Tired of assuming everything beginning with "MMO" ends in "RPG?" Eager to give real-time strategy gamers their fix is S2 Games, the development house which plans to launch Savage 2: A Tortured Soul some time this year. S2 Games co-founder Marc DeForest has been busy beta testing the game, but he was able to take time out of his hectic schedule to educate me on how the online-only Savage 2 is coming together.

Shack: Before we delve into Savage, tell us a bit about yourself and your history with the gaming industry.

Marc DeForest: About the year 2000, I had had another of other business ventures that were successful, [but] I'd always been an avid gamer since I was four years old. I decided I'd like to get my feet wet in making video games. One of the guys I was doing business with used to be a [3D] modeler, so he had some connections in the business. He put me in touch with Jesse Hays, who's still with us. Jesse was working at AutoDesk at the time doing 3D modeling. He knew one of the programmers there who wanted to get into game design and game programming, so the three of us started S2 Games and took on the project of [the original] Savage. Of course right now we're working on Savage 2, and we're currently developing a third game, but I'm not really at liberty to talk about that just yet.

Shack: You had to work "no comment" in there somewhere, didn't you?

Marc DeForest: [Laughs] Yep.

Shack: What made you and the S2 Games crew decide on an RTS/FPS hybrid for the original Savage?

Marc DeForest: Probably my most favorite game still to this day--Savage 2's going to change that trend--is Allegiance. It's kind of an RTS and kind of an FPS put together, but not in the traditional format that most gamers play. You had a bunch of guys who could get into ships and attempt to blow up the enemy base, fight other ships, and so on and so forth. You had a commander--and not in the traditional sense of a top-down view, seeing all the buildings--but you could see the overall battlefield, move around freely, zoom out and zoom in, send out different miners to bring in resources, research new technologies, new spaceships. The experience I had playing that game, and the experience friends had playing that game together, has not been topped by any other game thus far. Savage [1] mimics it almost ideally. It has minor issues that we wanted to fix in the sequel to prove we could really refine and perfect this genre.

So that's really where the idea first came from. We just decided to take that concept [an RTS/FPS hybrid] which was set in space [in Allegiance]. We're all fans of games like WarCraft III, Command & Conquer, and Counter-Strike, and just about any big shooter out there. So we thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if, instead of being set in space, we'd put it as more of a WarCraft III meets Counter-Strike meets minor RPG elements." For those people who could get by the annoyances that [the original] Savage provided... for them, [it was] an absolute knock out experience. Loyal fans love it and can't get enough of it. Hopefully what we do in Savage 2 is refine that a little more, remove the annoyances, make [the game] easier to pick up and play, to understand, not get your butt kicked right away. You get by the initial learning curve, then we'll get a few hundred thousand people hooked on playing the game.

Shack: The original Savage had a steep learning curve that was made even harder due to a lack of offline and tutorial modes so that players could learn and practice. Will Savage 2 feature these modes or anything similar so that the game is more accessible?

Marc DeForest: Well, you'll have an offline mode in the form of you can download the game files anytime, anywhere. You'll be educated about the game during the installation process, there'll be a bunch of help files, and if you read those you'll have a really good understanding [of the game]. After the game is loaded, you'll have the ability to go into a tutorial which will kind of give you a feel for certain aspects of the game like snap-casting, what it's like to be a commander, what it's like to be an officer, the different things you can do as an officer, and so on and so forth.

We've got two other things to help players learn the game. One of those is tips that display as you're connecting to a server and the game is pre-caching. There'll be little tip boxes saying "Did you know you can do this?" and, you know, just to give people more information about the game. When you first play the game, when specific things happen, we'll have little interface [pop-ups] that tell you, you know, "Did you realize you just leveled up?, You have attribute points," stuff like that. After the first time it happens, you'll never see it again.

The game files can be downloaded any time and any place, on any PC for free, and then you can play LAN mode with no obligation; you don't even need an account with us in order to [play LAN mode]. The reason we did that is, we're avid gamers. We've been to LAN parties, and we don't feel it necessary that every person at a LAN party should have a CD key in order to play a game. Of course, like most LAN parties, most people don't, so [you have people] trying to find a no-CD hack or you just don't play the game. Our thought process was, "When you guys go to a LAN party, you hook up to a network, and you've got the game files on there, so everybody can just [copy and paste] that directory onto their computer." If you want the game to be recognized as an installation, there's a minor installation file in that directory which will register some things in your Windows registry. Then everybody can play the game, just fire it up.

Our thought is that we've made a game good enough that we can give [that part of it] away for free. You got to a LAN party, maybe a bunch of people there haven't heard about Savage. They play it, they love it, they want to play it again so they can play online against everyone else. An account is cheap--they're $30--and we're assuming a lot of people will take us up on that offer.

The way we look at it is, the game itself is free. To play the game online against other opponents who aren't on a LAN, we'll have a free demo time that will allow you to play the game for X number of hours, maybe 3 to 5. After that time expires you can't play the demo any more. You then pay $29.99--one time fee--then you own an account. So, you know, Thanksgiving weekend, you gotta go to your Grandpa's house, you can just download the game files from the website, put in your [account] credentials, and you're good to go; all you need is the account.

Shack: Despite its emphasis on multiplayer game play, Savage had a fairly in-depth back story. Can you let us in on how the sequel's story is shaping up?

Marc DeForest: The leader of the Legion of Man, Maliken Grimm, goes to [the location] where the first Hellgate was ever opened; from there, the Hellbourne poured forth. That land is still poisoned. A creature--we don't call him the devil; in fact, we don't really have a name for him--he kind of possessed Maliken, and used Maliken to get the Beasts and the Humans on what we call Scars, patches of land where Hellgates were opened. The Hellgate ripped back open and came back onto Earth.

"Tortured Soul" has to do with the fact that Maliken's children [are split]. His son rules the Legion of Man, and his daughter rules the Beast horde.

Shack: So is the Hellbourne a playable faction?

Marc DeForest: [Savage 2 still focuses on] Humans versus Beasts. The way the Hellbourne [become involved] is kind of unique. Instead of being a third playable race, each race has access to them. There are two main resources in Savage 2. One is gold, which you get from gold mines, and the other is souls, which you get from killing enemy players as well as high-level NPCs which guard areas such as expansions and gold mines. Once you gain control of a Scar, each race has a sacrificial shrine that they can build on that Scar. Scars are uniquely identifiable on the map, much like a gold mine would be. Once you build a shrine, you can then use souls you've accumulated to enter the shrine and purchase Hellbourne units, which are very powerful.

Each [faction] has access to the Hellbourne units, and they're [designed to sway the tide of a match]. Obviously controlling gold mines is important, but controlling Scars and getting Hellbourne units is as well.

Turn the page to learn about the Legion of Man and Beast factions.