The news hit like an 8d6 fireball. Kevin Siembieda, the pioneering game designer and impresario of pencil-and-paper RPG titan Palladium Books, has decided to bring his flagship series to the N-Gage. After watching the full-motion video sequence that featured characters from the Rifts universe mixing it up at Nokia’s E3 press event, everyone has been scrabbling for details. Exactly what kind of RPG is this going to be? Which of the many character classes will be playable? When is the game due?

Nokia is keeping the huge project under a hermetic media seal. However, we did have a chance to sit down with Siembieda himself--as well as Backbone Entertainment Creative Director Trent Ward and Shane Neville of Nokia Games Publishing--to get some additional details on the development process, which has been under way for only a few months.

Siembieda has been approached many times before to cough up the Rifts license, but no game publisher had ever gotten his imprimatur until Nokia. Why the N-Gage? For one thing, Neville and the N-Gage publishing team impressed him with their knowledge of Rifts. “These guys really know and love the game," Siembieda said. "When I finished the conference call with Shane and his team, I turned to my agent and told him we have to do this. Nokia and Backbone are really capturing the look and feel of the game.” Furthermore, Siembieda was impressed with the technical capabilities of the N-Gage, although he had his doubts at first. “I was expecting a lot of limitations with the N-Gage--but Rifts looks amazing on the device. Nokia is really pulling this off the way it needs to be done.”

Ward is also excited to be working on the project--as is the rest of The Backbone development crew. Ward had planned to tell his crew to do their homework, which consisted of reading the Rifts rulebook before development began, but they had already made themselves familiar with the material on their own initiative. “Backbone is a very experienced developer. We’ve done PS2 titles all the way down to mobile games, and for this project, we’ve selected our very best guys from each group to create an ideal blend of knowledge and skills for the N-Gage.”

Neville has already presided over a number of upcoming N-Gage titles, including The Sims and Crash Nitro Cart, but he believes that Rifts will be his most important project yet. “Nobody’s really ever gotten the cyberpunk genre right before in video games, so this is a huge challenge. We’re going to pick out a ton of our favorite details from the books and integrate them into the title to capture the flavor of the Rifts universe."

Because few N-Gage gamers are likely to be familiar with the Rifts universe, Neville said the nuances will be introduced slowly. "We’re well aware that we’re going to be introducing a lot of gamers to Rifts for the first time in this game, so our plan is to start things off slowly and have them build gradually.”

To maintain the integrity of the experience, Rifts’ developers and producers are working hand in hand with Siembieda and Palladium. “I’m being constantly referenced,” Siembieda says. “You never know how much you’ll be involved in these things, but my level of participation has been great.” One illustration of Siembieda’s heavy contribution is the Rifts preview video that was shown at Nokia’s E3 press conference. Siembieda felt that the depiction of the Glitter Boy’s infamous Boom Gun was too small, so Nokia immediately fixed it.

According to Siembieda and Neville, Rifts’ story arc will be built around a number of playable subquests that will eventually combine under the auspices of an overarching plot. Gameplay will be nonlinear in nature, with plenty of twists and new elements to deal with as the player progresses through the game. “As in the role-playing industry, it’s all about the 'wow' factor,” says Siembieda, “And there will be plenty of 'wows' in this one.”

Neville wouldn’t mention any particulars about the story, other than to say that there will be several events in the game where players will have to reconsider their actions and make unexpected decisions. “There’s not going to be too much homogeneous gameplay in Rifts,” he says.

In addition to confirming that Rifts will feature both Bluetooth and Arena functionality, Neville offered this tantalizing comment about Rifts’ multiplayer features: “We’ve been looking at a lot of strategy RPGs and asking ourselves, ‘What can we do that these guys aren’t already doing?’ In Rifts, we’re going to be doing some very neat stuff with multiplayer that will be entirely new.” Neville also stressed the importance of the Rifts project to Nokia by noting that Rifts material both opened and closed the N-Gage’s E3 press conference.

Rifts is slated for release sometime next year--possibly in time for a simultaneous release with a Rifts movie. Siembieda has already signed a deal with Hollywood megaproducer Jerry Bruckheimer for the film rights to the Rifts universe.