News:Interview with Bioware about Sonic Chronicles

12 August 2008

Sega Nerds has an interesting 15-minute interview with Bioware's Lead Designer Miles Holmes about Sonic's upcoming RPG, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood with a description of their gameplay experience. The game has around eleven characters, including Amy Rose, Sonic, Tails and a new character, Shade. It shares a similar save system to Sonic Adventure, which reminded you what was happening in the game when you loaded it up again, as described below:

Fans of Sonic Adventure might remember that when you loaded up a save file, which was half way through the story of one of the characters, they had a small recap to explain what had been going on. Which helped remind players of what needs to be done.

Well Bioware has used a similar idea. When players load their file they are greeted by an extract of a journal, describing key events in the story so far and reminding players of what needs to be done next.

Miles explained that when many gamers play on handhelds they might play for a few hours at a time, but then stop and not go back to the game for a while (I know I do that a lot). Or they might only play in small chunks, on the train or bus. In the case of an RPG, players might need reminding of what’s going on, especially if they haven’t played in a long time - so that’s why they added the journal.

See more of the interview at Sega Nerds.