SiN Episodes Preview

For all have sinned.

I remember back in 1998, I was shopping for games and I found a copy of SiN and bought it simply because it had a cool character and logo on the box. I remember reading the synopsis on the back and realizing that this FPS actually had a cool storyline. I remember going back home and installing the game and I clearly remember the game taking twelve minutes to load. I also clearly remember the game crashing almost a dozen times each time I played it. But most of all I remember that I loved this game. It was fresh. It was cool. It had everything I wanted in an FPS – a good story, lots of action, cool characters and levels (created by the famous Levellord), great puzzles and lovely graphics using a modified Quake 2 engine.

SiN Episodes, set in the near future, followed the story of HardCorps officer John R. Blade, and his sidekick hacker JC as they tried to put an end to the drug U4 and hunt down the sexy villain Elexis Sinclair and shutdown her SinTEK organization.

SiN had a truckload of bugs out of the box and because of this it suffered heavily at the hands of reviewers. It never gained much success either. But this was entirely because a week after release, they were stomped out of sight by the release of the revolutionary Half-Life.

Of rites and rituals.

Ritual Entertainment rose to fame as a result of their excellent Quake 1 Mission Pack – Scourge of Armagon. It was rated as the most popular add-on to Quake 1 when it was released. After being shattered by Valve, the Texas based development studio did not lay down their swords. They created renowned titles like Heavy Metal FAKK2 and Star Trek Elite Force 2 and worked on numerous other projects. They even released an anime feature called Sin – The Movie. Then in 2002, something strange happened. Valve software (yes, the same company that ousted their game from the face of the earth) approached Ritual to create a single-player version of their insanely popular multiplayer game Counter-Strike. They went on to develop Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike Xbox.

Killing the middlemen.

So now most hard feelings between Ritual and Valve had evaporated and everyone came to the realization that they were big fans of each other’s games. This hearty embrace was fully realized when Ritual decided to make their next SiN game with Valve’s Source engine. The embrace tightened with Ritual announcing that they were going to eliminate the publisher element by releasing the game in an episodic format through Valve’s Steam system of distribution.

This is probably the biggest surprise of SiN Episodes – the fact that it is being distributed in episodes and in the process completely shutting out the middleman. This way, Ritual gets a much bigger cut of profits than the average development house, where the publisher eats a big chunk of the profits. This should not come as a big shock though, considering the fact that SiN Episodes is completely self-funded. They also plan to release collections of episodes in a retail format.

Emergence.

Story wise, SiN Episodes is set around 4 years after the incidents of SiN and its expansion Wages of SiN and it carries on the story of Colonel John R. Blade and his elite strike force the HardCorps. The story will further evolve with each episode adding to the larger story arc, while still having an independent story of its own. Meaning a player can get any episode and still enjoy a story driven game, but in order to experience the complete fleshed out story, one has to play all the episodes. Episodes will be released every 3 to 4 months, priced at around $20 each. Each episode will take an average 6 hours to complete.

This is a very interesting model, as Ritual has the benefit of creating a much smaller game and adding more creative and innovative elements to the game. If some things do not work, it can be removed or modified in upcoming episodes. The first episode will be released in Winter 2005 and will be called Emergence. It will introduce all the major characters of the SiN universe and set the stage for future episodes.

At the end of the original SiN (hehe), Elexis manages to escape and thus conveniently sets the premise for her to continue her nefarious activities in SiN Episodes. The action starts off in Freeport City, a near future city that is part Tokyo and part New York. Blade gets a new sidekick Jessica Cannon at his side. Early screenshots reveal a lot of vehicle combat, i.e. driving and shooting, with Cannon at the wheel. Blade can seemingly shift between any seat in the car and even lean out the window to get a better shot, but at the risk of getting hit.

Ritual have thrown in a wide array of innovations into the Source engine. The first is ‘Context Look’, where NPCs in game will know and respond dynamically to where Blade is looking, by the direction in which you are pointing the crosshair. The AI is much more advanced and enemies have improved damage location systems. They have also added the ability for players to grab and hold items in their hands as opposed to Half-Life 2 system. Ritual promises that all these new innovations are very important to gameplay and will have serious implications in the game.

A concept still in a tentative stage is the crafting of future episodes based on collective player action. If a choice is presented in the game and a majority of players decide on a similar course of action, the future episodes will be steered toward that similar outcome, based on what players chose. This will be an interesting innovation to see in action.

Final sins.

We’ve all been bombarded with games this year that are trying to take gaming forward in the aesthetic department alone. Some even ventured into new gameplay elements, but this is the first big title to make big waves because of its new distribution and business model. Only time will tell of its success or failure. If it does succeed, this might be the end of publishers and the start of a new era for developers to have complete creative control and the freedom to release smaller chunks of content. Ritual have definitely taken a bold step forward for the industry.

Meshach Thomas