Troika’s Unannounced Post-Apocalyptic RPG Interview

Although Troika is still putting the finishing touches on Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, they’ve also been working on another role-playing game that we’ve heard very little about up to this point.  The unannounced project will take place in a post-apocalyptic setting similar to the Fallout series that many of Troika’s own team members had a hand in creating years ago while working for Interplay. To get some initial information on exactly what to expect from the game, and to get an update on what else the studio has been working on, we spoke with one of the “troika” – Leonard Boyarsky. Our questions and his answers to follow:

GB: When did you first begin work on the new post-apocalyptic title, and where does it currently stand in the development cycle? Have you been tossing around any names for the game yet?

Leon: We’re very early in the dev cycle for the new game, and right now we’re just working on the engine basics that we’d need for any RPG we’d make with this engine, whether it be a traditional Fallout style RPG or a more action oriented title. We have a few ideas for the name, but until we secure the rights to it we can’t reveal what it is.

GB: Have you been speaking with any publishers about the game yet, or have you decided to keep things to yourselves for the time being?

Leon: We’ve talked to a lot of different publishers about the game, as well as other games using the same engine. We’ve got a few who are really interested in working with us on one of these projects using this tech. We’ll just have to wait to see what happens.

GB: Tell us a bit about the technology behind the game and how it compares to your three previous titles. Are you using any assets whatsoever from your previous games, or is this altogether new?

Leon: The tech is all brand new, as are all the assets. Basically, what we set out to do with this new engine is to make a next generation 3d pseudo isometric engine. This means that this engine is geared towards making the types of games we want to make with it, as well as having all the bells and whistles you’d expect from a next gen engine deformable terrain, normal, displacement, bump, and specular mapping, etc.

GB: If you had to choose your top three design goals for the new game, what would they be?

Leon: Well, we really want to make a Troika style in depth RPG that is flashy enough to grab the attention of the press and the public. Vampire: Bloodlines has had a high profile in the press due to the engine we’re using for it and the ability that has given us to be cutting edge with our visuals. We also want to make games that are accessible to a lot more people than hardcore RPGers, without losing sight of the things that appeal to the hard core gamer. Finally, the overriding design goal would be the one that we always have: to make a fun game that tells a great story in a world that reacts to the player’s actions.

GB: Do you feel that multiplayer is of great importance when creating this type of RPG, or do you think that fans of this type of game are looking for a strong single player experience only? Also, would you rather see the player controlling an entire party or a solo character?

Leon: In RPG development, multiplayer is almost always a completely separate game (unless you just let people play the role of a (hero’s) followers). The only time I think it makes sense is if you’re making an action oriented RPG whose action stands on its own without the RPG aspects, as adding real RPG elements to a multiplayer game (story, the ability to change the world, etc) is a whole independent dev cycle of its own. So, if I have my choice, in a game like the hypothetical Post Apocalyptic game we’re talking about, I’d either want no multiplayer so we could simply concentrate on a great single player game, or an almost totally independent team developing the multiplayer alongside the single player game.

As far as the control of your party members, I think we’re leaning towards giving the player the control of his followers during combat, if he wants it. I personally like the Fallout style where your followers are independent entities, but a lot of fans (and people who work at Troika) prefer the ability to control their party members. This is all conjecture at this point, however.

GB: Although it’s probably very early to be asking, have you put together any plans for how the character advancement or combat system will work? Have you decided whether or not you’ll be using a custom rules system or an already existing one?

Leon: Well, all I really am prepared to discuss on this front is that we’d prefer to use our own custom built system for this game. As far as details on how that system will work, you’ll have to wait until after we’ve signed with someone and gotten into development on the game before we’ll be ready to talk about it.

Leon: There are quite a few ideas we’ve tossed around over the years for this type of game (ever since we finished Arcanum, actually) that we’d like to try. They were never really Fallout specific, just things that we think would be great for this style of RPG. We haven’t made any design/conceptual decisions about how close or far away from the style of Fallout this game will end up being yet. The strange thing about this is that the feel/environment/style of Fallout is basically our conceptual vision, unedited straight from our gut instincts, so if we were to do anything similar to Fallout in those ways we’d have to be very self conscious to keep from seeming too much like Fallout.

GB: What do you think the fascination is with the gritty war-torn world a post-apocalyptic game portrays? Do you think this type of environment belongs in any genre other than RPG?

Leon: I don’t know where the appeal comes from, maybe it’s a wild west frontier type of thing the feel of being on your own in a hostile environment with no law but your gun (okay, now we’re getting into the cheese). Speaking for me personally, I think I like it so much because I saw the Road Warrior hundreds of times when I was a young, idealistic artist (and not the crotchety, bitter old man I am today).

I think the post apocalyptic genre would be great for any game FPS, strategy, adventure, side scroller (okay, maybe not the last one).

GB: We understand that Troika was very interested in obtaining the rights to Fallout 3. Did you actively seek to obtain the rights from Interplay, or did they approach you to continue the franchise? Looking back, what do you feel were the primary circumstances that led to Bethesda securing the rights to the game instead?

Leon: All I can legally divulge is that Interplay was interested in us doing the game for them at one point in time. It was kind of a mutual thing, we were starting to think about approaching them right at about the time they dropped the hint that they’d be interested in talking about it. For many reasons, I can’t go into the details of what we were pursuing with Interplay, but I can say it had seemed dead in the water for a few months when they announced the deal with Bethesda. It wasn’t really a matter of Bethesda securing the rights versus Troika securing the rights, the approach we were taking was totally different from the deal they eventually struck with Bethesda. Unfortunately, that’s about all I can say about it.

GB: Fallout Online, the MMORPG. Complete stupidity or fantastic idea?

Leon: Sometimes it seems like both. It really all depends on the design, I don’t think you can say it’s either just on the basis of the idea of doing an MMO Fallout. I think the biggest obstacle with an MMORPG in the Fallout universe is that it’s supposed to be a fairly deserted wasteland of a world, and there’d be thousands upon thousands of people running around.

GB: This one’s off subject a bit, but is there any chance we may ever see a continuation of either Arcanum or Temple of Elemental Evil? It seems such an intricately prepared world like Arcanum would make for another great game, and I know that Tim was interested in doing a game based on the AD&D module Against the Giants – at least at one time.

Leon: You’d have to talk to the publishers about that. From Troika’s point of view, we’d be very interested in continuing either of these, especially Arcanum. However, there’s no interest from Sierra or Atari to do either of these projects as far as we can tell.

GB: What’s this we hear about four different projects under development at the Troika headquarters? Can we assume that any unannounced titles will be in the RPG genre and most likely be for the PC? Any other subtle hints you can provide us about your upcoming titles?

Leon: As much as we love RPGs, we’ve always wanted to spread out a bit into other types of games as well, whether they’re RPG hybrids or completely other genres. However, RPGs will always be the base of Troika. Each of the four that you’re talking about vary in terms of how (hardcore) they are, but each has a lot of Troika RPG elements in them. Some of the proposed projects are PC only, but some are cross platform proposals as well.

We’d like to issue our thanks to Leonard for taking the time to answer our questions!