My questions:
- Could you describe your usual pre-production design process? Is there one leading creative person (designer) who has strong vision about story and gameplay and the others only help him with details? Or is it always cooperation of more people?
- How much effort you put into characters in order to make them more unique? Because generally speaking you often see peasants, rulers, warrior-types, harsh or oppressed or crazy… but you rarely see compassion in games, for example. Or brave diplomat-type who is neither warrior nor corrupted politician.
- I noticed that you (Mrs. Jehanne Rousseau) write dialogues for your games with few of your colleagues (like Fabrice Colin). You are probably one of the few bosses in the world who writes for games.
Could you tell us something about your writing experience, inspiration or education? What do you like about it?
- How do you revise your writing? What if your colleagues have very different opinions like "this NPC is too cheesy", "no, he is ok", "we need more intelligent NPC in this area, write it again from the scratch", "he should make a joke, this text is boring…" etc.?
- For Mars you employed few specialist writers (Taliespin) in order to enhance english translation. Do you cooperate with them regularly now?
- Usual challenge for RPG developers is make quests interesting, avoid too many generic kill/fedex quests. How do you cope with this challenge?
- This question is partially related to the previous one. Could we expect more usefull items (aside from weapons/armors/rings/amulets), more interactive objects in game world, maybe even small puzzles in your future games?
- One of the most interesting (and controversial) idea in Mars: War Logs was that killing people (finish them off after fight) is bad regardless if they attacked you or not. There was an idea about preciousness of life and harsh conditions that forces ppl to be bad to survive. Do you want to use this idea again in the future, expand it or make it more understandable in the narrative? Because I noticed that some players didnt understand it (or didnt want to understand it).
- There is general trend of dark games. But sometimes it feels like popcorn darkness, heroes showing off etc. Whats your opinion about it? Is it very risky to bring non-dark RPG to the market nowadays?
- You (Jehanne Rousseau) said in one interview that you like bizarre worlds. Probably something like Torment: Tides of Numenera settings (or even more bizzare?). Do you plan a game in such world, especially considering success of new Torment on KS?
- Of Orcs and Men is about orcs fighting vs tyranical humans. I can easily imagine it could be a base for sci-fi game. You will play alien being who was chased out of his home planet by "United Federation of the Only True Democratic Corporations" consisting of few species including humans. Your goal is to strike back and liberate your planet. Something like a mix of Firefly + Empire Strikes Back with (mostly) aliens. What do you think about this idea?
- Can you tell us something about Mars: Paradise Lost you are working on? At least if Roy will be again the main hero or NPC this time?
- Two things I would like to see in Mars: Paradise Lost are bigger areas (not some expensive open world, just bigger and more open) and small survival element(s) like thirst + exposure to the sun (which is appropriate for Mars setting). The basic idea is that player can choose between less risky (shielded from sun) but better guarded route or more open and risky route (with places exposed to the sun) but also less guarded. He could specialise the hero to be better fighter/technomancer or better survivalist who withstand exposure longer etc. It can enhance whole RPG system, but it needs somewhat bigger areas. What do you think about it?
- Do you plan to release Mars: Paradise Lost on PC?
- What do you miss or dont like in contemporary RPGs?
- Imagine for a while you have budget like Bioware. Is there some franchise or type of game you would love to create?
And the last but not least - big THANK you for your time.
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Its probably enough for now.
Note for Couch - sometimes there are two questions grouped but its actually one question, one topic.
