Cartel Announced, Interview

It’s unclear just how many RPG elements will be splashed into Paradox Interactive’s newly announced Cartel, but according to this interview on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, it sounds like the Syndicate-inspired title will be the squad-based strategy game that EA should have gone with themselves. From their overview:

RPS: So tell us a bit about the setting and the game itself.

Jorjani: Well it does take place within a futuristic world, and in that world the cartels do have the power to control entire nations. The cartels are more or less megacorporations, and the main goal of the game, of course, is to ensure that your cartel ends up on top. The (feel) of the game is based in that 1980s concept of the mega-corps: OmniCorp in Robocop, for example. The giant corporation that is all-encompassing and evil, but thinks it is doing humanity a favour. We were a little worried that the name had some drug connotations, but it is still actually about the conflict of big corporations.

So yes, you eliminate the other cartels by doing missions, for which you can decide on your strategies. The game is therefore structured in two parts. You have the action mission part and then the part that takes place between missions. On missions you control a squad of elite soldiers and specialists who are controlled RTS-style. There are a lot of different mission types you can send these guys on, such recon and exploration missions, sabotage missions, retrieval missions, assassinations missions, and so on. These are the kinds of things we are currently experimenting with in terms of making the variety of missions interesting.

Of course you don’t just send your agents in blind, either. You have kit them out, customise them and their weapons, and it’s all about giving you control of your gang. You are responsible for making sure the teams are suited to their mission.

What I should also mention at this point is that although events in the missions will be scripted as part of a campaign, we are also expecting to make the missions themselves dynamic. So if you are sent to assassinate someone he might take his car on one run through, or go to the public transport terminal on another. Our missions will always have parameters that change. A large part of the game will about planning ahead, but also adapting to changes in the mission. You’ll need contingencies.

Sounds very promising, indeed.