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Starhawk is built on a fantastic and
loved fast-paced recipe.
It’s got the fantastic multiplayer game play that our fans expect,
a rich new universe,
a solo campaign, and
a phenomenally exciting, new mechanic in the game called Build & Battle,
a system that allows players to build structures dynamically on the fly,
and make the battlefield play the way they want to play at that time.
Warhawk was loved around the world by all of our fans.
It was really built on a fast paced,
multi-dimensional game play over really broad landscapes.
We wanted to go one step further.
We really felt that the opportunity was great to make a brand new,
stand out approach to the shooter genre.
And that’s what led us to Starhawk.
In Starhawk, the universe is in the future,
in the distant reaches of the galaxy,
a place we call “The Frontier.”
A set of human colonies have been built up over a number of years,
Really kind of fueled by what we call “The Rush”,
kind of our gold rush analogue for Rift Energy.
As these Rifters, which is our short term for Rift Miners,
were mining Rift Energy,
they found that it was incredibly potent,
but exposure to Rift Energy causes them to become infected.
The Rift Energy permeates their body,
包括他們的心靈跟外觀
and they end up becoming enraged,
hell bent to protect the rifts from the Rifters.
And that’s one of the factions in our game, the Outcast.
And they form these roaming war bands
that go from corner to corner in the frontier,
all the distant colonies,
and really that’s at the heart of the conflict in our game.
We didn’t want it to just be two factions.
We wanted there to be a face, a character that,
in our now included single player campaign,
that would really connect with players.
That’s where our character Emmett Graves comes in.
He and his brother, a family operation,
had a rift claim out on a distant planet,
and as is unfortunate and common in the frontier,
an Outcast war band rolled in and destroyed their extractor.
The rig exploded. As what happens with exposure to rift energy,
both brothers were directly exposed.
Now of course, their gear man, Sidney Cutter,
who was up in the drop ship above saw all of this happen…
Cutter VO: Yeah, this is what happens when those mangy
creatures take over. It’s a shame I tell you.
Cutter was able to modify some of his equipment to create this regulator device,
and in this horrible procedure,
implanted it directly into Emmett’s spine.
It’s almost a curse.
It’s incredibly painful for Emmett,
and now he bears the mark,
the brand of an Outcast warrior, and he became outcast himself.
And so Emmett ended up being a hired gun, like a gunslinger,
protecting claims, going to colonies that were being attacked by Outcast war bands.
Anybody that comes out here has a plan or a problem.
I came back with both.
And so Emmett and Cutter take the rift salvaging operation to protect White Sands,
a small colony on the distant moon of Dust,
from an Outcast war band.
And so that’s the start of the game.
Emmett was the hero that they needed, but they didn’t want.
And not only is that conflict at the core of the game’s story and fiction and universe,
but it’s actually core to our exciting new system
in the game called Build & Battle.
We decided to say, all right, what if the battlefield was just the landscape,
a beautifully rendered canvas
onto which the player could customize in a fast, violent, brutal way
that matches the game play that they expected from Warhawk.
And that’s what Build & Battle is.
It’s a quick, brutal system
to allow the player to build wall structures and bases and bunkers and towers
and all of these other units and structures in the game
to fit how they want to play,
not only in single player, but in multiplayer.
It’s about telling the player, here’s a combat challenge,
and here’s all the tools you have to solve it,
solve it how you want.
Right there in front of the player…not turn based.
Right there on the battlefield you are building all of these structures.
Players love it,
not only in single player but in multiplayer.
It’s as fast paced and as quick and
as brutal as pulling a trigger on a weapon.
That’s what we wanted.
We didn’t want players to have to really manage anything.
And another fantastic thing about Build & Battle is
that all the buildings are destructible,
and the firefights evolve from there.
Buildings are destroyed. Buildings are rebuilt.
That freedom, that potential game play takes the great multiplayer recipe
we had from Warhawk and just extends it.
Starhawk is the spiritual successor to Warhawk,
but it’s the Build & Battle system which really sweetens up the whole game.
The team and I are just crazy proud of it.
It not only gives you a fantastic,
infinitely re-playable solo experience,
but the changes that it does to the online multiplayer experience is remarkable,
and I think players are not going to expect that,
but once they get it, they’ll want it all the time.