Loading Reality recently sat down with Volition, Inc.'s Community Manager (V-Singular on the community website) to discuss the upcoming Demons of the Badlands DLC as well as the future of downloadable content for Red Faction Guerrilla. Readers should be warned, however, as spoilers are contained in the interview.

Loading Reality (LR): Seeing as the Demons of the Badlands DLC is a strictly story-driven affair, can you expand on the characters and plotlines we can expect to see?

J Goldberg (J): Your main role in Demons of the Badlands focuses on Samanya, Alec Mason’s right-hand helper, 3 years prior to the events of Red Faction Guerrilla.  The new story focuses on her life with the Marauders, and where the separation between Vasha - the leader of the Marauders in RFG and Samanya’s sister - began.  A few familiar faces will pop up, along with some more primitive looking Marauder characters since this showcases a little more of their primitive technology.

Gamers will play as Samanya in Demons of the Badlands.

LR: How will the new storyline be accessed once gamers acquire the Demons of the Badlands DLC? Are gamers going to be required to complete the current single player game prior to gaining access to the new, story-driven Demons of the Badlands DLC, or the DLC its own entity?

J: When our first patch was released back on August 6th, included with it was a new menu options specifically for loading in the downloadable content.  By scrolling down and opening that menu, you’ll have access to not on Demons of the Badlands, but gain direct access to any future DLC that may be released.  Demons of the Badlands will specifically be loaded from this menu, since it is a separate campaign from the main story of Red Faction Guerrilla.

Similarly, gamers are not required to complete Alec Mason’s main storyline from RFG in order to participate in the DLC.  This is a wholly separate campaign, and we wanted players to progress with whichever storyline they wish.  I highly recommend that anyone planning to purchase Demons of the Badlands completes the main storyline first, otherwise the surprises may become a little too obvious when presented.

LR: How many hours of gameplay can gamers anticipate to get out of the upcoming Demons of the Badlands DLC? Are there side-missions and exploration goals added as in the retail game to increase gamers' time played?

J: It’s easiest to think of Demons of the Badlands as a compacted version of our full game.  While there may only be three main story missions, they are packed to the gills with intense destruction-filled action.  We’ve had reports of people taking 45 minutes to complete just the final mission.  For the entire DLC, an average run for a semi-experienced player (one that has completed the main storyline) seems to take around 3-4 hours for the main storyline.  If you include completion of all the new Marauder Actions, collecting of specific elements in the game world, and all of the achievements/trophies, the amount of game is easily doubled.

There’s also six new Demolition Masters, which have been a favorite for fans.  Our design team went all out with these to really push not only the physics and destruction capabilities found in our Geo-Mod 2.0 engine, but it requires players to get very creative in order to beat the pro times.

LR: Speaking of the Geo-Mod 2.0 engine, has there been any interest from other developers to license the engine? Is that something Volition would consider?

J: I know that we’re not currently licensing out the Geo-Mod 2.0 engine, but you never know what could happen in the future.  Our studio has always tried to push tech and Geo-Mod 2.0 is a great showcase of pushing destruction to a brand new level beyond any other game out there.

LR: When did development begin on the Demons of the Badlands DLC? Was there always a plan to push additional content for RF:G from the beginning of production, five years ago?

J: We knew that we wanted to include some form of DLC after the positive reactions from previous DLC in our Saints Row series, but it was in no way something we looked at five years ago, since RFG itself has changed tremendously over that five year period.  Work did begin prior to finishing Red Faction Guerrilla, but it was nowhere near completion at the point we had to wrap up RFG to hit our street date of June 2nd.  On the bright side, this gave us some additional time because we wanted to see the reaction of the community over those first few weeks on retail shelves to gauge their likes and dislikes, and expand on that within Demons of the Badlands.

LR: There are to be seven new weapons, if I'm correct - will any of those be accessible in matchmaking or online custom multiplayer?

J: None of the new weapons will be available within the Multiplayer component, as this is primarily a single player DLC package only.  Including them in multiplayer would’ve required a very lengthy period of balancing and adjustments and we feel that RFG is very well balanced in its current state, especially based on reactions from our playerbase.

 

Volition to focus on Multiplayer in upcoming DLC.

LR: Are you able to lend any hints or comments to what the next two DLC packs will contain, center around, or feature? Will either of the two other DLC releases contain multiplayer content?

J: All that I can get into now is that we’re going to focus on our two other modes as well with the future DLC packs, which include Multiplayer and Wrecking Crew.  Hopefully we’re able to release even more engaging content and continue to grow RFG.

LR: To clarify, the cost of the DLC will be 800 Microsoft points or $9.99 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, correct? And will the other two content packs follow this pricing structure?

J: You are correct on the pricing for this first DLC package, but we have not finalized the figures for our future DLC packages at this time.

LR: At this early stage, based on the sales of Red Faction Guerrilla (recently surpassing the 1 million copies mark), does Volition foresee a possible return to Mars beyond the DLC?

J: At this point, your guess is as good as mine.  All I can tell your readers is stay tuned to our website (http://www.volition-inc.com) or Twitter account (@VolitionInc), since you never know what the next game announcement will be.

 

---

One comment should stand out to fans of Red Faction Guerrilla more than any other, as it appears Volition will be focusing on Multiplayer in at least one of the two unscheduled DLC releases. This is grand news, indeed!

 Report

You need to login or register to post comments.