Logic Artists Interview at RPGWatch
Logic Artists Interview at RPGWatch
Interview - posted by Crooked Bee on Fri 8 August 2014, 12:31:03
Tags: Clandestine; Expeditions: Conquistador; Logic ArtistsOur RPGWatch rivals have done a Q&A with Logic Artists about their new game Clandestine and a possible Expeditions: Conquistador sequel. Have a snippet:
Read the full interview here.
RPGWatch: In the meantime Expeditions: Conquistador got the second wind. It created a lot of buzz in a Humble Bundle and winter sales on GoG or Steam. What are the chances for Expeditions: The Sequel after your next game?
Logic Artists: We’ve been planning a sequel to Conquistador since before the first game was released. The whole idea of the Expeditions prefix is that we really want to do more games like Conquistador - turn-based RPGs built around a strong narrative core. The heart of the Expeditions series, as we hope it will become, is the idea of setting out into the unknown with a small group of people under your command. It’s about exploration in historical settings, it’s about the clash of vastly different cultures, and it’s about letting the player experiment with values and mindsets that are very far removed from our modern, more or less enlightened age. The next Expeditions game will take place in a different time and a different part of the world than Conquistador, but it will maintain the core gameplay of its predecessor.
RPGWatch: I guess you can talk now. Later in 2013 you announced your new game “Clandestine”. What's it all about?
Logic Artists: Clandestine comes from a whole other place than Conquistador. It was originally intended to be a small management game where you would build an intelligence agency, build your network, and send your operatives on missions around the world, but over several design iterations and prototypes it ended up being a third-person stealth game with a very unique co-op component.
Basically, one player is the field agent – they have the physical presence in the game world, and they have a pistol. The other player is a hacker, sitting in front of a bank of PC monitors an inconspicuous van somewhere in the level, and the hacker has to guide the spy through the mission, supply the spy with all the information that they need to stay alive and out of too much trouble, and provide more direct assistance by hacking security cameras, unlocking electronic doors, providing distractions at crucial moments, and so on and so forth. It’ll also be playable in singleplayer, where you’ll play as the spy but some of the hacker stuff is available if you physically access a PC, and other things can be activated through a context-sensitive command wheel.
It does have some RPG elements, because that is our main pedigree – your basic dialogue system, with some new cool co-op features, a basic skill system, and as much choice and consequence as we can manage. But Clandestine is definitely coming from Logic Artists as fans of Looking Glass Studios rather than Logic Artists as fans of Black Isle.
RPGWatch: A stealth spy thriller playing in the 1990s. Will Clandestine be similar to Alpha Protocol? Is it story-driven?
Alpha Protocol is one of our main inspirations, along with Thief 2, Deus Ex, Hitman Blood Money and Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. As mentioned it will have some light RPG elements, but the intention is to make it first and foremost a spy game, rather than trying to fit it into the RPG category. As such it will primarily be a stealth game, and a damn sight more robust at stealth than Alpha Protocol. Clandestine will have a fairly complex narrative, but above all it is character driven. As it is primarily a co-op game, we can’t allow the story to get in the way of the interactions between the two players, but if you do take the time to delve into the story of the game, there’s plenty of depth there to discover.
Logic Artists: We’ve been planning a sequel to Conquistador since before the first game was released. The whole idea of the Expeditions prefix is that we really want to do more games like Conquistador - turn-based RPGs built around a strong narrative core. The heart of the Expeditions series, as we hope it will become, is the idea of setting out into the unknown with a small group of people under your command. It’s about exploration in historical settings, it’s about the clash of vastly different cultures, and it’s about letting the player experiment with values and mindsets that are very far removed from our modern, more or less enlightened age. The next Expeditions game will take place in a different time and a different part of the world than Conquistador, but it will maintain the core gameplay of its predecessor.
RPGWatch: I guess you can talk now. Later in 2013 you announced your new game “Clandestine”. What's it all about?
Logic Artists: Clandestine comes from a whole other place than Conquistador. It was originally intended to be a small management game where you would build an intelligence agency, build your network, and send your operatives on missions around the world, but over several design iterations and prototypes it ended up being a third-person stealth game with a very unique co-op component.
Basically, one player is the field agent – they have the physical presence in the game world, and they have a pistol. The other player is a hacker, sitting in front of a bank of PC monitors an inconspicuous van somewhere in the level, and the hacker has to guide the spy through the mission, supply the spy with all the information that they need to stay alive and out of too much trouble, and provide more direct assistance by hacking security cameras, unlocking electronic doors, providing distractions at crucial moments, and so on and so forth. It’ll also be playable in singleplayer, where you’ll play as the spy but some of the hacker stuff is available if you physically access a PC, and other things can be activated through a context-sensitive command wheel.
It does have some RPG elements, because that is our main pedigree – your basic dialogue system, with some new cool co-op features, a basic skill system, and as much choice and consequence as we can manage. But Clandestine is definitely coming from Logic Artists as fans of Looking Glass Studios rather than Logic Artists as fans of Black Isle.
RPGWatch: A stealth spy thriller playing in the 1990s. Will Clandestine be similar to Alpha Protocol? Is it story-driven?
Alpha Protocol is one of our main inspirations, along with Thief 2, Deus Ex, Hitman Blood Money and Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. As mentioned it will have some light RPG elements, but the intention is to make it first and foremost a spy game, rather than trying to fit it into the RPG category. As such it will primarily be a stealth game, and a damn sight more robust at stealth than Alpha Protocol. Clandestine will have a fairly complex narrative, but above all it is character driven. As it is primarily a co-op game, we can’t allow the story to get in the way of the interactions between the two players, but if you do take the time to delve into the story of the game, there’s plenty of depth there to discover.
Read the full interview here.
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