EA: Darkspore Influenced by Pokemon, Diablo, Magic and More
Matt Peckham
Still playing Spore? Compositing stretchy limbs and bulging organs? Shaking your double-tailed, spike-tipped derriere? Exploring not-so-strange "new" worlds?
No? Bored with all that? Rather send your custom E.T. into battle and just bypass the peace and love stuff?
Enter Darkspore, EA's "fast-paced and intense sci-fi Action-RPG" for Windows and OS X in which you battle across the galaxy to save it from "an ancient and powerful evil." If the plot sounds trite, the play mechanics promise better: A monster battle system premised on collectible creatures with discrete abilities, multi-deployable, and combat scenarios with multiple solutions, but that require careful squad-building forethought.
We emailed Darkspore executive producer Michael Perry and software engineer Jeff Gates to ask about Spore's influence, creature evolution, real-time strategy parities, and to figure out just how expansive Darkspore's universe really is.
Game On: Will it be possible to import creatures created in Spore, or is Darkspore connectively divorced from earlier installments?
EA: Darkspore is built on the technology of Spore and on top of that foundation we've made some significant advancements graphics-wise from its precursor. When we take a creature from Spore into Darkspore, it tends to look a little out of place. That being said, there have been a lot of amazing creations made in Spore and some of those, specifically the winners of the recent Template Challenges on the Spore forum, will be hand imported into Darkspore as enemies in the game. These creations will get spruced up with custom animations and effects and their creators will be credited in game. But yes, for pretty much all concerns, Spore and Darkspore are completely separate games.
GO: Can your creature(s) physically evolve over the course of the game, or are their abilities static add-ons? If the former, does the gameplay "adapt" accordingly, as it did in Spore, or did you have to clamp down on the way evolution iterates to ensure game balance?
EA: Each creature has a set of unique abilities. In Darkspore, players will collect parts to outfit their creatures in order to upgrade these innate abilities. Parts are randomly generated based on the mission difficulty along with how successfully players complete the mission. We use a 'suffix system' to ascribe gameplay bonuses to the parts. For example, "Tiberium Armor of Deflection" allows creatures to avoid energy bolts, while "Tiberium Armor of Absorption" might take those same energy bolts and transform a percentage of their damage into power for the creature.
By having the gameplay 'suffix' independent from the aesthetics of the part it should be possible for players to find the gameplay stats they are interested in, while at the same time being able to customize their creature with the look they want.
These upgrades will have varying levels of effectiveness on each of the different characters. Collecting the right combinations of characters and parts will be a key area of strategic optimization in Darkspore.
To ensure players face an appropriate challenge, our campaign and outbreak modes get progressively more difficult. Advanced players with well honed squads may initially advance a bit more rapidly, but will quickly find themselves comfortably challenged.
Next: Action-RPG or real-time strategy game?
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GO: How many creatures can you wield (from your "arsenal") simultaneously? If more than one--and assuming they each have unique abilities--are there real-time strategy elements to the gameplay?
EA: In Darkspore, players will field squads of three creatures. Of the squad, players will control one character at a time. Players will have the ability to switch to one of the other two creatures at nearly any time. Squad construction is a key strategic element of Darkspore.
One major influence for squad construction is the genesis-type system. In Darkspore each player and enemy creature is one of five genesis types - Biogenesis (plants and animals), Cybergenesis (robots and computers), Necrogenesis (reanimated corpses and skeletons), Quantumgenesis (manipulators of space and time) and Plasmagenesis (creatures of fire and lightning). Creatures of each genesis type have a weakness when fighting their own type. As such, to be maximally effective, players will want to have a diversity of genesis types represented in their squad.
A second key input to squad composition is that each character comes with a 'squad ability', meaning an ability available to the entire squad, not just the source creature. For example, one of our quantum characters has a squad ability that allows creatures to teleport a short distance and stun nearby enemies. Another one of our plasma character's squad abilities is to surround itself in a pillar of fire. When players combine these two creatures in a squad, they will be able warp around the battlefield, burning hordes of enemy creatures. Finding groups of creatures whose squad abilities combo well with each other will be important to building the most effective squads.
Once a player has built a squad and started a mission, it's all about using the characters and their abilities effectively. We feel "Action RPG" is the best description for Darkspore, even though it draws influence from games across genres including Pokémon, Diablo, Magic: The Gathering, Left 4 Dead, Plants vs. Zombies and many more.
GO: Will the universe be random or static? How large is it, i.e. how many planets? How long should it take, on average, to eradicate "the forces of Darkspore" from a planet? And can you go anywhere you like, or if not, how is your progression through the universe handled?
EA: The planets in Darkspore are a combination of sets of static geometry and randomly spawned monsters and environment objects. We feel this design provides the best balance of aesthetics and game design: fixed backgrounds to allow for the best possible art, variable game content to maximize re-playability.
Gameplay sessions are organized into missions that should each take about 15 minutes to finish, with variance based on player skill, squad composition, creature part upgrades, and mission difficulty.
When starting a mission players will choose between 'Campaign' and 'Outbreak' modes. Completing a campaign mission will unlock an additional creature and the next mission in the story.
Should players desire an extra challenge, or need some additional parts to prepare them for the next campaign mission, they can choose outbreak mode. Outbreak missions are randomly generated from the set of planets player have already visited in the campaign, with randomly chosen enemies and planet modifiers. After completing an outbreak mission, players will have the option to 'continue the fight' to increase the amount and quality of the rewards for the mission-chain, or they can 'cash out' and take the loot they've earned. But players should be careful. If they choose 'continue' and fail at the mission, the reward they had earned will be lost.
The choice over where the missions occur is specifically designed to be outside of the players control. This way, players will be continually challenged with a variety of planet and enemy combinations and be compelled to design squads that are adaptable. This variety should ensure that there is no 'one best squad' at any point and should allow players to find their own ‘best' squad compositions.
GO: Thanks guys!
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