Tabula Rasa Interview

PC Gameworld was able to track down Destination Games’ Starr Long for a lengthy interview about their upcoming sci-fi MMORPG, Tabula Rasa.

Q: Here’s a quote: (Players will go behind enemy lines in missions that directly impact the war effort.) Could you elaborate on the war effort?

A: Basically we want to give players access to variables in the game that affect other battle variables in real time. If, for instance, you go on a mission and get the maintenance code for the shock towers which are base defenses for the bad guys and they’re out on the battlefield assaulting that base they can run up to the shock towers and enter the maintenance code which will deactivate the towers temporarily which can turn the tide of battle. They might also rescue NPC soldiers from prison that they can later bring into battle.

There are also control points scattered throughout the battlefield and the NPC’s, both good and bad, are programmed to try to seek and hold those control points because whoever owns those control points determines things like where you respawn when you die, base facilities you have access to, and what missions and NPC’s are available. Hopefully all these variables combines will make it so that every time you’re on one of these battlefields you’re making an impact or seeing other players having an impact in the battle.

We also didn’t want NPC’s standing around just waiting for you to kill them. We wanted to make a game about war, so the NPC’s are constantly fighting each other.