Irrational’s current project for the PC is Freedom Force, a pauseable real-time tactical role-playing game centering on superhero characters.

James Sterrett: Dan Todd and Saam Tariverdi wanted me to do this interview because they haven’t read the comics upon which inspire it, and they hoped I had. They’re wrong: I haven’t read them either! In fact, my total knowledge of comics is the X-Men movie. However, I can’t be the only clueless person in your target audience. Could you try to explain the atmosphere you are trying to create?

Jon Chey: What we're striving to re-create here is the classic feel of super-hero comics from the 60s, as exemplified by the work of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. This era is commonly referred to as "the Silver Age" of Marvel comics. It was when teams of super-heroes such as the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and the original X-Men appeared.

During this era many of the classic comic book themes were explored. Comics hadn't yet descended into 90s style cynicism but the artists & writers had moved on from their simple beginnings to tackle more interesting stories and themes than they did in the earlier "Golden Age". At this stage, the heroes are still real heroes and the villains are still clearly villains. The themes are big and the plots are daring. Heroes and villains always discuss their intentions during combat sequences, villains are generally motivated by some bizarre twisted obsession, and so on.

Much of the classic comic book art style was developed during this time. We are striving to re-create this period both artistically and thematically. But, like the X-Men movie, we'll be using the latest technology to present it.

Ken Levine: The thing that denoted that age was the introduction of characters with flaws. Prior to the sixties, all comic book characters were perfect paragons of goodness (Superman, etc.). Even characters we now think of as "dark" (say, Batman) were essentially great guys who got along with everybody else in the halls of justice. Along came the Fantastic Four, a group of heroes that wasn't always happy with their state. They quarreled, they squabbled, they complained. They were human. And then came Spiderman, a nerdy teenage kid with no friends, Iron Man, a rich industrialist with a fatally damaged heart, etc.

Soon after that, all the characters in comics started to develop. However, although those books were more "sophisticated" than what came before, they were still delightfully naive. The plots were simple, yet powerful: almost like myths. The morals were direct but strong. The good guys were still good, but sometimes it wasn't so easy staying on the side of right.

Plus there's an amazingly strong visual aesthetic from the time, which was created by a combination of strong graphic design coming from the visual arts revolutions of the fifties and incredibly talented people like Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Gene Colan, etc.

That's the vibe we want to explore in Freedom Force.


James Sterrett: In other interviews you've mentioned the "fully deformable landscapes". Please beat back down the ugly spectre of Trespasser by explaining why this technology makes the game fun! 8) Presumably, it means that "stuff blows up real good"; but how is it different in that regard than, say, X-Com 3?

Jon Chey: Hmmm. Technology doesn't make a game fun. However, bad technology definitely won't make your game fun. I think what we're talking about here is something completely different. For a start, we're using our technology to create something that is very focused - this isn't a case of "oh, here's this cool technology, let's see how we can apply it to our game". It's a case of trying to find the technology that is appropriate for creating one of the key elements of a superhero game.

Don't you think it's strange the way that in games where you are supposedly a giant robot or wielding superhuman forces that you can't knock down a flimsy little door? In Quake, how come my rocket launcher is completely incapable of destroying part of the "terrain"? In Slave Zero, why are the apartment buildings immune to destruction? There are obvious technological reasons for these limitations, but there are game design reasons too. For example, in Quake/Unreal/etc the walls are used to force you to solve puzzles by finding keys/pushing buttons rather than blasting your way through.

Now, in Freedom Force, we are designing our renderer from the ground up to avoid the technological problems. But also, we are designing our game to avoid requiring indestructible "walls". There are no key-finding puzzles or button pushing puzzles so we don't need to channel the player along a particular route.

What makes blowing up buildings fun? If you don't know the answer to that, I'm not sure that I can explain it to you. :-)

James Sterrett: I can well understand the fun of making things explode - but it gets old if that's all there is! Does the absence of keys imply that the missions will be more combat-oriented? What would some typical missions be?

Jon Chey: Of course, blowing things up is just part of the game. Though Blast Corps did a good job of making a game out of that concept alone!

Missions are largely combat oriented. Some examples of mission types that we are working on are: hostage rescue scenarios, foiling bank robberies, straight-out slug-fests with super-villains, saving civilians from harm and so on.

James Sterrett: Does the ability to destroy all available terrain make it more difficult to design the missions? How do you keep the players in the arena?

Jon Chey: It means that mission designs are less focused around directed player movement. This means that they will play more like an RTS than a first-person shooter. But the gameplay will be interesting because the buildings are terrain features that are modifiable during play. That is somewhat of a new paradigm for any type of game.

Players are kept in the arena in the same way that they would be in any RTS, that is, there is an edge to the mission area beyond which characters cannot go.

James Sterrett: Will players be penalized for causing collateral damage?

Jon Chey: Yes, depending on the mission type.

James Sterrett: Pauseable real-time tactical combat sounds like X-Com 3 (which, for the record, I adore.) Is that correct? Or will it work differently?

