The Surge - Interview @ Gamereactor

Gamereactor talks to Deck13's Jan Klose about The Surge, the follow-up title to Lords of the Fallen.

We were recently offered the opportunity to talk to Deck13's Jan Klose and find out more about the studio's follow up to Lords of the Fallen. With the studio ditching the fantasy setting of their previous game and parting ways with that game's publisher, we wondered what The Surge was all about, and how the team would take the lessons learned from their last outing and make them count in their next.

Gamereactor: Lords of the Fallen was something new for your studio, do you want to move in the same direction with The Surge or will it be something completely different?

Jan Klose: It is in part something new. We want to keep the things that we really liked about Lords of the Fallen and that players liked. And still, on the other hand, we want to present something that feels totally new. We will keep the core gameplay which for us this duel-based one-on-one combat that we had with Lords of the Fallen. We want to extend this and put it in a whole new universe. So we will deliver new things gameplay wise, as well as setting wise.

GR: Do you want to create a new universe because you're done with Lords of the Fallen, or is it because you have new ideas that you want explore?

JK: There are two things. One thing is that we really felt like we would be repeating ourselves telling another Lords of the Fallen story, and the other thing of course is that publisher CI Games and Deck13 decided that we would not go together for the second instalment of Lords of the Fallen. So we are with a new publisher now with Focus Home Interactive. And of course it makes sense to think about a new universe. It gave us the chance to do something completely new. Like really thinking from scratch.

GR: The universe you're creating for The Surge looks very much like a dystopian future. What happened to make the world look like it does?

JK: We really want to use trends that we have in our world today and want to transform them into the future. So we are not doing a sci-fi game, but it's really like you just said, a dystopian near future. And our idea is really to think about what happens to the world if things were to go on in a bad direction. So what happens if technology advances but it's not in our favour? What happens to the environment under the pressure of worse conditions? So all these things we try to combine together and create some vision of the near future where we place the hero in. And we also think about the companies, the big tech companies, that we have today. What might become of them if they don't turn out to help the people, but maybe harm them? We really want to tell a grownup story and in the end what you see in the pictures is something that was once working and maybe positive, but has taken a terrible turn. The name, The Surge, this is something that happened to the world, but I cannot right now explain exactly what it is. But also the player will only find out in the course of their journey through the game.

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