Ritualistic

Musically, will SiN Episodes be familiar territory for players of the first game, or are you shooting for something new?

Zak Belica: Technically, the music will be changing to more of an incidental model - music will appear only when it's appropriate to the situation. I've found this approach works well in SiN Episodes as I've put in a very strong sound design element to the game. Valve has given us some great audio technology, and I'm pushing it to provide as immersive a world as possible.

Additionally, we'll be having some Episode theme music, most notably the song What's The World Come To. The song features Sarah Ravenscroft on vocals, and lyrically echoes the ideas put forth in this Episode. Look for regular and remix versions of this track soon.

Taking the Magnum for a spin.

Zak Belica: Yes, the principals from Sin will be returning, including Eric Mills as Blade, Hanna Logan as Elexis and Billy O'Sullivan as JC. However, the Sin universe has gotten quite a bit darker since the first game, and their characters will all reflect this. We'll also have some new talent as well. The role of Jessica will be played by Jen Taylor, who many of you will know as the voice of Cortana in the Halo series. She's a very versatile actress, and the part of Jessica will allow Jen to be a bit more sassy than other roles you've heard her in. Also in the production is David Scully as Radek the crime lord, who's made an appearance in many other Ritual games as well as the Halo series.

Each week you pose a new question to the community to get their feedback on all kinds of issues related to game design and development. How big is the impact of these "Question of the Week" threads on the development process?

Michael Russell: When I started doing the Question of the Week back in January, I was doing it to try to learn what Ritual's audience expected from the company. After all, Ritual was my re-emergence into the video game industry after working at Microsoft Game Studios on golf and snowboarding for five years. Gradually, it transformed into something where the questions are targeted to find out specific, community-requested solutions to problems we are seeing in either "SiN: Episodes" or other unannounced titles.

You'd be amazed at the impact that some of these questions have had on "SiN: Episodes." For example, a recent question on load times and quantity of gameplay led to some of our levels being split into as many as four smaller chunks. A recent question on feature enhancements to the Source engine showed that people wanted some stuff we had already implemented in the engine, and got gears grinding about how to use other requested features in future episodes.

Ritual's Play Testing Program, allowing gamers from the Dallas area to come in and play Ritual's latest projects, was launched earlier this year. How is that working out for you guys and how have the testers responded to SiN Episodes so far?

Michael Russell: The Play Testing Program has been amazingly useful for our developers, level designers and artists. By having fresh eyes come in on a regular basis, we can quickly prototype a feature or level, get it in front of the public, and find out if it's something the public likes, or a feature that only we like because we're game geeks who think it's "cool."

To date, we've had about 30 groups of testers come in and play through fairly large chunks of "SiN: Episodes." The response from our playtesters has been overwhelmingly positive. It's always pleasant to hear comparisons to "Half-Life 2" and "Halo 2" from your testers.

It's also been great to know that the time estimates we've been giving to the community have been pretty accurate. The absolute best players that we've brought in were able to get through the first episode in about 5-6 hours. The average player took significantly longer. However, we're still sticking with "4-6 hours of gameplay per episode" as the promise.

SiN Episodes once again takes us to a variety of environments grounded in reality.

Michael Russell: Our current focus is finishing up Episode 1. While some assets have been created for multiplayer already, we want to get "Emergence" done and out the door so we can then focus all of our efforts on creating the best possible multiplayer experience. On the upside, when we do get multiplayer working, that's a situation where we might be able to expand our testing program beyond Dallas city limits, if you know what I mean (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

Steve Hessel: The reaction to the survey has been great. We’ve had several thousand responses so far, which will provide a comprehensive basis for us once we start shifting resources over to multiplayer.

Obviously digital content delivery through Steam opens the door for all sorts of possibilities, including the release of the original SiN. Do you have any plans in that regard?

Steve Hessel: Steam is an excellent platform for getting your game content directly to your audience and putting the original SiN out on Steam has been one of our goals from the start. The version of the SiN that will go up on Steam will be slightly different from the retail version in several regards. The most profound change is probably the way multiplayer works – it is fully integrated with Steam, so the game now uses the Steam server browser and you will be able to use the friends system to track your fellow SiNners. The game also uses a new sound driver, which should alleviate issues with Soundblaster cards, and there are several other small fixes here and there.

We will have more information on the Steam launch of the original SiN shortly.

Is the game still set for a release this year?

Steve Hessel: Yup, we’re still on track for a release late this year. We’re currently eyeing the very end of fall to release SiN Episodes: Emergence.

That's all for now, folks. We would like to thank the SiN Episodes development team for their time. Keep checking Ritualistic for the latest news and information regarding SiN Episodes!

Related Information:
· SiN Episodes screenshots
· SiN Episodes game section
· SiN Episodes forum
· Official SiN Episodes website