The 1993 classic strategy franchise, Syndicate recently got a reboot, and it was something we hadn’t seen coming. It was a first person shooter, and a lot of fans were enraged at this decision. EA, however, believes this was the right choice.
“It’s been nearly 20 years since the original Syndicate came out back in 1993,” the game’s producer, Jeff Gamon, told Eurogamer. “”So a lot of people playing this game would probably have heard of the original Syndicate but not necessarily have played it.
“Obviously we get asked a lot about the reaction of fans of the original to us taking it into first-person direction. But we have to maintain that was the right decision.
“Why remake that classic in its original form when it’s still out there? So with a whole new audience and tastes in video games, and a whole new suite of platforms to develop for, the game we made was the right choice.”
“I knew that no matter what we did people would have strong opinions about it,” lead co-op programmer Lars Magnus Lang chimed in. “I can be the same with some games, also. I can still feel like, oh, did they have to do that?
“So, absolutely, it was quite a bit of pressure to live up to those expectations. We knew that we really couldn’t do that. Unless we made it into an RTS they would not be happy. But if we had made it an RTS we would have made only those people happy.
“They might have heard of it, but most people haven’t played it. We wanted to cater to those people also, to everyone. I’d rather make a really good game for our players and make them really enjoy it, than just make a copy of an old game with updated graphics. That’s not that super fun for either the end user or us. That game already exists.”
He gave the example of Bethesda making so many changes with Fallout 3, which also stirred plenty of controversies. “I remember Fallout 3 also had the same thing. It is kind of forgotten now because it was great. Almost everyone liked it. There’s always a few…
“We make it good on its own merits, then we take the universe, the setting, the cyberpunk, and really be true to the original Syndicate, and that’s it.”
The devs at Starbreeze talked about several other things, and you can read the full story here at Eurogamer.
We reviewed Syndicate recently and liked it pretty much. Read the review here.