Irrational Games Australia is a newly formed branch of the successful Irrational Games development studio that has been around since 1997 in Boston. The Australian Branch's first title will be Freedom Force. Irrational Games created the critically acclaimed System Shock 2, and members of the Freedom Force team have worked on Thief, Ultima Underworld and the original System Shock.
An Age of Heroes
Irrational Games has stated many times that they are bringing to life a game that many have discussed but few have attempted: a game all about superheroes. A tactical, squad-based RPG set around a small group of heroes who progress from mission to mission has been the stated design plan of Freedom Force. Now, as it gets within a year of release, more details are emerging. The game will be very deliberately set in the "golden era" of the comic book age, in New York circa 1962 and with its appropriate atmosphere.
The story revolves around an alien race that has conquered most of the galaxy, and in order to conquer earth, they have decided to bring down order from within by exposing the most notoriously evil people on Earth to a mysterious force called Energy X, which will give them super powers. However, a rebel alien disagrees with the scheme, and secretly heads for Earth to find some heroic people to give Energy X to. He is, however, shot down in Earth's atmosphere and his Energy X is dispersed, forcing him to travel around finding the people who have been given the super powers by chance exposure to Energy X. Other than this brief introduction, Irrational Games has kept mostly quiet about the backstory details of Freedom Force.
We Are All Heroes
Freedom Force is a multi-character RPG that lets you control a team of superheroes from a third-person perspective and is being billed by Irrational as a complex, tactical RPG. In the single-player game, the player will start out as the alien who crashes on earth, with his own super powers, and then the player must immediately begin recruiting those who have been exposed to Energy X. Other than the main character, in the single player game, all heroes are pre-built by the game itself and there will be roughly twenty in all. The game itself is mission-based according to various interviews, and will take place mostly in New York in the 1960s, in an attempt to recapture a more innocent era in comic book history than the current dark, gritty nature of comics. However, in keeping with the evolution of comics in the 1960s, the heroes will not be utterly perfect paragons of virtue, but will have some flaws and be slightly more realistic.
Missions will be largely combat-oriented, with the player controlling up to four super-heroes at once out of a larger pool of roughly twenty in all. Irrational has stated that several examples of mission types that will be featured include: hostage rescue, foiling bank robberies, straight out fights, and saving civilians from harm. The game, according to the designers, plays somewhat like a real-time strategy game in the actual mission mode, but will also have a management mode, which is in effect when you are not on combat missions. You return to your base, or go out an recruit new heroes to the pool you can use on your missions.
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