Hello, everybody.
First off, I want to thank everyone who has given the initial Campaign missions a play-through and has taken the time to send us feedback.
Hearing from you really improves our development process and is the reason why we always strive to share our work in progress. I believe that your voices and feedback directly help us make Stormgate a better game.
With that in mind, I want to reassure you that our entire development team has been paying attention to your feedback since the beginning of our Early Access preview period. We hear you loud and clear–and we are committed to iterating with the benefit of your feedback.
Where are we at?
First, I'd like to start off by setting expectations. Although I am very happy with how much the team has accomplished so far, our current missions are still being worked on and should be considered works-in-progress. What you see today is not the finish line for the first six missions–it's the starting line. We've established a really solid foundation from which to build and will now begin the iteration process to flesh out and polish the Campaign.
Looking ahead, you will see the overall Campaign mode become more robust and feature-rich, and you will also see each mission continue to increase in quality and production value.
We're going to continue working on the Campaign for a long time–just as we have with the other modes and with each of the core factions. In each of these cases, it was valuable for us to release content early enough so that we could hear from you and react to your feedback before finalizing anything.
This iteration loop is a key part of making a game truly great, but the difference here is that it traditionally happens behind-the-curtains at larger companies, outside the view of the community. At Frost Giant, we prefer to work collaboratively. We want players to be on the journey with us and to have the opportunity to help make Stormgate better through their involvement.
Let's dive in…
With all that said, I'd like to shift gears a bit and use the rest of this update to dig into more details. My goal is to shed some light on what's in store for the Campaign, so that you can have a better sense of how we're responding to your feedback, where we're going, and what lies ahead.
Artwork
To start off, I want to assure everyone that we hear your feedback on our art style and visual execution. I also want to assure you that our job isn't done yet–far from it, actually. We're actively iterating on almost every area of Stormgate, and art is no exception.
I also want to make a quick personal aside here, by saying that I am very proud of our art team. We still have a lot of work ahead of us, but pound for pound, I've never worked with a team that has made so much forward progress on a game, so quickly.
In terms of visuals, we will continue to make changes and improvements throughout Early Access and beyond, and you can expect to see more art improvements as we move towards 1.0. These changes will be across the board, including lighting, environments, ground textures, units, buildings, resources, UI, and more. We will update and improve some things while outright replacing others.
The primary challenge for a small team like ours is balancing iterative improvement with forward progress, so we just ask for your patience as we work through this process and continue to make Stormgate look as good as possible.
Here’s a quick run-through of the action items that we already have in motion:
Cinematic Characters
We’ve moved work forward to improve the quality of our characters in the campaign cutscenes.
As we start to replace gameplay models in story sequences with cinematic models, we’ll be adding facial animations and lip syncing, as well as bringing limb proportion into a more realistic range. (Yes, this includes some of those beefy forearms!) We are also going to revisit the shaky cam to help make it feel better. These improvements have always been planned, but we are accelerating the timetable for them in our schedule because of your feedback.
To give a little bit of context, some of the bigger RTS games can use upwards of 3-4 different versions of each main character that are optimized for various specific use-cases, such as maximizing legibility at a distant isometric gameplay camera, delivering increased close-in cinematic fidelity, or featuring more-detailed facial animations for transmissions and unit portraits.
However, as a smaller studio, we started out using our gameplay models just to get the story hashed out–including in our cutscenes. What you are currently seeing up-close are gameplay character models that feature exaggerated proportions optimized for long-distance legibility, similar to how stage actors that use heavier-than-normal makeup so that their faces can be seen by distant audience members in the back rows. This is not our long-term plan, and the process of improving our models for cinematics and cutscenes is already well underway.
Apocalyptic Unit Visuals
We’re also in the middle of concepting a new set of “war-torn” skins for each of the Vanguard units that will update their appearance to better reflect their origins as the Human Resistance.
Once the skin's new unit models have been completed, our plan is to look for opportunities to retroactively incorporate it into the Campaign so that it can be featured throughout each of the missions.
This should help us to establish a more rough-and-tumble vibe for the scrappy humans and align their faction more closely with the post-apocalyptic world around them.
Additional Improvements
We're also going to be revisiting the mission briefings themselves, updating the videos, revisiting specific scripts and voice-overs, changing how items work, changing mission objectives and scripted events, and otherwise polishing the Campaigns in a lot of different ways beyond purely visual updates. We look forward to sharing more details about these new features and updates on the road ahead.
Stay tuned for a lot of iteration and improvement. We’re always assessing what’s working, what isn’t, and making carefully considered decisions as to how to make the game more visually appealing for everyone. There is definitely more to come on this front…
Story
A number of you have also shared concerns about Stormgate’s storyline feeling too familiar. Understandably, you want this new RTS to explore fresh narratives and establish a truly new world. I want to acknowledge that we hear your concerns and that we fundamentally agree.
It's fair feedback that our starting point invites a lot of direct comparisons–as with our factions, we started with some consciously familiar reference points. But please consider that the first few steps of many Hero’s Journeys often look similar. We've only just begun our characters' story arcs, and we have way more in store for each of them as their journeys continue to unfold.
More love for ‘Mara
You’ve also clearly let us know that our characters (specifically Amara) can benefit from additional development to further flesh them out. We plan to start with Amara and then advance through other characters, including combing through her dialogue, rewriting some of her lines, and re-recording some of her VO to strengthen the character's portrayal and make sure that her perspective on the Vanguard story is engaging.
There are some very cool things in store for Amara in the future and we will continue to invest effort into further development to refine her presence throughout the early missions.
Please continue to give feedback and suggestions for what changes you would like to see us make to her or to our other characters.
A Heroic opportunity
We also have some new Hero-related elements that I'm excited to introduce!
First, we’ve recently finished prototyping a Hero leveling system that enables characters to advance in levels during gameplay, gradually becoming more and more powerful and choosing between which abilities they unlock or customize.
This system provides more choices to unlock than can ever actually be attained at the same time, so fully-leveled Heroes will not have access to every possible option. It also persists across missions, so you’ll need to make some tough decisions throughout the Campaign! We think that this level of customization holds a lot of potential for the Vanguard missions and should help differentiate our characters even further.
Second, we’re also planning to extend our Co-op Gear system into the Campaign missions. This feature will be designed to allow players to research and equip Gear choices that provide various advantages during gameplay.
The general idea is that as you play through the Campaign and make different decisions, you'll unlock different Gear choices that enable you to tweak your force's loadout in the Raptor One before deploying into missions.
We're really excited about both of these new systems and will be sharing more details as development continues!
Thank you for being on this journey with us
We are all so grateful for all your feedback during this critical Early Access phase–even the comments that were hard to read! At Frost Giant, we believe in our players. Together, we will build a polished, fun, and memorable RTS experience that we can all enjoy for years to come.
Thank you for your ongoing support!
Good luck and have fun,
Tim Campbell
Game Director