Shadowrun Returns Post-funding Update #60: Save Everywhere Investigated and Berlin Expanded and Delayed

There’s a new post-funding update for Shadowrun Returns over at Kickstarter, bringing some heartening news for people who enjoyed the title but had some serious reservations about some aspects (like I did). While they make no promises, the team is investigating the possibility of implementing a save-everywhere system (frankly a must for the genre), and is also delaying the Berlin campaign to January to make it more reactive and expansive:

Beyond working on bug fixes, translations, Linux, and finishing the tablet versions of the game, the engineering team has been investigating improvements to our save game functionality. We are aware that there are a number of people who would like the ability to save in the middle of scenes. However, we also know that adding this feature would involve major changes to the core infrastructure of the game. It’s still too early to say whether this is going to be possible, but we wanted to let you know that we’re actively investigating it and will let you know more in the coming weeks.

We’ve heard a lot of questions from you wondering what to expect from Berlin. Well, our original plan called for a modest-sized campaign that we could ship by the end of October. However, after listening to your forum discussions and feedback, it became clear that you would like to see something bigger (and so would we). So, we’ve decided to spend more time on Berlin to create an experience closer to the size of Dead Man’s Switch. A story of that scope will take longer, so we’re targeting January for its release. While we’re still in the early stages of development and many things could change, we’d like to share what we’re planning so far. For example – we know that we want our next story to feel more like the player is part of a shadowrunning crew and contain more corporate intrigue.

Here are the key ideas driving Berlin pre-production right now:

• A more flexible main story arc – choose which runs to complete first, and which factions to complete objectives for
• More depth to the NPC runner characters
• New weapons, outfits, portraits, music, and enemies – including more magical creatures
• Improved Physical Adept gameplay – along with additions for some of the other existing archetypes
• A European city with a very different look, (vibe), and cast of characters
• A story that highlights the compelling themes of the Shadowrun: Germany sourcebook