Space Siege Interview

GamingNexus offers an interview with writer William Harms, talking Space Siege.

As you play through the game you have the option of upgrading yourself with cybernetic enhancements, can you talk about how that impacts the storyline of the game and how you came up with the concept? Could you get through the game without upgrading at all?

The primary hook in the game is the question of what it means to be human. If you remove your real arm and replace it with a cybernetic arm, are you still human? Of course. But what if you replace your brain? At what point does the person you once were simply fade away and get replaced by a cybernetic version of yourself?

This choice plays out both in terms of the actual gameplay, including the types of weapons you can use, and in terms of the story. Certain characters will respond to you differently if you install and use cybernetics.

As for where the concept came from, that was all Chris.

You scrapped the party format in favor of having a single protagonist defend the universe: Seth Walker. Since you named him — and not the players — that name carries a lot of weight. How did you settle on that name and why did you choose to go in that direction? Are there other non-permanent improvements you can make to yourself (such as ability increasing drugs)?

We actually settled on the name pretty quickly. When you’re coming up with a character and you’re creating his/her life and history, your gut is the best barometer for whether or not the name fits. And when you get one that works, that process ends. There’s no sense in over-thinking it.

As I mentioned earlier, we wanted to go with a single character for story-related reasons. By having a single character, you can really drill down and make the game about Seth. You can do that with multiple playable characters, but that’s not the kind of game we wanted to make.

In addition to upgrading yourself with cybernetics, you can also use the parts that you find to upgrade your armor, your weapons and even HR-V, your robot sidekick. There are also skill points you can assign that unlock new abilities.