Garage Games Comes Clean - Fallen Empires: Legions Interview

Bamelin

I remembered we had a thread awhile back about Garage Games next project and I noticed this up on IGN ... massive interview about the spirtual successor to Tribes, now officially announced as Fallen Empires: Legions. Cutting and pasting the interview here for discussion.

This is one of the few titles that may make me consider buying a new PC.

IGN wrote:

The Next Tribes?
GarageGames unveils their multiplayer first-person shooter.
by Charles Onyett

January 16, 2008 - Want another Tribes game? It's looking like Fallen Empire: Legions might scratch that itch, a title by GarageGames, a company founded by four ex-Dynamix (Starsiege: Tribes developer) employees. Fallen Empire appears to be at least somewhat similar to Tribes, mostly because of its visual style and because it apparently has jetpacks. It'll be made available through InstantAction, a service that lets players play 3D action games in web browser. We didn't have a chance to play, but did get the opportunity to lob a few questions at Tim Aste, project director for Fallen Empire: Legions to get a basic sense of what the game is and how how it will work. His answers and a few screens are posted below.

IGN: Can you describe the basic concepts of the game, like how teams are comprised, how many per team, and what you need to do to win a match?

Tim Aste: With Legions, we set out to create a fast and furious online shooter. Now imagine that same game, but with a big freaking rocket strapped to your back. Freedom of movement is an integral part of the game concept; we wanted players to feel unrestrained by the world. If a player can see a spot where they wanted to go, we want them to get there easily.

Teams are composed several ways, depending on the game type. We haven't locked down exact player counts, but in the end that will be determined by what is the most fun as we continue development. Like many people would expect of GarageGames, our tech can handle a lot of players, probably 64 per server, but from a design point of view, we're focusing on more strategic, smaller team battles, so we'll end up with smaller teams on each side.

This question is sort of hard to answer though. That's because the most untraditional part of this game, is what we are calling "live development". Doing this game through an integrated web platform like InstantAction allows us to develop the game in a manner similar to "episodic content." I don't really like using that term, but the concept is sort of similar. The plan is to launch a "core" game with a bunch of polished, fun gameplay packed in to start. From there, we fully intend to keep the development going, adding more and more over time. A lot of what happens will be in the player's hands.

We'll be starting out with a solid design, but will listen to player feedback, and keep this thing alive and growing over time, even though we'll be delivering a lot of fun right from the start. We don't want the game to get stale after a month.

IGN: When you say "in terms of graphics and gameplay it will set a new benchmark of what the future of gaming will be on the web" [in a press release] you're making a bold claim, what exactly do you mean by this?

Tim Aste: Haha, yes that is pretty bold, but it's also a very new concept. Traditionally, when you hear about "web games", many people think of Flash games and casual games, simple 2D games that can be fun but are much, much less complex than most everyday 3D games. These are great and all, but we wanted more.
When we released Marble Blast Ultra on XBLA in early 2006, we were surprised by who was actually playing it. We were pretty shocked when we saw the people playing MBU were also playing much more "hardcore" games. We've thought for a long-time that there's a large audience out there who would play what we call "gap games." Gap games aren't simple, tiny games, but they are not huge ten million dollar+ titles either... and they are anything but casual.

Legions is definitely a gap game-- we're not building a Crysis or Halo 3 here. We're focused totally on the fun of the gameplay, and it doesn't take a 100-man team to create a really fun, great looking, action game.

IGN: We see that there are jetpacks – can the same sort of terrain-hopping strategies in Tribes be used here? Any new techniques?

Tim Aste: Yes. GarageGames is well known for being founded by many key members of the Tribes development team at Dynamix, and our tech has history there. Fans of freedom of movement strategies will definitely like what we have in store.

IGN: How big are the stages?

Tim Aste: Pretty big! This ultimately will come down to making a compelling level design. In our early prototypes we found that having massive terrains was not always the best solution-- even though moving around in the game is cool on its own merit, flying around by yourself just isn't as much fun as blowing other people up while you're at it. By the same token, areas that are too small feel constrained and unstrategic. In the end, we're finding a medium ground which provides both an open range and a functional gameplay flow. I don't know how big it is in terms of square kilometers, but it's optimized for fun and strategy.

IGN: Is there a story behind the game? What is the setting?

Tim Aste: We hope to talk about this very soon as we get ready to discuss our "live development" content system.

IGN: What kinds of weapons can you use?

Tim Aste: We'll be rolling out our early tests with the basics. Rocket launchers, grenade launchers, sniper rifles and chain guns. This plays into our live development strategy as well, so we don't want to ruin all our surprises just yet!

IGN: Can players build any sorts of structures? For instance, erect base defenses and create other devices to interfere with the other team?

Tim Aste: We've discussed and prototyped this in various stages for "Live development" on certain maps, but I don't think player built structures ala "Enemy Territory" will make it in our core 1.0 release. It might add more confusion than fun, so we'll see how this goes after the initial launch with a few tests.

IGN: What kinds of team strategies will the game allow for?

We are designing the maps to create clear chokepoints, so each team mate has a strength and weakness and can be played accordingly at the right times. Teams that properly use the map to their advantage will benefit, but the gameplay will be balanced enough that you're never out of the race.

From a non team standpoint, we've built the gameplay around the fact that it should be easy enough to learn and pick up, but hard to master.

IGN: What kinds of game modes will be available for play?

Tim Aste: Our first core release is focused around getting one mode sweet, with more modes coming very shortly after depending on what is happening in the game world and what players want. Rather than shipping a bunch of modes in the box and then finding out that players really only love and play one or two, we want to listen to the players right from the get go.

The actual game tech is designed in a very modular sense so it can be expanded easily, and new gameplay modes are a breeze to add in. We have several in testing right now, but we aren't sure which one will be our first step quite yet.

IGN: Are there vehicles? If so, what are they and what can they be used for?

Tim Aste: I don't think vehicles add anything in most of the game modes we're creating right now. Vehicles always sound cool as a marketing feature, but as a player, I find most of the time developers get them wrong. It's too easy to have the vehicles overpowered, or have them feel tacked on and cheesy. We don't have to compromise our design in order to satisfy some back-of-the-box bullet point list, which is one of the things we're doing differently. So, vehicles would go in if they felt necessary, but they don't so far. We'll see what the future holds in "live development".

IGN: What are the system requirements, or if those aren't decided, how powerful a rig will players need to run the game?

Tim Aste: System requirements haven't been nailed down yet, but the game will have to be fairly scalable either way because we want a lot of people to be able to play, and do so competitively. You'll almost certainly need pixel shader enabled hardware, but almost everybody we expect to be interested in this game has that by now

IGN: When will this be available? Have you settled yet on a price?

Tim Aste: We'll do our first release within the next few months and then kick off live development where a lot of new stuff comes down the pipe. We plan on pulling testing groups from the InstantAction site very soon actually, so you might want to go sign up if you're interested in getting in.

We haven't figured out pricing yet, and that again is something we want to talk with players about in the beta and make sure we get right. We definitely want to make it easy for you to invite friends in and let them play with you though.

IGN: Finally, what does Fallen Empire: Legions mean?

Tim Aste: We've referred to the game as Legions since our various attempts at a prototype in 2006. Naming was funny, as it started as our internal prototype name from years ago and then just ended up sticking and everyone seemed happy with it. Mostly it came from the idea of various "legions" doing battle. The Fallen Empire bit is the universe in which the game takes place. We hope to roll out new parts of this universe after our core release.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/845/845984p1.html