This is a post more for turn-based strategy/RPG fans than Fallout fans. NowGamer offers an interesting interview with Julian Gollop, who is best-known for his work on the turn-based strategy-RPG series X-COM. That series is now getting an FPS reboot (sound familiar?), but once upon a time was set to get a spiritual successor/remake that was to be turn-based but different. Who messed it up? Interplay after being taken over by Titus and Herve Caen.<blockquote>What can you tell us about the cancelled The Dreamland Chronicles: Freedom Ridge project for Virgin, which was rumoured, in spirit, to be a full 3D version of your original X-COM game?
Yes, it was designed as a sort of remake of X-COM for PC and PlayStation 2, and it was looking very promising actually. We were using a lot of new technology, including the Havok physics engine, which was very new at that stage. At the time we were one of the very few companies that were using it.
It was quite an ambitious project – the closest thing I can relate it to is probably Valkyria Chronicles on the PS3. We had a third-person camera view behind your character with a bar representing your Action Points, which went down as you moved.
When you went into shooting mode it went into a first-person view and you could select snap shots or aimed shots, which altered the size of an aiming circle on screen. So you did the shooting from that view, and went back to the third-person view to move your characters. In fact, when I first played Valkyria Chronicles it was quite eerie because it was a very similar system to what we had with Dreamland.
We also had an interesting destructible terrain system with lots of physics, so you could blow holes in buildings with a rocket launcher and see all the brickwork fly around, then move through the gaps, it was quite advanced for its time. Unfortunately Virgin got taken over by Interplay, who in turn got taken over by Titus Interactive.
Titus had no interest in what we were doing – they were only after Interplay’s assets, and they cancelled the project. But because we had a four-game deal with Virgin and had only done one game for them – Magic & Mayhem – we had no choice but to wind up the company at that point.</blockquote>
Yes, it was designed as a sort of remake of X-COM for PC and PlayStation 2, and it was looking very promising actually. We were using a lot of new technology, including the Havok physics engine, which was very new at that stage. At the time we were one of the very few companies that were using it.
It was quite an ambitious project – the closest thing I can relate it to is probably Valkyria Chronicles on the PS3. We had a third-person camera view behind your character with a bar representing your Action Points, which went down as you moved.
When you went into shooting mode it went into a first-person view and you could select snap shots or aimed shots, which altered the size of an aiming circle on screen. So you did the shooting from that view, and went back to the third-person view to move your characters. In fact, when I first played Valkyria Chronicles it was quite eerie because it was a very similar system to what we had with Dreamland.
We also had an interesting destructible terrain system with lots of physics, so you could blow holes in buildings with a rocket launcher and see all the brickwork fly around, then move through the gaps, it was quite advanced for its time. Unfortunately Virgin got taken over by Interplay, who in turn got taken over by Titus Interactive.
Titus had no interest in what we were doing – they were only after Interplay’s assets, and they cancelled the project. But because we had a four-game deal with Virgin and had only done one game for them – Magic & Mayhem – we had no choice but to wind up the company at that point.</blockquote>
Thank you for the article, I've never heard of it before.
