Shadowrun Returns - Interview @ GameInformer

GameInformer interviwed Executive Producer Mitch Gitelman about the games inspirations, and his response to critics of certain game features.

If you had another several months of development time before release, what features would the team have focused on to develop and/or improve?

On the engineering side, without a doubt, our save game system. From a content perspective, we would have liked to see more optional shadowruns. There’s always more you want to tweak but those are the two big-ticket items. 

Some have criticized the game’s approach to tutorials and teaching new features to the player. Is it a challenge to balance in-game tutorials against the desire to keep players involved and moving forward in the story?

It is a challenge. There are excellent games out there that blend their tutorials with their narrative seamlessly. There are others where you feel that you need to wade through the b.s. justification for going a step at a time. Shadowrun Returns has been praised for its writing and for getting its tone right. The combination of time, budget, and our focus on getting the tone and story right caused us to prioritize tutorials this way.  Plus, the game has a very old school sensibility about it and our tutorials are no exception.

What response do you have to players who feel that the campaign is overly linear for an RPG?

I refer to your earlier question. Harebrained Schemes is a small studio working with a small budget and made a good looking RPG with a classless character creation system, fun combat, and a decent story in about a year and priced it at only $20. The games we’re being compared to often have 10-100 times the budget and team size and sell for as much as $60. 

But my most important response is that we invested enormous time, budget, and effort to create an editor that allows people to unlock their creativity and create their own stories which players can download from Steam at no extra charge. 

I am very, very proud of the team and our accomplishment.