Sword of the Stars II: Interview with Martin Cirulis
CEO and Creative Director of Kerberos Productions
What is your main-inspiration for sword of the stars 2?
There are a lot of them as we are all big SF fans, not just in terms of movies but books and comics as well, so it's not too hard to see references to everything from Battlestar Galactica to Perry Rhodan. If I had to narrow that down I would say we were mostly inspired by our love of Space Operas that involve multiple races with very strong characteristics and style, like classic Star Trek or Babylon 5. In terms of game presentation and design, you just can't do any better than a strong background firmly rooted in a mythology that rewards a fan's sense of adventure AND intelligence. It is all too easy to find space games that try so hard to please everyone all the time that it all becomes generic and lifeless.
Space-themed Games are not as popular as in the 1990's. Where do you see the Space-Genre today and its future?
I see space games today as paying the price for the sins of complacency in the past, and the genre now sits on the cusp of 2 different futures. It's not hard to show that their popularity in the 90's was basically squandered by follow-up games that failed to keep pushing further or bothering to excite fans beyond "Hey look! We are a game! With ships! In space!" This was even more pronounced in Space Strat games where all the energy and daring of the early 90's seemed to fizzle out into either recreating Civ or in becoming endless wave of spread-sheet minutia. Any genre that turns inwards will always shrink and hardly attract any new fans.
The original Sword of the Stars came into being partially because the people on this team ARE space game fans and we wanted to play something that dared to try new things while keeping its feet rooted in what made the genre great. We didn't ask ourselves how we could be like MOO or even Civ, instead what we asked ourselves "If you were making those great games from scratch with today's technology, what would you do?" So we included real combat with 3-D ships that had forms drawn from their function, with turrets and engines you could blow off. We made weapons that worked in a physical, real way. And we made a star map that functioned in 3 dimensions, because strategically, space in not the same as land or even the ocean.
Since SotS came out 5 years ago, it and a few other games have shaken stuff up and gotten some much needed new gamers into the genre to the point where I see things going in one of 2 directions. The first is that the genre continues to shy away from trying to do A-list, modern standard games and slides back into small pet projects that are old time fan pleasers but do little to pull in new gamers or get the genre any real new press. The other path, the one we obviously hope things follow, is that the genre keeps trying to innovate and produce exciting, playable, appealing games. Games that acknowledge science-fiction is fun, but spreadsheets are boring. And of course the hope is that if enough momentum is gained then more players will be drawn back into the fold and the media will follow and who knows? Maybe someday space battle games will once again rule the covers of magazines!
What are your plans to present the story-line? Will there be pre-rendered cutscenes or ingame-cutscenes?
Not as such. You have to remember that Sword of the Stars 2 is not a mission-driven game like Homeworld where you go through a set storyline and then you are done except for multiplayer skirmish. Instead, at heart, the SotS series are wargames where you play out grand strategic wars in a turn-based fashion with the excitement of resolving battles in real time with fleets of ships. But what makes SotS fairly unique amongst these types of games is that the background is as rich and detailed as a real historical wargame.
So while you will not be getting animated cut scenes and story driven missions, you will be getting rich details on races when you select or encounter them Scenarios will show you parts of the expansive future history we have developed and let you try and change or affirm it for yourself. The SotSverse is an evolving thing where we tell players stories not by locking them in, but instead by scattering clues and information across the sandbox style open strategy wars they are playing. And this sense of a living universe is reinforced by how Kerberos supports its games. Every time we put out and update for a game, along with the improvements, extra features and bug fixes, we also try to add content to let players discover new things and get a feeling for what might be coming in future expansions. For instance, the Zuul, the first race expansion for the original SotS, actual made their first appearance as a new random event put in the game during an early update.
In SotS2 we push this idea of being in and learning about a living universe even further by supplying a built in SotSpedia that will unlock information for players to read about as they encounter new things and events while they play. This same system will allow people to make their own notes alongside these official entries so they can remember key strategies or even trade notes with friends online and gain even more insights.
Will there be an unit-limit? Why/why not?
There will be a unit limit for battles, but not production. You can build as many ships as you want and use them as reinforcement but there is a practical limit to how many ships can fight in the same battle. And the reason for that is pretty basic. It's because that's how it works in real life. Your army has many divisions of infantry, armor and artillery but they would never ALL show up for the same battle. It would be chaos. There is a very real limit on how many ships a command and control vessel could keep organized in a single battle. Now there are technologies that can expand those limits, but in the end, even in the future, there are limits to warfare and tactics are about getting the most out of those limits.
Will it be possible to "get in the action" and control single ships in the battle? why/why not?
It's hard to get much more into the action than giving orders to giant starships and watching them bring their guns to bear to the exact part of the enemy hulls you want, but if by action you mean flying the ship in first person view like a flight sim, then the answer would be no. And the reason again, is pretty straightforward. A SotS game is about spending your time as Emperor and Admiral. Coming up with grand strategies and then taking control of fleets in battle to help those strategies be realized at the tactical level. To turn the player into a mere fighter pilot would be a demotion on a grand scale. But more seriously, it would detract from the main the real feel of the game. Flight sims are great but this is a wargame for your mind and wits more than your twitch reflexes.
If you could use another existing space-franchise for one of your games, which one would you choose?
Babylon 5. No doubt about it!
Wing Commander or Tie Fighter? Why?
Hmmm... tough question. I will have say Wing Commander for the story and innovation, but a nod towards the overlooked X-Wing vs Tie Fighter for the awesome multiplayer dog fights it provided gamers long before that sort of thing was common.
Nachricht veröffentlicht am 24.05.2011 | Kommentare (0)
Tags: Interview, Sword of the Stars II