Star Fox, one of the most loved franchises on any Nintendo console with some of the most loyal fans, may not need to wait much longer for another installment of this heralded title. This time around however, neither Nintendo nor any of the other previous development teams have anything to do with it – and that’s one of the aspects of Star Fox: Shadows of Lylat (SoL) we find most interesting and exciting.
Fan made titles are always fun to see and especially exciting when realized. SoL is no different. With over 5 years of teamwork and dedication Team SOL is uncertain whether or not the final product will see light of day, they’ve not let that slow them down or stop them from putting forth every effort to the contrary. Yet, the questions remain; even if people put all this work an energy, and no one pulls the plug on the project will it be something people go for and will the game be worth playing? By what we’ve seen and been told, the game should hold a special place for both Star Fox fans and fans of Space Sim shooters. While breaking away from the arcade style of shooter the original Star Fox franchise had been, the simulation angle would tend to give it a more detailed and mature look and feel. Still much of the appreciation of the game once realized will be held in both the control mechanics and the story telling.
Editor Dolovey Herman was granted the opportunity to talk with Benjamin Suhr, Project Manager for Shadows of Lylat. Suhr gives insight on their current, highly anticipated project:
Dolovey Herman (DH): I believe what a lot of fans are wondering is, how did you obtain the licensing to do this?
Benjamin Suhr (BS): We do not have a license. Shadows of Lylat is by no means an official title. Neither Nintendo, nor Namco or any other company had anything to do with the game. We are completely at their mercy. They can stop the project at any time. We hope they consider “SoL” to be fan art, as we do.
DH: While being an indie developer, how does Star Fox Shadows of Lylat compare to your other creations? Or is this your first?
BS: Many of the developers in the team already had some modding experience before they joined. Even now most of them are working on multiple projects. I think “Diaspora”, a Battlestar Galactica game, and before “Beyond the Red” should be mentioned. We shared and still share quite a few members with them.
As for myself, I worked on a few mod projects before as well, helped updating effects and textures for Freespace 2, but “SoL” is the first project I’ve been in a lead position in.
DH: From what you’ve done so far, how do you think fans will react to the changes you’ve made, such as: from game console to computer and back to all Airwing assault?”
BS: We hope fans will understand that we tried to turn Freespace 2 into a Star Fox game, as much as possible. Some things are still simply impossible to do. In some cases we deliberately did things different though. For example the ship selection after the mission briefing. It would have been easy to just allow the player to pick one ship, but we decided to allow the player to choose from all ships he/she may use at that point of the story.
I think many players will like this, but I know some players won’t be happy with anything that isn’t exactly like in the original games. We are trying to get “SoL” to feel like a Star Fox game, but we are not trying to copy everything. Like between the original games, there will be some differences.
DH: Although fans of the Star Fox series (including myself) weren’t too impressed with ground assault in the most recent additions to the Star Fox franchise I must ask: will there be any ground assault? Such as the Landmaster, or Third to First Person-shooter?
BS: While it might not be completely impossible anymore, I can’t promise there will be a Landmaster level. I can tell you there will be no on-foot missions. The engine isn’t suited for this. As long we can’t do it somewhat properly, we won’t try it.
The Freespace 2 Open engine is currently being reworked and the Source Code Project (SCP) developers are looking for additional coders, so things might change. Those changes usually take a long time though. On the other hand we might not even feature on-foot missions, even if we had the possibility to.
DH: Judging by trailers one and two, Shadows of Lylat looks extremely detailed overall! If I may ask, will the controls and handling be fairly intricate? If so, what actions are required?
BS: The controls will be reworked. Right now they are exactly the same as in Freespace 2, except for corridor missions.
Freespace 2 requires you to use a lot of keys to control your ship/hud/targeting. We’ve already reduced that, but the ultimate goal is to make “SoL” playable as well on a gamepad, as it currently is on keyboard and mouse.
It’s a lot of work and I don’t know if we can manage to do it before the first release.
DH: Will there be dialogue?
BS: Yes, all dialogue will be voiced in English. We already found some pretty good voice actors. There will be another casting though.
The voice acting will be one of the final steps before release 1.
DH: Besides what we’ve seen, what are some new weapons that we should expect in the next thrilling Star Fox chapter?
BS: We had a few new weapons in the game, but decided to take them out again. For one part it made the weapon upgrading via power-ups too complicated, but it also made the multiplayer balancing more complex. It simply didn’t work well with our “pick up and play” rule.
There will be a new Arwing model though, at least in multiplayer. It has not yet been decided what kind of weapons it will carry. Maybe you’ll see some new weapons there.
DH: How long until we are able to play a demo or hopefully the whole Star Fox game?
We canceled the demo when we realized how much content we put in it. So we decided to put some more effort in it and turn it into a full first release of the game.
- The single player part will be short, but every stage will be very different. You’ll see a lot of impressive stuff in the first few stages.
- The multi-player mode will feature almost all ships of the final version.
- All those ships can be used to create custom missions. We’ll release “SoL” with the latest version of the Freespace 2 mission editor.
- Players will have enough content in the game to create something completely new.
We hope to see many many fan-made missions while we’re working on the final release. Some good ideas might influence the final game.
DH: Are there any certain programs that we must have installed to run this game? If so what are they?
BS: As Shadows of Lylat is completely stand-alone, there is no program you have to install other than the game itself. The only requirement is OpenAL, which many players probably already have installed for other games.
DH: Being an indie developer can be rewarding, but it can also be quite the challenge. With that in mind, what are your hopes in terms of outcome with Shadows of Lylat?
BS: After all the work we spent on the game, we can only hope it will be popular and played by many players. There some space game fans out there that don’t know anything about Star Fox yet, because they only play PC games. We’d like to make them aware of Star Fox.
DH: Has there been any word from Nintendo or the previous developers of the SF series on their feelings towards your endeavor?
BS: So far only Dylan Cuthbert, president of the game development company Q-Games and one of the developers of the original Star Fox for the Super Nintendo, is the only one we (indirectly) heard from. Of course we hope everybody involved in the Star Fox franchise will be proud have fans dedicated enough to spend their free time on a project like this. I hope we will get some feedback from them after the release.
DH: If the plug were to be pulled on the title in terms of licensing the ‘brand’ as it were, would you redesign the ships and characters so that ‘all the work isn’t gone’?
BS: There currently are not plans what we will do if Nintendo decides to shut down our project. However if we wanted to create a completely new game, we would have done so. I guess a lot of the content we created would go directly to other projects we’re working on.
Looking forward to more development from Team SOL? More information about Star Fox: Shadows of Lylat can be obtained on the official SoL FAQ page and the development team Game Warden page.
