Phoenix Point - Julian Gollop Interview

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Julian Gollop was interviewed by Wireframe and asked about Phoenix Point, X-COM, Rebelstar and more.

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Looking back through your games, there's a clear throughline from Rebelstar Raiders to Phoenix Point. What's interesting is that you're constantly refining and finding new ways of improving what you've done. So is that like a game in itself, for you, to improve on those ideas?

Yeah, even going back to the original Rebelstar, I had the idea that you had these characters - even though it's a squad-based tactical game - these were characters in a universe and they had a story. There was something bigger and wider and more meaningful going on. Obviously, that was developed quite substantially with the first X-COM game, though with Phoenix Point it's definitely developing it even further, of course. You have soldiers who can develop uniquely in different ways, and as with X-COM, your more powerful soldiers are the ones that you really try to protect and make sure they don't die.

On the other hand, they're really powerful, so you need to use them. But also, on the wider, strategic level, I'm quite obsessed with the idea of linking things at multiple levels in the game, so Phoenix Point has a strategic level which has different factions with their own leaders. Those leaders can have personalities, objectives and agendas which direct their strategic level. You as a player are intervening in this world in ways you can choose, but nonetheless will continue without your intervention.

You touched on this in X-COM Apocalypse, which had multiple factions and alliances and hostilities between them, but it's much more fleshed out in Phoenix Point.

So at the story level, were the factions created to fit the story, or did you write the story to accommodate them?

Yeah, so the original story of the world was created early on. Then we brought in our writing team, which fleshed it out considerably - the world fiction, the backstory of the game - that became quite detailed and interesting. Phoenix Point is a near-future science fiction-style game, and it has certain horror elements in it, I guess, also - certain Lovecraftian horrors in some respects.

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