Interview

The man speaks

Answered by Dave Georgeson, producer of Tribes 2:

FiringSquad: The big news on most folks' lips as of recent is the pushback of Tribes 2's release date. Were there any problems that arose? I've heard a lot of new dates running the length of December all the way to February. Do you guys have a solid date you are shooting for?

Dave G: Our goal is to ship Tribes 2 by end of the year. It's a very highly anticipated title and we think there are enough gamers out there waiting to buy it to merit a delay that is designed to let us polish the title to a high sheen before releasing it.

Walking on air?

This is hereby officially dubbed one of the most beautiful screenshots known to man.

FiringSquad: Skiing was definitely a major, if unintended, gameplay feature in Tribes. However we have seen in interviews that skiing was on the revisions list and from what we saw at E3, it was quite limited. Yet you have always stated that it's not a final decision and is always open to change. So how is skiing right now in the beta? More importantly, what is your reasoning behind changing it in the first place?

Dave G: When we tested the idea of limiting skiing in our "BasePlus" mod, it had a highly artificial cap put on it that was arbitrary and wrong-feeling.

However, what it did for gameplay was pretty much in line with what we wanted. Therefore, (and in response to fan suggestion), we implemented an "air resistance" model that allows high speeds, but slows larger objects down faster, thus putting a limit on ski speeds, but still letting you get that incredible "flying" feeling that "Tribes" is famous for.

Quick flag pass!

This poor capper

FiringSquad: About a month ago Tribes: World Domination was announced, but we haven't heard much about it since. It's being billed as an official, multinational tournament with allusions to the PGL and other matters. Is there anything else you can say about it? Has Dynamix ironed out sponsors, or decided how the elimination will work?

Dave G: We stopped talking about it for two reasons:

1) We need to get the main game done before we start working on promotional and fan events, and

2) We have some serious infrastructure to design and implement for Leagues and Ladders and we (at Dynamix) don't typically announce details without being sure we can implement them.

You aren't going anywhere buddy.

Just hide out here on this big stone music box looking thing and none will be the wiser.

FiringSquad: Just recently we began to see the 'Prophecy of Tears', your pre-release introduction to the storyline in Tribes 2. I have to say, not only is it very good fiction, but there is also a lot of it. The story in the original game was something akin to "We can't use robots anymore, gotta go on foot now" and that was, by and large, the lot of it. However, with Tribes 2 it is very obvious you guys are spending a lot of energy and thought on the storyline. Is it mostly to setup the background, or will there be a fully functional plot in the single player with cutscenes, interactive dialogue, and who knows what?

Dave G: The single player (in "Tribes 2") is primarily a fun, involving way to train a player for multiplayer combat. Yes, there is a story, but it's in no way designed to compete against the "Half Life's" out there. The background that we're developing is written by Blake Hutchins, our on-staff writer, who collaborates with the design team in coming up with interesting story elements that allow growth in the game in ways that we want to expand in the future with the franchise. He's dang good at it, and we're very happy to have him on the team. Future efforts in the Tribes franchise are likely to have more story involvement than T2 does, and that's why we're setting the story up now.