Tribes 2 Talk

One of this year's most anticipated games is Tribes 2, the sequel to 1998's surprise hit, Starsiege: Tribes. The multiplayer-oriented first-person action game has survived countless reorganizations at Sierra and Dynamix, and is now only a few months away from finally releasing to store shelves nationwide. We sat down with the game's producer, Dave Georgeson, to talk about Tribes 2's progress since it was last shown at the E3 convention in May. When you're done reading the short interview, click on the thumbnail above to take a look at some brand-new shots taken from the game.

GameSpot: A lot of the hardcore Tribes fans have attributed the game's success to its lead designer Scott Youngblood. Since he's now no longer with Dynamix, is the focus of Tribes 2 changing from the first in any way?

Dave Georgeson: The focus of Tribes has always been on team tactics. That hasn't changed at all. The fact that Scott isn't involved in Tribes 2 has actually made very little difference. The large majority of the team was involved in Tribes 1, and they've moved over to Tribes 2 intact. Even the folks that weren't on the original team were all dedicated Tribes 1 players, so they're very interested in making Tribes 2 an even better, more involving experience. Players should definitely not be concerned about that particular issue.

GS: It seems you've spent a lot of time working on and perfecting the game's new community interface. Has this taken resources away from the actual game itself?

DG: No. The team is actually quite large. Out of 25 people on the team, 13 of them are programmers. This is an abnormal percentage for this kind of team, but that's because we added folks on specifically to deal with AI and community. It didn't affect the sim part of the game at all.

GS: When Tribes Extreme was canceled, the game's single-player component was supposed to be integrated into Tribes 2. Is that still the case, or is Tribes 2 going to be multiplayer only?

DG: By and large, the code that transferred to Tribes 2 was all AI-based code. Even that wasn't directly moved over - only the theories transferred over. However, the talent that was working on Extreme moved over to Tribes 2 and that's why Extreme was cancelled. But yes, many of the ideas involved in Extreme are now in Tribes 2.

GS: Because of its difficulty, Tribes wasn't very accessible to casual players. Will you be addressing this issue by implementing a more intuitive tutorial?

DG: Yes. The single-player missions are specifically designed to give casual players a way to have fun playing through story-based missions while simultaneously gaining all the information they need to play competently online. Also, players can compete against AI bots in the multiplayer maps so they can gain player vs. player skills before going online also. The bots are pretty dang good now and very player-like in their methods and actions.

GS: When we last saw Tribes 2, there was some uncertainty as to whether or not the game would ship with the Worldcraft editor. Have you decided yet?

DG: We can't ship the Worldcraft editor with our product. It's not ours to ship. However, it's pretty readily available in other places and our exporter does deal with that tool well.

GS: Have Tribe 2's three new weapons been finalized? What are they?

DG: We have way more than three new weapons. There are the guided missile, the shock lance, sticky mines, timed mines, concussion grenades, flare grenades, flash grenades, and an explodable satchel-charge pack.

GS: When is Tribes 2 scheduled for release?

DG: Q3 2000.