Nuclear Union Interview

We missed it earlier, but the good folks at Rock, Paper, Shotgun are offering an interview with Best Way’s director of game design Julia Romanova on their recently-announced post-apocalyptic RPG Nuclear Union. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any info on the RPG systems of the title, and most of the gameplay-related answers are fairly vague.

Still, here’s an excerpt:

RPS: Can you tell us a bit about why you decided to make Nuclear Union? What decisions led to it? Why make an RPG instead of an RTS?

Romanova: Having released Men of War and getting to know that 1C was going to release several add-ons developed by their internal studios, we decided to take a break from the WWII topic. At first we were inclined to go back the Soldiers: Heroes WWII style a small group, sabotage operations, but with more attention to the tactics. Hence we got a tactical simulation of a group, that we created using Gem2. The engine kept on evolving, we got new perspectives and possibilities, and we started thinking of introducing RPG elements into the game. Later on our programmers considerably increased the graphics level, and we became all hyped to make a shooter (latest Call of Duty was just released around that time, and the majority of our team were playing this one a lot). But the will to make a tactical RPG overcame. And when 1C suggested a plot and setting, we simply could not reject such a tempting offer to make what we can call a reconstruction of possible future of our country and make it possible to explore a whole new and highly interesting world.

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RPS: Can you tell us anything about the combat system? What is it comparable to?

Romanova: It’s too early to talk about the combat system and this would be a good topic for one of the developer diaries. But we can tell you that we intend to concentrate on tactics and hope to amaze players by diverse enemy behavior. A special AI behavior programming tool has been created just for this. Time will tell if we succeed.

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RPS: How linear is the story?

Romanova: The story is linear as much as the global task of our hero demands it. Player has a freedom of choice otherwise.

RPS: How open is that world? Can the player explore anywhere as in, say, Fallout 3?

Romanova: We plan to create a considerably vast world. Sometimes it scares us when we realize how much work we still need to do. There will be story missions with interactive scripted scenes. However after the completion of such a mission, the player will be able to freely roam the game world, take part in various events, complete additional quests and uncover secrets of the new world.

Thanks No Mutants Allowed.