Shadowrun Q&A - Magical Races, Abilities, and Technology

First-person shooters tend to be pretty simple in that you run around a level with a gun and blast everything you see. That formula has remained intact for pretty much the genre's existence. Shadowrun hopes to shake things up by introducing all sorts of dynamic new forms of gameplay. The game is set in a world where magic, which is channeled through a character's essence, and technology coexist, and you can use both to do all sorts of things, such as teleport through walls and glide over the battlefield, in addition to using your guns to pick off enemies from afar and melee attacks to beat them down up close. To learn more, we caught up with Mitch Gitelman, the studio manager of FASA Studios, the internal Microsoft group developing the game. Shadowrun is being developed for the Xbox 360 and PC, and it will ship later this year.

GameSpot: Shadowrun is a game that's not easy to describe. It's sort of like Counter-Strike with magic, but that just scratches the surface of what the game involves. How do you describe Shadowrun to others?

Mitch Gitelman: I tell them that Shadowrun is a team-based first-person shooter that blends ancient magic, modern weapons, and advanced technology. In Shadowrun, gamers can play an elf, dwarf, human, or troll, and each has unique abilities. Each round of the game, gamers get an opportunity to buy new tech, magic, and weapons to grow and customize their character to match their play style. The tech and magic in the game give you new combat actions to combine, which allow you to outsmart and outplay your enemy.

GS: Let's briefly go over each of the races. First, tell us about the humans. As we understand it, the humans are the most balanced of the races. So what are they good at?

MG: When you apply technology to your body, you can channel less magic. This is true for all the races. Humans have a natural facility with technology, so they take less of a penalty to their magical essence when they use it.

GS: Next up are the elves. What are their pros and cons? We know that the elves are the most magical race, but how badly does this impact their use of technology?

MG: Because the elves have the most essence, you are limiting their potential to use a lot of magic simultaneously [by using technology]. For example, without applying the technological ability to see through walls, an elf could teleport three times in a row with no delay but wouldn't see the enemy waiting for him on the other side of a wall. With enhanced vision, he could see the enemies through the wall but only teleport twice.

GS: The dwarves "soak" in magic around them, basically making them magic neutralizers. But what else are dwarves good for in Shadowrun?

MG: My strategy is to use dwarves as scrappy short-range fighters. They're short, so people often fire over their heads. And when they're close to you, your magical powers can't come into play.

GS: Finally, the troll is the "tank" of the game, capable of absorbing huge amounts of damage. But what can you tell us about the troll's capabilities?

MG: With the proper application of magic and technology, a well-played troll is a very scary thing. Trolls do more melee damage than the other races, but they're slow. A 12-foot-tall troll with wired reflexes and a sword can be across a map dicing you up in seconds.

GS: Fans of the Shadowrun universe know that there's a fifth race in the mythology, though it's missing from this game. Why were the orks left out?

MG: Because we hates the nasty orks, my precious.

The real answer is time. When you make a game, you need to make hard decisions about what gets into it. When you start a project, you want everything you can think of; as you create schedules and task lists, you realize that you can't fit everything into the box. That doesn't mean that we won't consider putting orks in a later version of Shadowrun.

Magical Mayhem with Guns

GS: Could you give us a brief overview of the magical abilities in the game? What are they, and what can you do with them?

MG: Remember that every ability in Shadowrun has plenty of depth to it. These descriptions are just the top-line uses of the abilities:

Tree of life summons a magical tree that heals anyone standing beneath it. Resurrection breathes life into the bodies of dead allies. Teleport moves you instantly through walls, floors, ceilings, and enemies. Smoke turns you into smoke, allowing weapon fire to pass through you. Gust pushes objects and characters away from you. Summon calls upon an astral creature to fight for you. And strangle grows crystals that block movement and trap characters.

GS: Now let's do the same with the technological abilities. How many are there, and what do they do?

MG: These descriptions just scratch the surface of their uses:

Glider unfolds backpack wings to let you jump higher and fall slower with great maneuverability. Enhanced vision uses ocular implants to show your character through walls, floors, and objects. Smartlink wires your gun and brain together for more accuracy and no friendly fire. Wired reflexes jack your nervous system so you move, reload, and jump faster. And the antimagic generator is a sticky grenade that destroys summoned objects and creatures and sucks essence from characters.

In addition to the top-line and subtle uses of each tech and magic ability is the variety of cool stuff you can do when you combine them together in different combat scenarios to get the drop on the enemy or turn the tide of a battle. You've got to try it to truly appreciate it.

GS: What was the thinking behind stuffing all of these wild powers and abilities into a shooter? After all, how did you come up with the idea that being able to see and teleport through walls is a good thing?

MG: We looked at the fun we had with other shooters and realized that a lot of people were having a lot of fun with the cheats and hacks. We thought that if a lot of people were having fun cheating, why not make the cheats into features and balance them so everyone could use them?

GS: There's an interesting variety of weapons in the game, ranging from katana swords to chainguns. What was the process for integrating weapons with all of the magical and technological abilities?

MG: The weapons in the game each have a clear battlefield role, and they are very real-world oriented so that their role was immediately understandable to new players. Our magic and tech abilities allow for all sorts of interesting new gameplay, and we wanted the weapons to be solid, dependable, and "knowable." [They serve as] the control group that the tech and magic revolve around.

The weapons were basically created on a continuum with one another to make sure that at a basic first-person shooter level, they worked and were balanced. Then we put them into play with each piece of tech and magic as they came online to see what broke. Once something was perceived to be broken, adjustments ensued. While everyone on the team gave a lot of feedback (a lot of it loud and profane), our lead multiplayer designer, Sage Merrill, made the calls and balanced the gameplay.

GS: Finally, Shadowrun is a game packed with all sorts of wild moments because you can string together magic and tech to create all sorts of outcomes. Do you have a favorite that you'd like to share?

MG: Oh man, where do I start? It seems like every game of Shadowrun produces a "water cooler moment."

I don't know if this is my favorite, but there was one where a dwarf was mercilessly pounded by a troll firing a minigun at pretty short range. It looked like the dwarf was about to take the big dirt nap. He turned to fire his shotgun, but that only managed to anger the troll. At the last minute, the dwarf teleported backward through a wall three stories above the ground. The troll followed him out onto a catwalk to see what happened as the little dwarf turned on his glider wings, switched to his sniper rifle, and got a perfect headshot while gliding backward above the battlefield. How do you create an achievement to cover that?

GS: Thank you, Mitch.