Shadowrun Returns Interview

GameStar.ru has an interview with Harebrained Schemes’ Mitch Gitelman on Shadowrun Returns, dealing with the title’s successful Kickstarter campaign, the older less-successful Shadowrun projects such as the Xbox 360-exclusive shooter, whether Returns will deviate from the parent setting in some way and more.

Here’s a snip:

You promised us a wide variety of means to customize your character. How are all the combinations going to impact the game itself? How different will be my playthrough as a Steet Samurai human from Shaman troll, for example? And how can we affect the character customization during the playthrough? Is it going to be a common job switching or plastic surgery, Unexplained Genetic Expression and Human Meta-Human Vampiric Virus or something more interesting?

It’s still a bit early to answer all these questions in detail. Magic and Tech abilities are just coming online now. But I can tell you that you’ll be able to earn and spend Karma to improve your character and gain new skills and abilities. It isn’t a class-based game. We present you with character archetypes as a start but you’ll be able to spend Karma and progress as you wish, limited by elements like Essence.

…

Good, bad, evil. What about the morality in the game? If I join one of the malicious corporations will I be able to take over the world with it’s help? Or maybe to cast the cyberpunk yoke off of the world by cunningly maneuvering between them? What are the limitls for player to affect the world of Shadowrun Returns?

Morality and limits. That’s two separate topics.

First, it’s important to remember that Shadowrun Returns isn’t a $30m, open-world, AAA game and won’t have big features like the ones you allude to in your question. What we do offer is the ability for people to create their own stories using the editor we’re releasing with the game. So if you want to tell a story that changes the world, you’ll have a tool to do so.

As to morality, our story, characters, and plot are pretty damn dystopian. Shadowrun isn’t much of a feel-good environment for gaming.

Thanks to Fábio Vieira and apologies for not including him as the source earlier!