Welcome to our second-to-last Syndicate Developer Diary! By now our co-op demo is available on both Xbox live and PlayStation Network and we are just a few short weeks away from the release of the full game on February 21st.
Continued…
Last September we announced, or rather confirmed the rumors that Syndicate would be returning to gaming nearly 20 years after the release of the original classic game. Since then things have proceeded at an increasingly frenetic pace. Pretty much every week there has some kind of milestone, event or deliverable; either presenting the game to the worlds gaming press or releasing new screenshots, deep-dive videos or trailers. Of course our focus has been on finishing the game and making sure it’s as high quality and polished as it possibly can be. The public exposure has been invaluable, helping to validate the design decisions or helping us to tweak and tune some areas of gameplay. It’s also been a huge boost to the team who have seen first-hand the enthusiastic reaction from press and gamers alike. From the start of the development to seeing it in stores, this has been a long project – nearly 4 years. Any normal person who has seen their work every day for that long would have to question whether it was good enough. For many people on the team it never is good enough and so watching people shout, laugh, and enjoy the game they’ve created has been just the kind of positive confirmation needed to drive them on and over the finish line.
Now it’s all but done and so the nail-biting anxiety sets in – the waiting to see what you, the paying customers think. It has been quite a responsibility to take on a property like Syndicate and sometimes controversial, or even unpopular, to take it in a completely new direction from the original. Many people have fond and indelible memories of the original and would like nothing more than to see it coming back in a similar form. Many more have no such memory; some know the name but not the game. Syndicate is now a first person action shooter featuring a rich single player and a separate co-op campaign, but it’s also different in many ways and remains evocative of the original Cyberpunk classic. We always sought to bring something new to FPS games and I know the team is proud of what they’ve created. Breaching and the ‘DART6’ chip add a new beat to the shooter rhythm and in co-op it adds an entirely new dimension; it’s the glue that binds the team of four players together. Co-op mode evokes the original in mission design, weaponry, technology research, and player progression. Starbreeze and EA are extremely proud of the game we have made. Work continues to ensure the online launch of demo and game are as smooth as they can be, promotional events, interviews, press tours and so on, but otherwise we wait to see what you think. I hope you enjoy playing Syndicate as much as we’ve enjoyed making it!
Cheers,
Jeff
