Inside Cloud Imperium Games: Foundry 42

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:00

   [Music] Mission Control do you read me this is Commander Roberts naion command boundary 42 come in the thing that excites me the most about Squadron 42 is the chance to create a cinematic and immersive playing experience that hasn't been seen before a brand new game uh right from the start there's a lot of people out there you know chomping at the bit you and it's going to be you it's going to be a huge game it's really a chance with the technology going PC only to really deliver something spectacular when Chris came to me

2. 00:00:50

   originally he said that you know the the the universe of video games and the the technology and software had caught up with his desire to make character-driven games uh there is a subtlety of movies there an emotion um uh that you try to get across in moments and characters that I think I didn't appreciate until I was really sort of immersing myself making films and so I really want to try and bring a lot of that back um into uh specifically Squadron 42 sort of my first task when I came on board was you know all the kind of basic framework for what would go on to become the sort of beginning of the lore um the first Big Challenge has been nailing the big story outline to create a strong framework for the story for squadron 42 it's it's going to drive the game along

3. 00:01:37

   uh and also working with the with all the various offices that are around the world we have to write character work and relationships for people over whom we have no control at all which is fascinating challenge it's tough because you need to have a story that can shift and change based on how the player plays it so I think that in previous incarnations of of games a lot of the branches had to do with whether you won or or lost a battle now they have to do with how you treat a a wingman or how you what kind of moral decision you you make in a particular situation the great thing about being able to sit in a room with the guys from Manchester and Chris and talk about the stories we get to we get to lock it down we get to kind of look at this and go all right here's what we're working with let's build off

4. 00:02:24

   that made some good progress this week I think we've pretty much nailed in there now now we now we know you know what the scope of the game is we'll be pulling a lot of people I think to make it happen I've known Chris and Aaron since we were little kids four or five we pretty much started school together stealing Chris's early uh attempts to try and pass my exams I've known Chris Saron since the age of four worked on his first games just a tight-nit group of friends and it's just going to be so much fun look my buddies again I knew Chris in a different life when he ran uh ascendant pictures which was his film company and I was his president of production first game I worked on was strikker run which

5. 00:03:12

   was one of Chris's back in 85 games such as Privateer 2 the darkening Privateer 2 Star Lancer then it was star Lancer then had a fun three years on Ma Griffin Bounty hun I'm working for Warner Brothers on Lego on the various Lego titles Lego Star Wars and with Chris's company we did Outlander and we did lucky number s and we did Lord of War and when this came together uh he asked me to to join the Squadron 42 team as a consultant to help lock a story down because he wants a more cinematic more character-driven story than is common in games it's not something you do very often um and starting a new company up

6. 00:04:02

   as well to do the game got the call from Nick you know saying it's AO then I spoke to Aaron and he said what do you think I was like I'm in it was a weekend um Aon rang me uh and I had the family round so I had to kind of drop a Sunday dinner to uh to take the call and it was only uh when they were leaving driving back to the airport they happened to mention uh the idea of us uh doing the game time for a new challenge yeah doesn't come any bigger than this does it an opportunity we just couldn't turn down I'm actually really excited to be working very closely with the community to basically make something for the people who are going to be playing the game rather than just developing something and then putting something out there under the sort of constraints of working for a publisher and in in terms of the way we're doing it now we get to

7. 00:04:51

   basically you know Work Direct with people you know we spend a lot of time on the forums understanding what people want and what they feel you know and basically where they want to go and um obviously we have a very clear direction we want to take it but also it's great to also get that feedback from other people as well something that uh you can be extra special given the the sort of support from the community we are making a game for the people I think that this company has completely reinvented the model of how to how to make media frankly I think that it it's important to see opportunity that that you know the world is there to be reinvented we're working very hard to make sure that the the story and the immersion and what we bring on Squadron 42 is going to really um create um a fantastic introduction to

8. 00:05:43

   um Star Citizen so I'm really kind of looking forward to advancing that level of sort of cinematic engagement that I did with uh wi Commander with Squadron 42 and uh so you know as far as I'm concerned Squadron 42 is going to be what I would be making a nextg wing commander of all by itself so it should be just by itself as good as any $60 retail AAA console game and then you're going to have all of the staris Universe on top of it so um and I won't be satisfied with anything short of that cuz it's so important that this is this Squadron 42 will lead the players into the persistent universe and we want to make sure that um that first um glimpse of the universe absolutely blows people away