Syberia ii.1/6/2024 ![]() "Even the snow will change depending on where you are, gradually getting heavier as you proceed in the game and go further north. "It's been a real challenge to put these things into the game, but we wanted to really bring off the feeling of winter weather, as it emphasizes the new settings so well," Beaudry commented. Shadow and lighting effects are major new features. "Winter-type scenes" will be the norm, and these settings will be accentuated with the addition of animated snow that will either fall lightly or pound down as part of a blizzard, depending on the time and locale. According to project manager Marie-Sol Beaudry, the developers are moving the setting "steadily further north," so there will be more of an alpine flavor to everything. Much of the adventure will take place outdoors. Fewer touchstones link Kate with the corporate world this time, meaning you can forget about having cell-phone conversations with your colleagues in New York. While the first game took Kate on a journey from her businesslike lifestyle in the USA into a steadily more surreal land populated by odd creatures like the C-3PO-like automaton Oscar, the new game takes place wholly in this strange new world. Sokal also visits Montreal for a few days every month, usually bringing along new concept sketches to be used in "brainstorming sessions" with the artists busy putting together Syberia II's new landscapes.Īll these new regions will be quite different in character from those in Syberia. ![]() Design team members keep in constant contact with Sokal, sharing ideas over the phone in lengthy conversations that take place almost every day. As with the original Syberia, Sokal has written the script for the sequel and provided hundreds of concept sketches outlining his vision of everything from the "future gothic" architecture that made the first game so striking to the quirky facial features of the characters Kate and Hans will encounter during their expedition. While the game itself is being fully designed and programmed at Microïds' Montreal offices, the French novelist and artist Benoit Sokal (perhaps best known for his Amerzone graphic novel, which was adapted into an adventure game in 1999) is overseeing the project from his studios in Paris. One thing that hasn't changed with the new game is its chief inspiration. There will also be more interaction with the environment, similar to what we did in the Komkolzgrad world in Syberia." The snowy streets of Romansbourg. As you will now be living the adventure with Hans instead of following around after him, trying to find him, there will be more dramatic action, more people, more life in the settings. No arcade elements or anything like that, but we've made the story more dynamic with more exciting things happening to Kate. "We've also added more action to the story line. "We've added a lot of new features in comparison with the original Syberia, changed some of the focus and improved the graphics so that we can do things like animated snow and ice, complex real-time shadows, and so on," said production manager Stephane Grefford by way of introduction. The game's designers walked us through the new story line, showcased a number of enhanced features, and displayed a tech demo of some nearly completed locations. We were offered an exclusive first look at Syberia II and a chance to sit down with the project leads for a discussion about the upcoming game. Anyone who completed the first game must have been aware that a sequel was in the planning stages, a suspicion that we confirmed with a visit to the Microïds development studio in Montreal last week. While erstwhile corporate lawyer Kate Walker may have found missing toy creator Hans Voralberg at the end of her travels, many plotlines were left unresolved. Perhaps the only disappointing part of Syberia was that the game didn't really come to a satisfying conclusion. What's more, it wrapped those logical puzzles in a sleek package that featured an involving story and some of the most eccentric visuals seen in a mass-market American game since the very Euro-chic The Longest Journey arrived stateside in 2000. Unlike so many of its recent predecessors, Syberia actually made sense. ![]() Stylish, surreal settings attracted the attention of casual gamers, and puzzle design that emphasized actual thinking over the frustrating "use everything in your inventory and see what happens" style of game brought a lot of lapsed adventure gamers back into the fold. The adventure game from Microïds may not quite have revitalized the flagging adventure genre, but it was a certifiable hit in both Europe and America last year. Surprise hits don't come any more surprising than Syberia.
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