Shadowrun Returns Interview

Shacknews had the opportunity to chat with Harebrained Schemes’ Jordan Weisman about their current and future plans for Shadowrun Returns, where the game will be set in terms of the pen n’ paper lore, the recent Kickstarter craze that he and other developers are taking part of, and more. An excerpt:

Harebrained Schemes hopes to offer multiplayer, perhaps “a PvP mode for deathmatch arena play, or cooperative RPG play.” It won’t be in at launch, but the engine is being built to “to allow us to expand in that direction,” he explained. “We got very excited and I mentioned it in a video and then we sat down and realised in the time frame and realistic budget, even that we were starting to see the fans might extend us to, it would stretch us too thin to commit to that for launch.”

What is confirmed is an editor. While it is purely an editor, not a full mod kit, Weisman believes it’ll give users “quite significant” powers to tell their own Shadowrun stories. You won’t be able to import your own assets, but can repurpose the stock art to your own ends.

The game will be in 2D, but Harebrained Schemes is still working on an art style to evoke its “retro history” without scaring away new players. “We want to make sure that we capture that essence without being dated,” Weisman said. “That’s a fun challenge, but also one that we know will take several iterations to get right.”

Hackers, or ‘deckers’ to use the lingo, won’t dive into the full virtual reality of the Matrix during missions, but will they add their unique technical perspective to the situation, an idea very important to Shadowrun. “I wanted to get across that we do all view the world through the prisms of our own experiences and our own skills,” Weisman explained. Taken to the extreme, “To a carpenter, the world is just a series of things to figure out how to solve with a hammer.”

“Can we really present those worldviews in a way that the player gets to add up all of those into one cohesive piece and make different decisions, both tactical and emotional, based upon the information that they’ve gathered through all these different worldviews?”

If all the talk of decking, orks, dragons, elves, hand razors, and the Matrix is a bit overwhelming, fear not. Deep data archives are coming in a new Shadowrun website covering the RPG, Shadowrun Returns, and the turn-based Shadowrun Online from Cliffhanger, but you won’t need to study up to follow the game. “We don’t want to stop the game for a huge long exposition on how a wendigo became a wendigo,” Weisman said. It’s an ork (or hobgoblin, ogre, oni or satyr) infected with the Human-Metahuman Vampiric Virus, if you didn’t know.