SPOnG: Yeah, the game, initially, to me… it struck me that there is a lot in it – the various options for character-boosting tech, magic and so on – and I was slightly concerned that it may well be too confusing - at least for a casual player. But playing through the training missions, you seem to have got the learning curve spot on.
Mitch Gitelman Thanks, that’s great to hear. We put A LOT of time into those!
SPOnG: You mentioned that you like to think of Shadowrun as, “the thinking man’s first-person-shooter” – what do you mean?
Mitch Gitelman Well, maybe a better way of putting it would be to say that it’s a first-person-shooter for quick-witted gamers… “thinking man’s” brings to mind plotting and planning… y’know, like Rainbow 6… instead Shadowrun is about improvisation, figuring out how to think VERY quickly on your feet… You know, you’re in a situation where you are the last guy on your team and the enemy has three guys left, so you have to quickly think, “What abilities do I have? How do I need to use them in order to beat these enemies?”, and you can!
For example, I can just run into a room where some of my friends and team-mates are dead on the floor, and very quickly I might be able to use a ‘resurrect’ power to raise them from the dead. Then all of a sudden it’s an even match again! Or I could summon a tree of life to heal myself and then I could summon a string of crystals to surround that tree, which means that the enemy cannot use it themselves… It’s gameplay elements like this that really make Shadowrun interesting.
SPOnG: For those who might not be familiar with it, can you say a little more about the history of Shadowrun?
Mitch Gitelman Sure, it started off in life as a paper and puzzle RPG – like Dungeons and Dragons – and it was really fun to play. I was involved very early, two of my good friends wrote it, back in 1989/1990. Then it became a board game, a collectible card game and most recently an action-figure game and also a RPG on Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo… and now we’re making it into a first person shooter.
SPOnG: Some of the fans are slightly concerned about this though yes?
Mitch Gitelman Yeah, well there are two reasons for this really. One is that they have been waiting for Shadowrun – in an electronic medium – for thirteen years now. So, there is that expectation from those fans that it would be a role-playing game and they are upset that it’s not. Another reason is because this game is a prequel to the Shadowrun game that these fans know and love – much like Knights of the Old Republic is a prequel to Star Wars – so this game takes place twenty-five years before the Shadowrun game that the fans have played before.
SPOnG: Just talking more generally about the future for Live Anywhere, what are FASA’s plans for further cross-platform games?
Mitch Gitelman Oh, well, nothing I can talk about yet, but if there is going to be innovation FASA’s probably going to be involved in it somehow. But nothing I can talk about yet.
