Syndicate: Open Worlds, Co-op, Cyberpunk - Producer Interview

Syndicate, a first-person shooter from Swedish developer Starbreeze, will bring Bullfrog's classic cyberpunk franchise to a new generation of gamers - we chat to executive producer Jeff Gamon to find out how the studio avoided throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Syndicate will bring conventional and high-tech weapons in a colourful near-future setting.

What themes from the original syndicate has Starbreeze tried to preserve in the reboot?
       
Jeff Gamon: Many of the themes of the original are preserved as we used those as the starting point rather than thinking about the genre or gameplay mechanics.  Our goal was to reimagine the game for today’s console generation of gamers and not just remake it. Pioneering gameplay and technology aside, it was the setting in the cyberpunk world of the original Syndicate that brought all the ingredients together as the whole.

The new game retains the same sense of ominous or imminent brutality, the deluded or mislead chipped consumers and of course the agents – the weapons of the Syndicates in their war against each other for territorial dominance. Beside the narrative themes, the game features much of the technology and weaponry of the original although with some small license taken to allow us to make them work for this game.  And of course there is the whole separate co-op campaign which reflects the original four-agent raiding of the original.
 
Deus Ex recently returned and we've also seen recent titles like Hard Reset - what do you put the resurgence in cyberpunk games down to?

JG: Hard one to say really. I don’t think cyberpunk ever really went away, maybe it trends away and we naturally come back to it as it’s needed or as it feels socially relevant. I do think though that cyberpunk provides for a credible future setting and so it’s a lot easier to get wrapped up in than say, high sci-fi fiction. In the early stages of the project we preferred to use the term, ‘near future setting’ and avoided ‘sci-fi’ for just that reason, we wanted our world of Syndicate to feel like it was just around the corner.

Bullfrog's Syndicate: Inspiration rather than starting point, says Gamon.

Syndicate had elements of emergent, open-world gameplay - will we experience any of that in Starbreeze's game?

JG: Not in this case. The single player campaign is very much a narrative; you play the role of Agent Miles Kilo. Co-op is four-player online so will inevitably play slightly differently from one session to the next but it will be the AI, your teammates and the breaching gameplay that provide emergent scenarios.
 
SF author Richard Morgan worked on the game - what sort of thing did he bring to the table? What's the secret to leveraging the skills of an author in a AAA game?

JG: Richard was a great partner to have on board. I don’t think there is a secret to working with someone like Richard; like anyone else on a creative team, they need to fit into the mix. As Richard is a keen gamer he was able to contribute significantly in the early stages of the project but that also enabled him to better understand the requirements and constraints of game development. Also, being flexible and in a position to develop the game, the missions and the story simultaneously provides the ideal development setup.

Original Syndicate weapons like the persuadertron and gauss gun are fan favourites - how did you go about implementing weapons new and old?

JG: Syndicate features a wealth of weapons many of which had that familiar feel of conventional ballistics, but of course Syndicate majors on cool weapons. Any FPS is only as good as its shooting experience and we’ve dedicated a huge amount of effort to getting this right. The genre shift did constrain how we adapted each of the original classic weapons but we had to make sure that we didn’t just pay lip service; the original weapons had to be as cool as we remember from the original.

Syndicate agent Miles Kilo. Or is it Hollywood actor Michael Fassbender?

Players will get to hack NPCs and enemies with a variety of results - how many different hacks are there? Any ideas that didn't make the cut? Any favourites in the office?
 
JG: The hacks or ‘breach applications’ form part of the trinity that’s at the heart of the Syndicate gameplay experience; Shooting, Breaching and the Dart Overlay.  The singl player campaign features three breaches which you acquire as the narrative proceeds; Persuade, Suicide and Weapon Backfire.  These are best suited to the scenarios that present themselves in the single player campaign.  Co-op on the other hand is about working together in a team; not just keeping each other alive but taking on different combat roles as well.  To provide for the diversity needed, co-op features 12 additional breach apps but each one is upgradable in a variety of ways, affecting more targets, inflicting more damage, duration and so on.  As for favourites – purely for payoff Suicide with a grenade never gets dull when there is a whole group of enemies to deal with.

Co-op: Kind of a big deal.

How have you approached the co-op modes? Was there any temptation to include competitive multiplayer?

JG: Co-op was always envisioned as equal billing to single player. It is an important part of re-imagining the original gameplay of four agents raiding enemy territory, not to mention the looting, research and progression.  The breaching mechanics lend themselves perfectly to co-op gameplay forcing and rewarding players for working together as a squad; which incidentally is the only way you can win on the higher skill levels.  Competitive multiplayer was on the table at one point but co-op ran away with it – you know when it’s right when all the ideas being thrown about and all the excitement is for co-op.
 
Are there hopes to continue work on the franchise in future?  Does Syndicate lend itself to DLC or expansions?
 
JG: We’re currently concentrated on making this title as best it can be and don’t have any news beyond that.

Syndicate launches on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC in Europe on 24 February.