Shadowrun developer justifies absence of single player campaign

Mitch Gitelman, studio manager for FASA, sure is busy these days, granting interviews to promote their upcoming cyberpunk RPG Shadowrun. Previously, we covered his interview with GameSpot, where he provided a little more insight into the game. After finding out about the characters, the weapons, as well as the general environment of the game, it’s now time to know more about the features in store for us.

Proudly describing Shadowrun as “the best game FASA Studio has ever made”, Gitelman explains how the Live system works, and how it is different from Xbox Live. He expounds, “…it is Live, but on Windows Vista. The rest of the Xbox LIVE features, like Marketplace are coming later.” So for now, you can expect to be able to have voicechat, as well as create a Friends list while earning achievements.

However, if you’re a fan of single player campaigns, you’d be disappointed as there won’t be any here. That’s because the developers realized, while on the process of creating the single player scenarios, that the multiplayer game already stood completely on its own. “It was that good,” he raves. “That’s when we came up with the idea of making Shadowrun the first cross-platform shooter so everyone could play it together. All we had to do was convince Shane Kim and Peter Moore we could do it and the Live Anywhere Vision was born.”

As to why they will only ship about eight to ten maps in the game, when all other FPS games release a lot more than that, Gitelman says that’s because the maps here are way more complex to design and execute. And we’re bound to believe him. After all, you can teleport through walls, floors and ceilings here. And that’s apart from gliding across the battlefield and spying on enemies through solid objects!

FASA has really high standards and we would rather ship a few maps that are great than a bunch of mediocre ones so we have a marketing bullet point that says “over 15 maps” or something. We have a bunch of maps that’ll never see the light of day. And let’s be honest, how many Counter-Strike maps actually get used? Less than a handful. Two I can think of. Remember that the maps in Shadowrun are the same eight to ten maps we’ve been playing for years and still love to play.

Mitch Gitelman, studio manager for FASA, sure is busy these days, granting interviews to promote their upcoming cyberpunk RPG Shadowrun. Previously, we covered his interview with GameSpot, where he provided a little more insight into the game. After finding out about the characters, the weapons, as well as the general environment of the game, it’s now time to know more about the features in store for us.

Proudly describing Shadowrun as “the best game FASA Studio has ever made”, Gitelman explains how the Live system works, and how it is different from Xbox Live. He expounds, “…it is Live, but on Windows Vista. The rest of the Xbox LIVE features, like Marketplace are coming later.” So for now, you can expect to be able to have voicechat, as well as create a Friends list while earning achievements.

However, if you’re a fan of single player campaigns, you’d be disappointed as there won’t be any here. That’s because the developers realized, while on the process of creating the single player scenarios, that the multiplayer game already stood completely on its own. “It was that good,” he raves. “That’s when we came up with the idea of making Shadowrun the first cross-platform shooter so everyone could play it together. All we had to do was convince Shane Kim and Peter Moore we could do it and the Live Anywhere Vision was born.”

As to why they will only ship about eight to ten maps in the game, when all other FPS games release a lot more than that, Gitelman says that’s because the maps here are way more complex to design and execute. And we’re bound to believe him. After all, you can teleport through walls, floors and ceilings here. And that’s apart from gliding across the battlefield and spying on enemies through solid objects!

FASA has really high standards and we would rather ship a few maps that are great than a bunch of mediocre ones so we have a marketing bullet point that says “over 15 maps” or something. We have a bunch of maps that’ll never see the light of day. And let’s be honest, how many Counter-Strike maps actually get used? Less than a handful. Two I can think of. Remember that the maps in Shadowrun are the same eight to ten maps we’ve been playing for years and still love to play.