Preview: Shadowrun

Microsoft Game Studios' Shadowrun, since it was first announced and demonstrated at E3 2006, has been a source of controversy among video game enthusiasts and dyed in the wool pen and paper zealots. A multiplayer FPS designed alongside the MechWarrior boys FASA, the game takes elements from the popular role-playing franchise and distills them into a purely action oriented experience that skates across the surface of the source material rather than dives right in.

This alone makes the game hard to love for those with fond memories of the of the traditional game, let alone the 16-bit incarnations for both the SNES and Genesis. In comparison, Shadowrun for the Xbox 360 is hardly recognizable and a different beast altogether. Not to say this is a terrible thing, just...well...different.

So what is Shadowrun?

Set in and around Santos Brazil in the year 2031, Shadowrun tells a story of struggle between two opposing forces, namely the RNA Global mega-corporation and the Lineage, a 5000 year old secret society dedicated to defending a magical power that was recently unearthed by RNA Global.

As a game, Shadowrun is played over a series of rounds involving up to 16 players, 8 versus 8, at a time. During the first 30 seconds of each round, players have the opportunity to buy additional weapons, magic and tech, spending the money earned during play for winning rounds and for actions during gameplay, including killing opponents, carrying the artifact, and using certain abilities to help the team. Players on the losing team also earn some money between rounds.

The winning team is the first one to win six rounds. Each round is four minutes with the possibility of one minute overtime, and the method of winning is determined by the type of game being played, including Raid, Extraction and Attrition. Sounds a bit more like a sport than a bitter conflict, eh?

Three types of gameplay you say?

Shadowrun's three different gameplay modes each offer something different, and each require different conditions for victory. The Raid game type requires the attacking team to capture a magical artifact and deliver it to the extraction area. The defending team must stop the attackers from escaping with the artifact. The artifact always starts in the same place and only the attackers can carry it. If it is dropped and not picked back up, it will eventually return to its initial location. With one side on offense and the other on defense Raid is the more tactical of the game types, often feeling like a high speed chess match with magic and machine guns.

With the Extraction game type, the artifact starts in the center of the map. Both teams can pick the artifact up. Each team wants to bring the artifact to a separate extraction area on the opposite side of the map from where they start. Extraction is the more fast paced and frantic game type, as both sides are after the same thing so combat happens at a more brisk and frenetic pace.

Finally, Attrition is basically a game of team deathmatch, however there is no respawn. The only way to come back into a specific round is to be resurrected by a teammate.

So...how do I kill things?

Shadowrun offers an array of weapons for the discerning shopper, from explosives and swords, to the tried and true shotgun. In total, the game offers nine different weapons for players to purchase between rounds, including close range guns such as the pistol and SMG, medium range weapons such as the minigun, and guns to pick off your opponent from across the quad, such as the sniper rifle and rocket launcher. Each player also starts with two grenades per round and can carry two weapons plus these grenades at any given time.

In addition to these, Shadowrun players also have access to both magic and tech to help give them the upper hand. Magic and tech give a player the ability to do game-changing things and are usually the key to a team's winning or losing a round. These elements work against each other, however; Essence is required to cast magic and tech reduces the amount of Essence available. Because of this, a player can choose to rely exclusively on magic, only on tech, or can try to balance a little of both.

Note that neither magic nor tech can be used while carrying the magical artifact. Attempting to activate a tech or cast a spell will force you to drop the artifact. Any passive abilities granted by magic or tech also do not function while carrying the artifact.
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Essence?

Essence is the magical energy needed to cast spells. A player begins the game with a full pool of Essence represented by a column of circles in the lower left of the screen, and every spell that is cast takes its cost from that pool. Over time, the Essence pool will regenerate, filling back up to its maximum.

However, having tech assigned for use will reduce the maximum size of this pool. Each tech has its own Essence penalty associated with it and assigning multiple techs will reduce the available Essence by the total of these penalties. Tech penalties are shown at the top of the Essence bar. Certain spells will also temporarily drain a portion of the Essence pool while they are in effect. This is called investment, and investments are shown at the bottom of the Essence bar.

What are the different magics?

Shadowrun features seven different magics than can be used by players, as detailed below:

Tree of Life: Creates a magical tree that heals anyone, friend or foe, that stands under it. The tree is a physical object and provides cover and some concealment, though it can be shot and destroyed. It can heal a limited amount of health, after which it is destroyed. Healing your teammates with a tree of life will earn you money.

