Troika RPG Q&A

I've been involved in pitching post-apocalyptic games to publishers. My experience has been negative.

It is viewed as an undesired genre to create a brand around, poisoned by too many games using the words "post-apocalyptic" and Mad Max associations. Publishers believe that when consumers hear "post-apocalyptic" they immediately think it's a car combat game. And besides Twisted Metal - those products don't sell.

They would honestly rather publish another game about space aliens over anything near post-apocalyptic. Another generic, evil aliens with laser guns, flying in ships, etc.

Fallout is a marginally successful brand born from a good time in PC games. If it had been enormously successful we would have seen a sequel every other year like Tomb Raider or GTA or Battlefield.

Even with Troika's experience, it's obvious from the interview it's hard for them to sell this concept. Especially an RPG? For PC? Oofah...

A lot of people, myself included, feel if you combined the combat of Temple of Elemental Evil, and the detail and depth of Arcanum, you'd have a damn near perfect RPG. Is the depth of Arcanum and Fallout something you're aiming to retain in this new product?

Most definitely. Hearing the remark about Arcanum and ToEE is funny because we’ve said the same thing around here. I think that combining the strong points of both those games is definitely a goal we have here for future titles, including this one.

Ok, now that gives me a lot of hope. I never finished Arcanum because of the combat system, but there was obviously a lot of depth to the game in terms of its story and non-combat mechanics. TOEE had some of the best mechanics I've ever seen in a turn-based RPG, bugs notwithstanding. If they can pull off a successful merging of the two games, with all the strengths of both incorporated, it should be pretty cool to play!

Wtf? When did Duck and Cover switch to the .CX domain?

I thought they were gone for good when the .net one was down... : (

Thank God, I will get my post-apocalypse fix from now on.

I updated the interview to include the links to the screenshots in the question about them.

Does anyone have a link to the two pictures from the tech demo that they mention in this article? I must've missed them when they first came out.

Troika makes me so happy.

*insert comment about everything coming to a full circle*

I'm hyped! And I don't know a single thing about the whole game.

For those too lazy to read it all, here's the best part (I guess):
From a gameplay/system perspective, this game is definitely a spiritual successor to Fallout.