Interview with Ritual

[B.Ob.]

SiN Episodes: Emergence - Past, Present and Future, Part 1

 

Has there been any specific feedback that you are going to incorporate into future Emergence patches or even episode 2? Have you gained any useful insights from statistics uploaded by players to Ritual?

 

LEVELORD: Two issues come to mind for me. There are many, many cool suggestions being made on the forums, and we are reading all of them with open and eager eyes, but two are quite profound.

 

The first is related to cliff hangers in the story that would transverse from episode to episode. Although it seems obvious that we should approach those in the same way as television shows like 24 and Lost, there are restrictions for us when making a game-based story. We aren't presenting a new episode each week, and the longer time delay between our episodes means we need to have more closure at the end of each episode. We also want each episode to be a stand-alone product, that is, someone could actually start at Episode 5 and still have a good game. After releasing the first episode, we think we will push the suspended intrigue and what-the-hell-is-going-to-happen-next cliffhangers more as the episodes progress.

 

The second has been the lack of Blade's characteristic comments in Emergence. We have received many emails and read many forum comments showing a split audience on this feature. Some were glad that Blade was the silent-type because it allows the player to more easily ‘become' Blade. The other camp, though, misses Blade's in-your-face cracks and remarks. The suggestion has been made to have a switch or something to allow both.