By Daniel Rutledge
One of the most exciting gaming prospects of 2011 is the first-person shooter reboot of 1993 cult classic Syndicate.
Electronic Arts chose Starbreeze Studios (Chronicles of Riddick, The Darkness) to develop the title, described as a unique and brutal sci-fi first-person shooter experience set in a not-too-distant future, where business is war.
Players will take on the role of Miles Kilo, Eurocorp’s latest prototype agent, and embark on an epic action adventure full of corruption and revenge.
Recently, I sat down for a Syndicate chat with Electronic Arts Executive Producer Jeff Gamon and Starbreeze Studios chief executive Mikael Nermark.
When did the idea for rebooting Syndicate come about?
NERMARK: I think from an EA perspective, they acknowledge their great franchises and want to keep them alive, so they wanted to bring Syndicate back. From a Starbreeze perspective, as an independent developer, you have a lot of discussions with the big publishers. When we talked to EA and Syndicate came on the table, being the classic game it is, we jumped at it. But the original Syndicate was made in 1993 and we very much wanted to make our own game, bringing into it and utilizing what made the original great.
GAMON: Starbreeze don’t just say ‘we’ll take this movie and we’ll make it into a videogame’. They take the essence and the spirit of those IPs like The Darkness, The Chronicles of Riddick, and make them a great videogame in its own right. Giving Starbreeze an IP like Syndicate, we were confident they would do that brand justice.
Is the game aimed at the hardcore market or more casual gamers?
GAMON: We set out to make a game for core shooter fans. We meant for it to be challenging, not just a shooting gallery. We wanted it to be challenging through the cleverness of it – through the AI and through the scenarios that we build. The subject matter of Syndicate is mass-marketable, because it’s set in a believable near future. It’s something everyone is familiar with but it is aimed at people who want a challenging experience.
I was really struck by the art direction in the game. Tell me about some of your influences.
GAMON: What you haven’t seen is the split-world aspect. We wanted to make a world with the haves and the have-nots. This is a world of corporate governments who provide this utopian life for their subscribers, the consumers that have elected to have the computer chip inserted into their head. The inspiration for the world, everyone cites it, but Blade Runner, obviously. That movie’s world is just as cool and evocative today as it was when it came out. Also Minority Report, that sort of overly clean, pristine, utopian urban life. Gattaca is another great example of the haves and the have-nots. So what you’ve seen so far is the upper part of this world, what you haven’t seen is the down-zone, the people who don’t have access to this privileged lifestyle with pristine conditions.
Can you tell me more about the scummy areas you’ve just described.
GAMON: They make a great contrast and the two areas are not just contrasted visually. The down-zoners are much different. The agents are considered monsters in the down-zone. Their technology and weaponry is all counter-agent. Up-town it’s a high-tech war and the techniques you employ there are basically useless on the down-zoners as they don’t have chips in their heads. These guys have built their whole defensive system to stop agents, so that presents a very different type of gameplay. You probably noticed how adaptive and aggressive the AI is in what you played, well there’s a whole different flavour to the AI in the down-zone, they’re much more guerrilla style.
Tell me a little about the weapons in the game.
GAMON: We wanted to make a great first-person shooter experience with a foundation layer of what feel like contemporary ballistic weapons. Then we’ve taken a lot of ideas and weaponry from the original Syndicate. So you have the Gauss gun, the mini-gun, the flamer, they’re all in there. We don’t have the Persuadertron, but we do have the persuade breach, which enables you to be able to switch a guy so he suicides or fights on your side.
The breach abilities open the gameplay up to pretty much any idea you could think of. How did you narrow it down to what has ended up in the game?
NERMARK: At the beginning we looked at many ideas, thinking about what is right for this game. It’s a process that takes some time. So we had an idea of the sort of game we wanted to make, then we test it and iterate our way through the development. Then we came to a place where we were satisfied and the breaching mechanism was a big part of it.
GAMON: It’s very easy to run away with yourself with that chip and breach gameplay because the ability to hack into digital systems presents so many possibilities. But we wanted to get that great, through-the-gun experience, and whatever you throw in there has to be complimentary to that rhythm. So the breaching mechanic is another beat to the classic first-person shooter rhythm. You have your iron sight, shoot, reload, repeat, then you also have the ability to breach. If you start making it really complicated, it’d mess up that rhythm. Where we’ve arrived is simple, elegant and it works well.
How has sci-fi author Richard Morgan expanded on the Syndicate mythology?
GAMON: We took the setting of the original game – corporate governments and chips – and we read Richard’s book Altered Carbon, which he won the Philip K Dick Award for. We were reading that and thinking; this is Syndicate, f**king hell, it’s ideal! So we picked up the phone and called Richard and it turns out he’s a huge gamer. He came in and picked it up and just ran with it. He really got the world straight away.
Has he written just this game, or has he written more material which could be used for a sequel or DLC?
GAMON: As an author, I think he starts by creating the world and then sets this particular story in that world. So I’m sure there’s more potential material, yeah.
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Syndicate is set for release in February 2012 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.
3 News
source: newshub archive
