Diehard GameFAN: In “Dead Man’s Switch,” you had a wide variety of runners to hire. In Dragonfall, it sounds like you have less options, but characters with more back story and personality. What was the decision behind going that route for the expansion?

Mike McCain: Well in the first campaign there are a couple runners, such as Coyote, who you get to know better over the course of the story. Players responded really positively to that, and NPCs are an important part of the RPG experience, so we wanted to do more of that in the new campaign.

Therefore – in Dragonfall, the focus is really on being part of a team. It’s not just you alone against the odds, it’s you and your crew. This naturally calls for a small cast of characters that we can really put time into to ensure they provide both engaging narratives and interesting gameplay patterns.

That said, your team is not completely fixed. There are a couple team members that may or may not become part of your crew depending on choices you make. Also, in addition to your “core team”, there will be a small set of mercenaries available to hire for missions where you might want a runner with skills not represented in your core team or main character.

Diehard GameFAN: Dragonfall introduces the ability to save anywhere in the game, something that was missing from Shadowrun Returns‘ core product. Were you surprised by how many people requested this from Harebrained Schemes, and how hard was it to recode the game to allow this?
Mike McCain: We pride ourselves in being able to listen to and react to our audience. I would say as far as the save game system is concerned it was simply a matter of time and money. Save states are *very* complex and it was something we weren’t able to include in the original release. But since Shadowrun Returns was received quite well in the marketplace, this gave us the time and money to iterate and provide an improved save game system. This is also why we are able to release a much bigger, full-length campaign expansion to the game with Dragonfall, and why we’ve been busy continuing to add features and polish to the core game. Our goal is to give our audience what they want insofar as we have the ability to do so – so now that we have the ability, we’re doing it!

Diehard GameFAN: There will be a lot of new content in the game from new Cyberware to new options for the Game Editor. Any highlights you want to share and any chance of riggers getting vehicles in addition to the drones they already have?

Mike McCain: My personal favorite is the sniper rifle! Throw some buff spells on Eiger (the team’s troll weapons specialist), stick her in the far corner of the room with the sniper rifle and just wait for the enemies to stream in. The taser’s also pretty cool. It can stun enemies for multiple rounds, but it’s a short range weapon with a single round per reload, so you have to choose your targets carefully.

Some other great additions to the game, just off the top of my head: throwing weapons, exploding barrels, custom text & keypad input in conversations, a huge variety of new enemies – fire drakes and Knight Errant to name a couple – and a whopping 150 new portraits in total in the game!

To answer your question about vehicles – rigger-controlled vehicles would be fun to see, but we simply don’t have a game system that would be able to provide interesting vehicle play without a lot of overhaul. It’s unlikely we’ll see rigger-controlled vehicles in Shadowrun Returns.

Diehard GameFAN: Approximately how long will it take to complete Dragonfall‘s core storyline and how many options/side quests will it contain?

Mike McCain: Our early playtests suggest that the campaign is actually longer than anticipated. We initially set out to create an experience somewhere in the 8-10 hours range. It currently looks like even a bare-minimum playthrough would take more than 10 hours, and I think you can count on at least 12 to 15 hours if you’re exploring and doing more of the game’s side content. We’re also trying to tune this campaign to a slightly more challenging difficulty level than “Dead Man’s Switch”, so that may factor in as well.

Diehard GameFAN: There were several other potential expansions bandied about in the Kickstarter ranging from Japan to more Seattle content. Is there any chance we’ll see some of these expansions come to life in the near (or even far) future? If so, which ones?

Mike McCain: It’s too early to say! But I will say, we would love to revisit the Seattle Metroplex at some point – there is so much more to the Seattle campaign setting to explore and tell stories about.
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