Jagged Alliance: Flashback - Thomas Lund Interview

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Pockettactics has an interview with Thomas Lund. The interview gives a few details of the game, but mostly deals with a few personal questions.

Owen Faraday: I don’t think it’s a secret that the key to a successful Kickstarter is nostalgia factor. JA seems to a very big following — it probably rivals XCOM in terms of people’s fondness for it.

Thomas Hentschel Lund: For me personally, it was one of the three original games that defined my youth. You had Fallout, the original X-Com, and you had Jagged Alliance. The turn-based godfathers.

OF: Did Bit Composer develop that real-time Jagged Alliance from last year, or did they license that out?

Lund: They had somebody make that for them. It was a mixed bag. Looking back on it was like that shooter that 2K was going to make in the X-Com universe. Well, maybe not that bad. But you can’t have real-time combat in a Jagged Alliance game. It was good that it got a lot of new players in, I’m not dissing those guys for doing it. They went with what was the safe route at the time. But after XCOM, they saw that the market was ready for turn-based.
We want to stay independent, not work for hire. And that’s what this Kickstarter is all about. We’re going to license the Jagged Alliance property and make a new Jagged Alliance game the way it should be made.

OF: Is there anything that jumps out at you when you play JA2 that makes you think, ‘I can improve this, I can do this better?’

Lund: Not straight off the bat, no. But we have to go back through it — it’s such a big, complex game. There’s a lot of systems to look through.
Thanks go to Kordanor for bringing the article to my attention.


More information.
 
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Oh for Christ's sake… You were perfect until you said this:

"We want to make a new game, a prequel that tells the story of the AIM mercenary organization and gives you the back story of the mercenaries you hire in Jagged Alliance 1 & 2."

PREQUELS SUCK! It's a gimmick. It's lame.

Just make a fucking sequel with most of the same and some new mercs, that's what everyone's been asking for! Not a prequel.

<end rant>
 
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Oh for Christ's sake… You were perfect until you said this:

"We want to make a new game, a prequel that tells the story of the AIM mercenary organization and gives you the back story of the mercenaries you hire in Jagged Alliance 1 & 2."

PREQUELS SUCK! It's a gimmick. It's lame.

Just make a fucking sequel with most of the same and some new mercs, that's what everyone's been asking for! Not a prequel.

<end rant>

You made me smile, thnx :)
But indeed you are right, prequel are the new rage and I too don't like it.
The only exception of course is the Hobbit.
 
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Normally I'd agree. For the same reason I don't like history flicks - I basically know how it ends.

However in this case I don't see it in that light. For me this is more like a "origins" movie. Or like a TV-Series I watched for some seasons and now I finally have the chance to watch the pilot.

And like in a TV Series, where most of the episodes have a closed story with some meta story around it, I think it's very similar here. I mean it's not like JA1 or JA2 tried to make epic stories like Mass Effect. It was all the little stuff, the little character stories and so on which were interesting storywise. That's also the reason why I loved the "Hall of Fame" in JA2.

Of course now you already know the characters and how they will end up.
I mean, sure, for characters which died in the story like Marty "Kaboom" Moffat, it's probably not that interesting because he is dead anyways (at least this is my perspective on it).
But it's also a great chance to see old characters in action which were removed in JA2 like some of my favorites from the first part: "Jimmy", "It" and "Needle".
In addition it might shed some light on the "mystical" story behind "Mike".
They also might use the opportunity to intruduce completely new characters which either might have died in the transition to JA1 or might gone below the radar and then show up in a future JA3.
I mean when you played JA1 and then JA2 I guess you did not expect Hamous showing up after you read about him in the Alumni gallery.
 
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Did anyone play Jagged Alliance for the story?
 
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I would say the story was accedptable in terms of RPG stories, but JA is about combat simulation and freaking turn based people. Whether its a prequal a sequal or whatever, just dont drop the turn based.

Btw I had a chuckle at the comment that the market is ready for turn based. What market is this guy referring to and when was this market not ready for turn based.
 
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The story of JA2 is cheesy as hell. Which is part of its charm. So I don't care if it's a prequel, sequel or alternate universe.

So long as the TB tactics rock and they don't take the story too seriously I'm happy.

So looking forward to this one.
 
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I'm not sure why this is titled "Flashback"...

The story of JA2 is cheesy as hell. Which is part of its charm. So I don't care if it's a prequel, sequel or alternate universe. So long as the TB tactics rock and they don't take the story too seriously I'm happy. So looking forward to this one.

Story can sometimes get in the way. I think that's where they went wrong with the new "X-COM", for instance. It really pisses me off that I had to be made to feel like I was on a step-by-step rapid progression to the end game, one way or another. Completely changed the X-COM vibe, and I really don't understand why so many alleged veteran players of the original weren't complaining about that. Maybe they were just so happy to have anything even pretending to be a remake in spirit they didn't care how different the "spirit" was. Or maybe they were just bullshitting about being old school fans of the original. Anyway, that and the fact they included all the customization options for soldiers in the pre-order ONLY. That pisses me off a lot too, on a personal level rather than a game-design level. Makes no sense to me whatsover they did that, and even less sense that they never rectified the situation. Maybe if everyone who reviewed the game had been playing the actual release version instead of the special pre-order version, some people who matter would have made an appropriate amount of noise about how shitty it was for the developers to do that, and I wouldn't have abandoned the game so quickly. Also, the fucking bugs that make playing Ironman on PC impossible, such as the user interface going into a funky state and then locking up. Still not fixed, as far as I know, even though I saw dozens of complaints about the very same things I saw on the Steam forums, way back then.

Anyway... best not to get too fancy when doing a modernized remake of a classic. What you think is an improvement might be seen as anything but by the very people whose opinion made the game a classic in the first place.
 
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Story can sometimes get in the way. I think that's where they went wrong with the new "X-COM", for instance. It really pisses me off that I had to be made to feel like I was on a step-by-step rapid progression to the end game, one way or another. Completely changed the X-COM vibe, and I really don't understand why so many alleged veteran players of the original weren't complaining about that.

I liked story part and I did like that it isn't true to original.Why?Well because by the time I knew about remake I already backed Xenonauts, which is unfortunately been delayed again(they have active community of beta testers so you can check on their forum to see more about game and what state it's in).If there wasn't true unofficial remake coming I would probably feel same way, but this way I am ok with change of tone because I don't really want 2 very similar games in short period of time.
 
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