GB Feature: Scars of War Interview

Scars of War lead designer Gareth Fouche set aside some time to answer our questions about the first-person indie RPG’s influences, setting, factions, and more.

GB: How many factions can we expect to encounter or hear about, and how important are they to gameplay?

Gareth: There are 11 primary factions, though you will hear about and meet others who aren’t as central to the gameplay. The primary factions are those you can side with and whose plotlines you can dramatically affect.

Those primary factions are fundamental to Scars’ gameplay. The core plotline involves events which are developing (I won’t go into detail there for obvious reasons), but these events draw the interest of those factions, interest which causes them to become involved in events as they unfold. The role of the player is that of a “wildcard”. As you progress you can ally with or choose to act against individual factions, but you will have to live with the consequences of those choices. It is impossible to choose a path through the main plot that satisfies all or even most of the factions, your choices will cause some to treat you with enmity, even outright violence.

I’ve also tried to avoid creating any obvious “good guys” or “bad guys”. Each faction has a logical (if sometimes hidden) agenda, goals and motives for their actions which are perfectly reasonable, from their perspective. It is up to the player to decide which viewpoint they agree with, if any. None of the factions desire to “destroy the world” or anything similar just to prove that they’re the supreme assholes, the hope is that players will have to think carefully about who to ally with and who to make enemies of.