For our second Dev Diary, we thought we could talk about the Characters’ aspect. It’s another thing that we wanted to address in SuperPower 3, making changes from the first two games. From the beginning of the development, our Artists’ team worked hard to find the right style, the right ‘’artistic feel’’ for this game. It was important for the game to feel realistic, but still be beautiful and appealing to the players.
We are hoping that the art (at the end of the Dev Diary) will help you see what our vision has been! You can see that our characters are realistic, but still creative and interesting! And to bring your own character to life, you will be able to choose everything: their name, age, religion, language, as well as the ethnicity, the physiology, skin details, hairstyles, and clothing.
FROM THE START
A big part of our Character Creation that you need to understand from the start is that, as nice as it looks, this menu is not just cosmetic! The game will present you with a default character based on the country that you will have selected. The language, religion, sex, and ethnicity that you will then choose for your character will have gameplay consequences on managing your country and your international relationships. Other than that, the gameplay won’t be affected by how you develop your character. :)
Cultural considerations are one of the big changes that were made in SP3 from the prior titles – we don’t just consider political similarities and economic necessities, but also cultural affinity between groups, countries, media, and political parties. Sometimes, a country is populated by vastly different people that have a hard time getting along. And sometimes during a game, you can be put in a position where even more different groups of people join or pop up in your country. Each one of these groups has a cultural affinity between themselves and with the groups that can interact with them, like the media or political parties.
As the leader of a political party, your own cultural definition will have consequences on how well you are accepted by the various groups of your country, but also by new groups coming in, as well as the media.
IN-GAME
Since your character will be the head of state of the country you have chosen, the creation of that character will obviously determine how close to (or far off from) your population you will be. For example, if you choose to make a female Buddhist character, who is Chinese and speaks Mandarin, and your selected country is Afghanistan, you might have a harder time connecting with your population! The choices you make will affect your cultural affinity and it’s really important to take that into account, with a game like SuperPower 3!
And if you don’t know what to choose or are unsure of the traits you need to fit in, you can always click on the ‘’random for…’’ button and the game will generate a character that will ‘’fit’’ with the average citizen of the country you already selected.
This is another reason why conquering the world is difficult; the more regions you gain control of, the more you will have to face the populations of these regions. And they will likely be different culturally, religiously, etc., from your population. Then it gets more and more difficult to manage, the more diverse it all becomes! So, be aware of all this information and these important traits when you get the chance to put your hands on SP3 and everything will be fine and smooth :)!
Other than ethnicity, religion and language, the component of culture is described in 6 traits. These you cannot choose. Your actions will show how you are: whether you mostly think long term or short term, whether you are very indulgent or compassionate. This will also be matched with the cultural affinities of your population. Not everyone wants a liberal paradise, and not everyone wants a strong authoritarian ruler. The nature of your country will affect greatly the way you will play the game.
RPG
Although SuperPower 3 isn’t a role-playing game (RPG) per se, we know that this is a component that the players enjoyed before. That’s why we wanted to offer you personalized characters as well, to make that experience even more realistic and enjoyable. You can create several characters and keep them from one game to the next, or always create new characters for each game - there’s no limit to the possibilities. You will be able to make the game your own, and then conquer the world!
For today, our second Dev Diary, we want to show you the Character Creation and a couple of the ones that we made for fun! Here’s hoping you like the style and that you’re excited to try it for yourself ;). Please let us know: are you happy with the changes we made from the previous games? Are you a little enthusiastic? Do you have any suggestion? Tell us more!
Next time, we will return with a topic that you can’t wait to read about… (we know it): the Modding of the game!! SuperPower 1 and SuperPower 2 were heavily modded and still are, to this day :) So we know you are looking forward to this part. Come back soon for it :D Until then, as always, stay safe everyone!
