SiN Episodes: Emergence

• Platform: PC
• Published by: Valve Software / EA
• Developed by: Ritual Entertainment
• Release Date: May 9, 2006
• Genre: Action
• Multiplayer: No
• Online: No

SiN Episodes: Emergence Interview

Shack:It's been 7 years since the release of SiN, and 6 since the release of the Wages of SiN expansion pack. What makes this the perfect time to revisit the franchise?

Ritual: We've been wanting to return to the SiN universe ever since the release of the first SiN. Traditionally, publishers tend to want a lot of control over projects funded by them – and rightly so, considering it's their investment that's at stake. When we tried to shop for a publisher for SiN 2 a couple years ago, the deals usually involved us not having a lot of creative control and sometimes even losing ownership of the property altogether, neither of which really was an option for us.

We had talked to Valve about doing something on Steam for a while until it finally came to us that a new SiN game delivered through Steam would be the way to go. And thus, SiN Episodes was born. Putting the game on Steam allows us to get our content to gamers directly, while also being able to self-fund the project, since it's not as expensive as a traditional AAA retail title. This in turn gives us complete creative control, and allows us to retain ownership of the SiN franchise – it's a perfect match.

Shack: From earlier interviews it seems like the plan was to release the first SiN: Episodes installment late last year. What happened and does the delay of the initial episode alter your plans to release new episodes every 3-4 months?

Ritual: One of the upsides of self-funding the project is that you call the shots on when to release the thing. As we got closer to our internal release deadline, we took a long look at the game and decided to take the extra time to really polish this episode and make it as good as we can.

As far as releasing future episodes goes, we're hoping to get the next installment out there about six months after the release of the first one. Emergence will provide us with a huge number of assets for the following installments, so that will greatly cut down development time.

Shack: So what's the premise for SiN Episodes?

Ritual: SiN Episodes is an episodic first person shooter that takes place Freeport City, a futuristic mix of New York, San Francisco and Tokyo housing some 27 million people. The hero of the game is John Blade, commander of a private security force trying to protect the citizens of Freeport from SinTEK Industries and its brilliant CEO Elexis Sinclaire, who is trying to mutate humanity and advance evolution by several thousand years.

The first episode is entitled Emergence and will be released both on Steam and via retail outlets on May 10, 2006.

SiN Episodes builds on SiN's trademark features, such as environmental interactivity, action-based outcomes and memorable characters, while fully exploiting the advantages of episodic delivery. There are three major advantages for gamers here:

The most obvious one is that we'll be able to delivery a steady stream of content to gamers. Instead of having to wait several years for a sequel, that time will be cut down to just a few months. This will also supply the modding community with fresh assets on a regular basis.

The second advantage is price. Instead of having to pay 50 dollars for a 10 hour game you might not even like or finish, you can buy one of our episodes for well under 20 bucks. That will get you 3 – 6 hours of action-packed gameplay for less than the price of a music CD. Related, each episode will feature a self-contained story with a definite beginning, middle, and end, while also advancing the overall story arc, so you will really be able to just buy any single episode and get a satisfying experience out of it.

This brings us to the third advantage of episodic gaming: Community feedback. Since the development cycle of each episode is so short, it allows us to integrate feedback from the community into the next episode, either via the forums or online surveys, such as the multiplayer survey we conducted a while ago. If a feature is well-received, we'll expand on it in the next episode, and if something isn't liked, we'll either adjust it to try and make it fun, or drop it completely. This ultimately allows us to shape SiN Episodes into the experience our fans really want.

Shack: Tell us about the new and returning characters in SiN: Episodes.

Ritual: As mentioned above, SiN Episodes once again stars HardCorps leader John Blade and his nemesis Elexis Sinclaire. Blade is backed up by resident HardCorps hacker JC, as well as Jessica Cannon, a new character we're introducing in Emergence. Jessica is a temperamental rookie who is helping Blade out in the field, so you actually get to fight alongside her in some of the missions. Another new character in this episode is Viktor Radek, a local drug lord working with Elexis. As SiN Episodes goes on, we will be exploring the characters and their relationships more thoroughly. Not everything is as it seems and you should definitely expect the story to take a few unexpected twists and turns.