Resurrect: When you cast Resurrect it brings back to life any dead within a short radius, tying them to you. This is a powerful ability and will cost you some essence as an investment if anyone is actually resurrected. You can resurrect multiple nearby players in a single cast and a single investment by moving over multiple bodies while casting. You will make a portion of any money that the resurrected player earns.

If the resurrected player dies, they will not leave a body and cannot be resurrected again and you will regain the invested essence. Destroying enemy bodies will prevent the enemy team from resurrecting dead teammates.

If you die, any players that you have resurrected will start losing health at a fairly rapid rate. In this state, they can be re-resurrected by another teammate and saved, but if they are not, they will likely die in short order.

Strangle: Creates magical crystals that damage and drain essence from players that run into them. The crystals also attract and trap players for a short while, though the individual crystal is destroyed by this. Each cast of Strangle costs you some essence as an investment. When all of the crystals from a particular cast are destroyed, you will regain the invested essence. The crystals are useful for blocking routes and slowing enemy passage.

Gust: Creates a strong gust of wind that will disrupt enemy aim and send them flying, potentially off of ledges and to their doom. Gust is useful in denying opponents access to an area and also damages players that are smoked (see "Smoke" below).

Smoke: When you activate Smoke, there is a short delay as you smoke, after which you are unable to be damaged by anything other than Gust. While active, Smoke drains your essence to maintain itself, and will shut off when you use it again or when you run out of essence.

While assigned, smoke renders you invisible to Enhanced Vision and prevents enemies from locking onto you with Smartlink. See "What are the different techs?" below for details on these techs. While assigned, Smoke reduces the rate at which you regain essence.

Teleport: Teleport moves you roughly eight meters in the direction that you are moving, regardless of what is in the way. You can jump up and teleport to move through ceilings or can crouch and teleport to move through floors. Teleport is extremely versatile and finding good teleport routes through the map will allow you to quickly cover large distances, escape from a bad situation, or surprise your enemy.

In order to teleport you must be moving or crouched. Teleport also will not work through thick rock.

Summon: Summons a minion to attack your enemies. If you cast summon while targeting an enemy player, the minion will hunt them down, otherwise it will defend the area around where you targeted.
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What are the different techs?

There are less techs than magics, but they are no less potent. Shadowrun features five different techs than can be used by players, as detailed below:

Glider: Gilder allows you to glide long distances through the air and will prevent you from taking falling damage while active. You can activate Glider by using its assigned button or, when it is assigned, by hitting the A button while in the air. Glider combined with teleport will make you extremely maneuverable. A small electromagnetic generator causes some initial lift when glide is activated.

Enhanced Vision: When activated, Enhanced Vision sends out a sonar-like pulse that will let you see both enemies and friends through walls, combined with a distance indicator to each contact. If you are close enough to a player, you will see their silhouette; otherwise you will see an icon representing them. Enhanced Vision does not show players that have Smoke assigned.

Players on the receiving end of a vision pulse will feel a distinctive rumble and will see a visual effect, telling them that they've been spotted. Be aware that, if an enemy on the receiving end of a vision pulse has Enhanced Vision assigned, you (and only you) will automatically show up to them, just as if they had activated it.

Smartlink: While active, Smartlink confers a number of advantages, but also adds a laser sight that makes you more visible to opponents. Smartlink helps to make firing your weapons more accurate, adds an additional level of zoom to each ranged weapon, and adds smart targeting that prevents you from damaging your teammates. Once activated, Smartlink remains on until you use it again to deactivate it.

AntiMagic Generator: The AntiMagic Generator creates devices that, once thrown into the world, absorb all magic within their area of effect. This will destroy trees of life, minions, and strangle crystals as well as draining all essence from players within that area. When thrown, they will stick to almost anything that they hit and last for quite a while before running out of power. The devices can also be shot and destroyed. You start with four devices and will slowly regain them after using any of your initial four.

Wired Reflexes: While assigned, Wired Reflexes increases your movement speed, makes you jump higher, allows you to reload weapons faster, and gives you the ability to block some or all of most weapon attacks while you are wielding a katana, facing your attacker and not yourself attacking.

When activated, your movement speed increases even further, you jump even higher, and you reload weapons even faster, but activating Wired Reflexes costs you health, potentially even killing you.

What are the different races?

Besides these options, Shadowrun also offers a choice of four different races from which to pick and play as, with each bringing different skills to the game. As Shadowrun is team-based, teams that have a good balance of races tend to do better than teams that are missing one or two.

