Interview: Fallen Earth Lead Designer Lee Hammock, Part Two

Part two of our interview with Fallen Earth lead designer Lee Hammock (you can read part one here if you missed it) gets into the subjects of the game’s background and storyline, methods for its dissemination among players, the reasons for mixing FPS controls with an RPG back-end…

And, of course, beta.

The game seems to be shaping up to be a real contender. If all of their plans for it come to fruition (which, having played more than my fair share of MMOs over the past ten years, I know is easier said than done) Fallen Earth could finally be the title that reverses the fortunes of science fiction in the MMO genre.

Time will tell.

The MMO Gamer: Back in the explorer segment you mentioned that there is always something to see over the next horizon.That’s very important in an MMO; not only in exploring the map, but also exploring the story, and the background behind the game. You always need to have something just out of reach for a player to strive for if they’re going to continue on.

What are you going to do to address that in Fallen Earth?

Lee Hammock: That’s one of the things we’re working on right now. The first draft of our tutorial, players came out of it and said, “That was neat, but what do I do now?” We didn’t have enough narrative force out the door.

We’re adding a lot of elements now so that as soon as you get to the tutorial, the player is told, “Here’s the history, here’s an immediate threat, here’s an NPC for you to hate, and here’s how you’re going to die if you don’t pursue this storyline.”

Right out the door players have multiple goals of, “Ok, here’s some stuff I have to deal with. Oh crap! That guy I hate, he’s now the level boss in the first level of play, I should really go put a stop to this!”

We’re giving people a lot of storylines. Some of them are very short-term, for example the main bad guy in sector one, you meet him in the tutorial, you get to hate him there, and you get to kill him in the first sector.

He ties into a larger plotline that goes through the first five sectors of gameplay, and most of our villain factions go through many sectors of gameplay. Pretty much starting in sector three, every sector you get to take out some major villain faction, and basically wrap-up their story.

Every sector has some type of major story wrap-up, so you’re getting a constant feeling of “Ok, I’m getting some type of completion out of this,” it’s not “Ok, I have to fight these bad guys throughout the whole game, and then they wrap up the last sector.”

There are constantly new factions coming up, old factions going away, and there are always storylines tying them all together.

Instead of having one giant storyline that the whole game focuses on, each PC faction has their own storyline, each villain faction has their own storyline, why the players are clones and where that technology comes from is a storyline, the company that built all the technology in the area is a storyline…

There’s a constant stream of different arcs players can pursue throughout the game.

The MMO Gamer: What if someone logs into the game and decides, “I don’t feel like reading a storyline. I’m just going to up and start killing every living thing that I see.”

Would they still be able to get a feel for the history of the game? Is there enough around that isn’t relayed through NPCs and mission texts for them to get a sense for the world they’re moving through?

Lee Hammock: Yes. One of the things that we’re working on designing in the new player experience section of the game right now is the capability for players to do whatever their preferred player activity is, right off the bat.

They finish the tutorial, show up in the first zone, they want to murder people, they can go murder people. They want to craft items, they have the resources and the knowledge to craft items. They want to play a support character, they have all the stuff they need to do those things.

If they want to completely ignore the story, more power to them. They will over the course of just playing through the world get the gist of what’s going on. It’s pretty much impossible not to.

There are various elements like the company that built the technology that is reproducing the characters, as you progress through the game just visually more and more becomes apparent about that company, about the reasons the company had, what they were really doing, how all the different creatures and factions tie all together…

It’s impossible to play through the game without getting the basics of the story through the creature selection, how the creatures behave, what they are doing, what you are sent to do to them.

For example, we have a group called the Judges that are religious fanatics who are present pretty much throughout the game. The missions you have interacting with them, even if you don’t read all the text, just the “Ok, we have to go save these people from them, we have to stop them from attacking, we have to steal their holy book…”

Even if you’re just reading the goals of the mission, without reading the flavor text, you’re going to get a pretty good idea of what they’re up to, and why they need to be stopped.

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