Jon Chey: Temporally, the game will be similar to both X-Com 3 and Baldur's Gate, both of which are pauseable real-time simulations. However, there will be a number of key differences. For one, we are not planning to implement any auto-pause features, which we feel distract from the flow of the game. Pausing is a crutch that you don't want to lean on too heavily.

James Sterrett: Well, it's a crutch I lean on a lot in those two games! 8) You've mentioned that the characters will sometimes do things on their own. Could you explain how that would work? There's an obvious tension between maintaining player control and simulating an independent will.

Jon Chey: Independent character behavior is largely a penalty. For example, a character might be hot-tempered which means that he will lose control and behave in a destructive way for a period of time.

James Sterrett: You've mentioned elsewhere that the characters grow with "prestige points". Can you discuss how your skills system works? What systems were inspirational in building it?

Jon Chey: The player is rewarded with both prestige points and character points. Prestige points are a measure of overall player success and are essentially used to buy "bonuses". They are not necessary to winning the game. Character points are the backbone of the RPG system and are awarded to individual characters that go on missions. They are used to improve character skills.

The RPG system itself is a new creation of our own. Particular inspirations were the GURPS rule system, GURPS Supers, & Champions, though we looked at many more RPG systems in total.

James Sterrett: How much improvement can characters expect to undergo during the game? How powerful are they in the beginning?

Jon Chey: There will be considerable character growth over the course of the game. At the beginning, the characters are heroes (i.e. they have fantastic powers and kick the stuffing out of a normal person) but at the end they will be super-heroes.

James Sterrett: How do the neuroses affect the game, both in your characters and the enemy's?

Jon Chey: They are both cosmetic and functional. For your characters, they can affect the behavior of your characters as I discussed before. For the enemy, they will affect their combat style and their overall aims within the plot.

James Sterrett: Is the player's role that of overall commander, or is the player expected to assume the persona of one of the characters on the battlefield? Will the player need to make critical plot decisions during missions?

Jon Chey: The player controls all of the characters during the battle.

James Sterrett: Can the players/characters perform actions other than combat during a mission, such as talking to people or reading things? If so, how important are such actions?

Jon Chey: Yes, there will be a fair degree of talking and item manipulation during the missions. However, this is largely pre-scripted, and out of the player's hands. There are no conversation trees, for example.

James Sterrett: Typically, will the characters be plopped into the thick of the action, or will they arrive on the scene away from the action area and have the opportunity to make their own approach?

Jon Chey: The approach will be short. This is a game about super-hero combat, not walking the streets of NYC.

James Sterrett: How do the characters arrive at the action?

Jon Chey: Flying. Walking. By bus (not really).

James Sterrett: [Though going through New York City on public transit might make an action game of itself! ;-) ]

James Sterrett: Will there typically be innocents wandering around the streets? Or are the streets and buildings mostly deserted?

Jon Chey: There will be random civilians wandering around.

James Sterrett: Will players face difficult moral choices, or have to face up to the unhappy consequences of morally dubious actions?

Jon Chey: Yes, in the sense that the player has an obligation to limit the collateral damage caused by the battles and is given a choice whether to focus their efforts purely on achieving the primary mission goals or whether to also attempt to save civilian lives - which may hamper their efforts towards achieving the primary goal.

James Sterrett: Are there corresponding bonuses to saving the civilians, or are they mostly just in the way?

Jon Chey: You bet. They are in the way and the player will have to make the choice of whether to ignore them and focus on the main goal or whether to try the harder task of saving them *and* defeating the bad guy.

James Sterrett: What can the player expect to see and do in a typical "mission cycle"? ["Mission cycle" is the entire process of doing a mission - often it looks like this: plot advances, mission goal provided, select kit, play mission, debrief, assign experience points, repeat.] Will the plot advance largely during, or outside, of missions?

Jon Chey: You have pretty much identified the mission structure, although plot events are much more liberally sprinkled around. In particular, we aim to deliver more content during the mission and less in pre-mission briefings. Also, there will be more to do in the mission interludes than is normally the case.

James Sterrett: The entire structure of the game sings "mission-based X-Com" to me. Not a bad thing - but is that accurate? How do the missions integrate into the plot? Is there an overgame akin to the strategic overgame in the X-Com series?

Jon Chey: That's a semi-accurate description of the game. But I think there are a number of key differences, some obvious, some not so obvious:

- Real-time vs. turn-based.

- 3D vs. 2D (these are obvious).

- Characters are far more important to us. Gone are the generic soldiers. Instead, each character has their own personality and is very distinct from the others in terms of their powers and abilities.

- Likewise, the enemies are far more distinctive. There were no individual personalities that you had to fight against in X-Com. We have crazy super-villains each with their own special neurosis.

- Story is more important to us. By being mission-based, we can tell a far more complex story than X-Com could with its dynamic campaign.

That's not to say that X-Com wasn't an inspiration for us. It was. And one day we hope to take the Freedom Force universe and create a more open-ended X-Com style campaign with it.



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