As is the case in countless other games, humans are the stock 'jack of all trades' races, favoring balance over being particularly specialized in any one area. They start with bonus money, allowing them to get a jump start on the other races, and humans also have the lowest essence penalties for using tech of any race. They have the third highest essence, after the dwarf and the elf, and have the second highest health, after the troll.

Elves, on the other hand, are well suited to hit and run tactics, getting in quickly, getting away, and living to fight some more. They slowly regenerate health over time if they are not being damaged, and this ability is powered by the player's essence while healing. Elves are also fastest race, though they are slowed more than the others by carrying heavy weapons. They have the second highest essence, after the dwarf, and have the least health of all the races.

Trolls are the assault troops, large and slow moving, but hard to kill. They harden when hit, reducing the amount of damage that they take, but slowing their movement. If a troll is trading bullets with a non-troll, the non-troll is likely going to lose. Hardening takes essence and will wear off over time if the troll runs out of essence or stops being damaged. Trolls are also the slowest race, but are not slowed at all by carrying heavy weapons. They have the same essence as humans but pay a higher essence cost for tech, and also have the most health of any race.

Finally, dwarves are small and have the innate ability of absorbing essence from their surroundings, allowing them to bypass magical defenses and frustrate enemies by draining their essence. They absorb essence from magic in the environment, destroying trees of life, minions, and strangle crystals while replenishing their own essence. Dwarves absorb essence from players, though this ability works on enemies at a farther distance than on allies. To drain essence from an ally, you need to be standing almost on top of them.

They have the most essence of any race, but it regenerates extremely slowly on its own. Absorbing essence will help to keep their essence bar full. Dwarves also have the third highest health, after the troll and the human.
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According to FASA Studio Manager, Mitch Gitelman

What is "Shadowrun"?

MG: Shadowrun is the best game FASA Studio has ever made. It's an intense, team-based first-person shooter that combines ancient magic, modern weapons and advanced technology in a way that's never been done before. Rather than turn magic and tech into just another weapon, we've made them into tools the player uses to outwit and outfight the enemy.

Notice that I used ‘outfight' instead of ‘outshoot. That's because Shadowrun isn't just about putting your cross-hairs on a troll and pulling the trigger. It's about using the right abilities and the right weapons at the right time to get the advantage in combat. It's really a thinking person's shooter-but someone who thinks on fast on their feet.

Tell me about how the Live system works on Windows. Is it just like Xbox Live?

MG: It's not just like Live, it is Live, but on Windows Vista. You can voicechat, you can create a Friends list, and you can earn achievements. If you're already a member of Xbox Live, you'll see your friends, messages, gamerscore - all the great stuff that makes Live a great online games service. You use the same gamertag, and can show off same gamerscore and achievements on each platform. The rest of the Xbox Live features, like Marketplace are coming later."

Okay, everyone talks about mouse/keyboard vs. controller. You've said it's fair in the past but most people think that's impossible.

MG: Most people aren't professional game developers who specialize in making games with great controls like MechWarrior, MechAssault, Crimson Skies and Halo. We also have developers from Counter-Strike on the Xbox on the team as well.

No offense, but a lot of people balked at the idea of dual stick move/look controls when Bungie was making Halo and now it's the default control method for console shooters. Any time someone attempts to innovate, there will be naysayers. I know there are a lot of people who don't believe we could make the controls fair but we did it.

Remember that Shadowrun isn't just about putting your crosshairs on the enemy. You can be a great shot but get crushed by someone who uses tech, magic, and character abilities better than you. We have great testers who helped us balance the game. These guys are league FPS players, so they know what they're doing. About half are Counter-Strike players and the other half are Halo players. They say it's fair. Since they can kick my butt on either platform, I have to believe them."

Why no single player campaign?

MG: FASA always starts by designing our multiplayer first. We believe that the core of our gameplay is the multiplayer mechanics. Once those mechanics are clear, we develop single player scenarios to explore how to use them in fun ways in a campaign. As we were creating the single player scenario prototypes for Shadowrun, we realized that the core multiplayer game completely stood on its own.

It was that good. That's when we came up with the idea of making Shadowrun the first cross-platform shooter so everyone could play it together. All we had to do was convince Shane Kim and Peter Moore we could to it and the Live Anywhere Vision was born."

But "Shadowrun" is an RPG franchise - why adapt it into an FPS?

MG: It's true that Shadowrun started as an RPG but it's also been a tactical combat board game, a collectable card game and an action figure combat game. The world of Shadowrun is large and there's a lot to do in it. Pen-and-paper and electronic RPGs explore the story element of that world, but other mediums have focused on the combat like we did. But the question remains-why a team-based first-person shooter?

