Cyperpunk world where you control 4 Agents out to topple the Corporate regime and usurp their power.
Outside of that it’s a completely new Universe, but one that’s going to wow the hell out of any syndicate fan, it’s really what I could only dream of when we first started on Syndicate Wars, then we could only have 2000 polys on screen, 1 meg of memory for gameplay, about 1 Mhz of Cpu allocated to AI. The city simulation is going to literally be 1000x deeper, the visuals approximately 2000x better in terms of the operations we can do per pixel.
Q: How much of the dystopia will the player be able to explore? Are there missions in the game that detail the world or is it more of a backdrop for player actions?
There won’t be linear scripted missions as such, the world will be completely open with emergent missions which the player will come across as they move throughout the game.
We intend to weave a narrative through the world however, one which explains how this world came to be and gives you insight into its people and ultimately helps to define your choices by how you react to what you see, read hear, learn. Q: How much depth will the tactical combat have? Can a player get through a fight with non-lethal means or is violence a prerequisite for success?
The combat system we are designing coupled with the emergent nature of the world mean there will most definitely be situations where you can avoid combat altogether. We doubt you’ll be able to avoid it entirely in the game but by playing a more espionage driven squad you will be able to manipulate, bribe and sneak your way out of most situations.
Q: How will civilians and neutral police get involved in fights between player forces and those of corporations?
It really depends on how you play.
Your squad’s level of influence and the amount of propaganda they have driven with determine how notorious they are. If you are very well known but control the flow of information then you may be left alone by many smaller Corporate patrols and revered by the populace.
On the flip side if you are very well known but have poor control over information you may be hated by the populace as killers due to Corporate propaganda machine and shot at on site by them and the security forces.
And anything in between really.
You can also take direct control of people via skills and augmentations which allow you to manipulate or use the populace and enemies to your own ends...even using them as a resource for your genetic backs, growing the strength of your agents.
Q: Will players be able to pause the game to evaluate the situation and give commands to their squads?
There will be a pause function for stopping the game but it will not allow you to issue commands etc. We intend the game to be completely real time, it is important to us to maintain a sense of pressure on the player, by adding a pause to command system it would make the game a completely different one to what we intend.
We have a few plans to make sure the interface is optimized for controlling 4 agents in real time. And the agents themselves will be more autonomous so they won't need babysitting every moment.
Q: How much control will gamers have over the make-up of their teams? Are there character builds that lead towards certain play styles?
The play style is your own, even though we have the 4 defined classes we are being very careful to not enforce a play style.
You can massage and mould your 4 agents to whatever ends you wish, the classes increase depth and tactical options and give the player more ways of interacting with the world, rather than just shoot and move.
Guaranteeing one of each agent allows us to make each agent's special ability super awesome, instead of having to nerf them for balancing sake incase the player had 4 of those units.
On top of the classes are tonnes of shared skills, augments, items and weapons which will allow a very customisable squad.
Think of it as an infinitely complex rock paper scissors.
Q: How much will 5 Lives Studio interact with its fans during the development process?
We intend to keep a good presence on our forum and update our progress as often as possible.
There is a point where the 5 of us need to be solely working on the game so there may be periods where we go darker as we just need to buckle down and work through a goal but expect a good amount of updates.
Also the feedback we get from fans is priceless for us. Publishers often spend thousands on focus testing and we have a community willing to be involved so we’d be fools not to accept such a fantastic opportunity.
Q: Are there any plans to add multiplayer to Satellite Reign and how might such a mode work?
We have a stretch goal for co-op multiplayer. It’s one of the things we thought about almost instantly. However it’s a big step, it would mean getting a lot more funding so we didn’t want to jeopardize the core game by making it a baseline goal.
We hope for it and if the stretch goal isn’t successful it's something we’d like to look at for the future.
As for how it would work, it’s too early to say, we have a lot of great ideas but to talk about them now is mere conjecture as things may change.
Q: Is a level editor in the planning stages? Will the game offer modding support? Unfortunately no.
I’m a big fan of modding but the resources we would need to put that in place are detrimental to us making the core game.
While we’d love to support us it would be well after something like multiplayer in terms of investment for us so not feasible at this point.
Maybe if we made Star Citizen money. lol
Q: Are there any modern strategy games that the team is playing and/or is inspired by?
Dawn of War is a big one. UFO Enemy Unknown, Company of Heroes 2.
Mike Diskett: I have about 3000 1v1 matches of Starcraft 2 under my belt.
