EA: Syndicate reboot as FPS "the right choice"

February 28th, 2012, 01:54 Posted By: wraggster

EA's decision to reboot the Syndicate with a first-person shooter was "the right choice", the gargantuan video game publisher has insisted.Both publisher EA and Swedish developer Starbreeze have discussed the development of the game, which launched last week.EA's decision to go first-person for today's Syndicate angered many fans of the much-loved strategy series and this, Starbreeze admitted, added pressure to the development.But EA said it was the right choice, given how old those strategy games are - and the fact that they're still around."It's been nearly 20 years since the original Syndicate came out back in 1993," EA's producer on the game, 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."For developer Starbreeze, which began pre-production on Syndicate with a small team in 2007, it knew from the start it faced an uphill battle convincing the veteran fans of the merits of the project."I knew that no matter what we did people would have strong opinions about it," lead co-op programmer Lars Magnus Lang said. "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."

"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."

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