(Reposted from our Discord server : https://discord.gg/TRuCZZXuwc )
Heyyyo, Youko here!
It's officially Friday in some parts of the world so here's your first weekly update on episode 3 WIP. (:discord emote:)
Here’s a rough outline of how these are going to work:
Basically once a week (usually on Friday) me or another member of the team is going to discuss some of the work we’ve completed this week similar to how a Patreon would operate. A larger update with some visuals will be roughly posted around once a month. This ranges from WIP work to some sneak previews so stay tuned for that.
Feel free to discuss these updates in spoilers or the lounge. I’ll usually be around when these drop to answer any questions if there are any.
That said, since Sierra Ops is such a large game for our tiny team, we all heavily specialize on our own respective fields so expect a very heavy story/ writing focus from me, general behind the scenes from Jason, and gameplay stuff from Glean.
We really want to try to be more transparent about what is going on with development after how much episode 2 was delayed. Hopefully, this will help ease some anxiety about the state of the game and prevent more “abandonware” claims. (:sweating cat:)
Anyway, here is the actual update:
I’m happy to announce that we are officially starting to transition from bug-fixes and polishing to work on episode 3!
For any of you who weren’t aware, Sierra Ops has been in development hell for a long, long time. The original first draft of the script was completed in some time 2019. Since then, a lot of things about the game has changed. From the inclusion of more concrete world building to exoframes, the script has seen some massive edits from that first draft to release in both episode 1 and 2. In fact, the entirety of Episode 2’s script was originally only around 40k~ and ended up ballooning past 120k. A lot of this old material was particularly rough so it needed a lot of reworking to be usable, but I hope you’re happy with the result.
Now, the question is “does this also apply to episode 3”?
Right now it’s a tentative half-yes, half-no. After taking another look at the existing writing, it’s a lot more workable than episode 2 so the amount of rewriting I have to do is substantially decreased. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be quick process, but it is a lot better of a situation than Episode 2’s script.
Currently, we’re planning to work in a chronological fashion to minimize late-development edits and changes. Hopefully, this will speed things up and improve our QA process. A lot of new content will need to be incorporated so expect the writing process to be an ongoing effort while we attempt to coordinate our individual workloads better to deliver the game faster.
Believe me, none of us want the next episode to take another 1.5 years to release. We are doing everything we can to shrink that timespan.
Now that the context has been taken care of, here is the actual writing progress this week:
Jason and I have more or less finalized the mission list and outline for the free roam period of Chapter 3 and have completely planned out Chapter 4.
Chapter 3 free roam features the most missions yet with the appearance of our first chain mission – a mission that is only available if certain outcome in a pervious mission was achieved. Judging by the steam achievements, it’s something many of you will enjoy.
Following the actions-reactions trend, we’re planning to feature more optional missions that take into account your performance and actions in earlier side quests or main story missions now that Junius is starting to find his feet and is actually making an impact on the war. Specific battles may become significantly easier to harder depending on prior actions. Heck, some outcomes are locked unless certain actions are taken earlier so plan accordingly. We highly recommend keeping different save states so you can explore all the possible outcomes in a situation!
Moving on from Chapter 3 for a moment, Chapter 4 will mark a big change aboard Sierra. If you can guess what it is, you get full points (not that it’s particularly difficult). I’ll update you guys with more information once we’re actually closer to working on the mission itself. Let’s just say it’s another double-trouble mission.
As for what physical writing has been completed this week, I’ve been working on bridging the end of Episode 2 into Episode 3. First up is the break that Junius originally attempted to call at the end of Episode 2 only to be interrupted and called to other duties. Only about 1/3 of the breaks have been edited or rewritten, so I’ll be continuing that next week.
That’s it for this week. Next update coming next Friday!
Thanks for supporting the game! ːsteamhappyː