Shack: What about the weapons. What will we be using to free Freeport City of its various humans and mutant enemies?

Ritual: The first episode introduces four weapons – more will be added as the series goes on. Blade's signature weapon, the Magnum pistol, makes a return, but apart from that, all the weapons are new to the SiN universe. Another change from the first SiN is that each weapon has two firing modes – for example, the Magnum can fire a depleted uranium round that penetrates certain materials, allowing you to pick off enemies taking cover behind doors or pillars.

We also have incendiary grenades, which are a lot of fun to play around with. As they explode, they'll set any flammable materials around them on fire – including enemies. So that makes them a great tool for clearing out rooms and creating tactical obstacles.

We want to make sure that each of the weapons is and remains useful, even as more and more episodes are released – we want them to be like a tool belt players use to tackle the situations and obstacles we throw at them. A lot of balancing goes into making sure that each weapon fulfills its purpose without becoming redundant.

Shack: Any cool gadgets we'll get our hands on as well?

Ritual: Blade's bag of tricks is fairly small in the first episode, but we'll most certainly fill it up with a few interesting items throughout the series. The most important gadget in Emergence is a hack spike that you can attach to foreign computer systems to help JC patch into them. Sometimes that's the only way to get around those pesky security systems employed by SinTEK.

Shack: SiN had some pretty great environmental interactivity. Will that return that in Episodes?

Ritual: Interactivity is one of the things that made SiN so unique, so that's definitely coming back for SiN Episodes. We noticed that a lot of players try to use an item in the environment and when nothing happens, they'll never use anything in the game again. So we're really trying to cram as many useable objects into the game as we can.

Related, in the first SiN, the environmental interactivity (such as useable payphones and being able to destroy pretty much everything) was mostly there for the player's enjoyment, but it didn't have any effect on the actual gameplay.

With that in mind, we've added another layer in SiN Episodes. A lot of the items scattered around the environments can actually be used to take out enemies. We've got oxygen tanks that fly around wildly when shot, taking out anything in their path. Then there are containers filled with mutagen, which, when punctured, release a deadly cloud that will heal mutants and hurt human enemies. Similarly, the canisters used in health terminals can be carried around and used to devolve mutants while at the same time healing yourself, so that opens up a slew of possibilities for the player when it comes to approaching combat situations.

Another thing we did was take the DOS prompt-based console system we had in SiN and turn it in a graphical user interface-based system that we use for a lot of stuff. For example, we have payphones with useable number pads, so you can dial numbers you find in the level to get clues pertaining to the overarching story. Our vending machines pop out different items depending on which button you press. All these little details help up the level of interactivity yet another notch.

Shack: Another part of SiN was the Action Based Outcomes. Based on what you did in a level, you might see something entirely different in the next level than someone who made a different decision in the preceding level. Will we see anything like that in SiN Episodes?

Ritual: We're actually playing around with the idea of integrating cross-episode Action-Based Outcomes, or ABOs, which will influence the events in upcoming episodes based on what you did previously. Basically, we're looking at two types of cross-episode ABOs: Global ABOs and Local ABOs.

Global ABOs are persistent events that are based on Steam's ability to track certain "decision points" in the game. That way we can see what course of action the majority of players takes and reflect that in future episodes. So if the majority of players decide to blow up a building in one episode, that building won't be there in future episodes. This is really just another layer of us wanting the community to be able to influence the game.

Local ABOs only affect players individually. Let's say you get the choice to help out a character. Depending on whether or not you do it, that character will either return the favor in the future, or not. Local ABOs aren't as "epic" in nature as global ABOs, but they have the advantage of not being persistent, so you'll be able to replay the game and experience the other outcome(s).

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