If you look at FASA's history, you'll see why. We've been making multiplayer shooters since 1990 with the BattleTech pods. The pods were location-based multiplayer units that linked eight players together in virtual reality cockpits along with voicechat. Seven years ago, we released MechWarrior 4 and people are still playing it in multiplayer leagues. We produced MechAssault, the launch title for Xbox Live at the birth of online console action gaming. After that, we developed Crimson Skies, a game that lots of people call their favorite online game for the Xbox. And then I hired John Howard, the lead designer of Halo, melded the design teams of those great games together and set out to make Shadowrun.

So why adapt it to an FPS? Because we know it would kick ass. If you ran a studio with a history of making groundbreaking and fun multiplayer action games and the lead designer of the best FPS on console, what would you do?"

Okay, that makes sense but why not use that team to make a great shooter and call it something other than Shadowrun?

MG: Because this is Shadowrun. It's based on the core ideas and the themes of the pen and paper game. It's just takes place about 25 years before the stories in the other games, when magic is first returning to the world. No one inhabits a dystopia yet but people can see it coming.

Our intention has always been to move the timeline forward with each successive release. Not only will the world change, but the game mechanics will evolve as well when we introduce things like jacking your brain into a computer and traveling in the astral plane. There is plenty for a first-person shooter player to learn and enjoy in this game. The rest will come in time.
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How many players per game will "Shadowrun" support?

MG: Shadowrun will support a maximum of 16 players per game but you'll see a lot more that 16 players flying around the battlefield. You can summon creatures to fight for you, strangle crystals to block entrances and capture enemies, and trees of life to magically heal you. A lot of people ask me why we only support 16 players when other PC shooters can go as high as 40. My first answer is, "What would happen if you let 40 people play football? Would it be any more fun?"

Shadowrun is fun for 16 players. More than that would just mean chaos, not fun. Also, take a look at what we're doing in the game. 16 players can teleport through walls, floors and ceilings. They can glide all over the map and see everything from a high vantage point. There are spells going off, creatures being summoned and bullets flying everywhere. And all of that at a smooth framerate and with next-generation graphics. When you realize what you're actually looking at, the number of players and graphic fidelity is impressive."

Okay, I have to ask you about the art. The game got torn apart for its art at E3 but it looks very next-gen and competitive now. What happened there?

MG: We created Shadowrun backwards from the way most games are made. Most developers create an exciting pitch and put together a pretty prototype to sell their game. They do all their art while desperately trying to make the game fun before they ship. Sometimes it comes together at the last minute and sometimes it doesn't and you're left with a game that's pretty but not a lot of fun or that runs like a dog.

Working on those games is a drag because everyone is working their butt of but secretly knows the game sucks. With Shadowrun, we nailed the gameplay first to ensure that the art we were creating would work well with our design and run at framerate. So any time the project got into a rough spot, morale was always buoyed by the knowledge that our gameplay kicked ass. When you know that what you're making is fun and different, it can get you over a lot of humps-like getting pummeled at E3.

What you saw at E3 was one of several art iterations we were passing through on our way to where we are today. The problem was that the art we had just wasn't good enough to announce the game. So we got our nailed for terrible art and everyone said we should fire our artists. After E3, we refocused our art direction and busted out some great stuff that really reduced the heat on us. From there, we walked through our normal process to polish it to the competitive level it is today."

I heard you'll only ship about 8-10 maps in the game. Other FPS games release a lot more than that. What's up?

MG: In Shadowrun, you can teleport through walls, floors and ceilings, glide across the battlefield, and spy on enemies through solid objects. The gameplay in Shadowrun is more vertical and three dimensional than other FPS games. That means the maps are way more complex to design and execute.

FASA has really high standards and we would rather ship a few maps that are great than a bunch of mediocre ones so we have a marketing bullet point that says "over 15 maps' or something. We have a bunch of maps that'll never see the light of day. And let's be honest, how many Counter-Strike maps actually get used? Less than a handful. Two I can think of. Remember that the maps in Shadowrun are the same 8-10 maps we've been playing for years and still love to play.

Because the abilities in Shadowrun were designed to allow you to outmaneuver your enemy, it's never the same experience twice. When you have a finite set of solid mechanics that allow for experimentation and improvisation, you get a highly replayable situation-based gameplay model. It's like a classic board game. How many maps do you need in chess?

Feb 28, 2007 - 2:50 pm | 14 comments
Jason Dobson