I reported a while ago about the former developers behind the once great SSI studio coming back together to make a new game, and while many of their fans aren’t around to appreciate the news, I was still fairly hyped about it. Info was sparse at the time, as you could imagine, but a recent interview has helped fans visualize the kind of RPG Seven Dragon Saga will become.

The review is a great read if you grew up playing the goldbox games in the late 80s/early 90s, but a couple of David Shelley’s answers really stuck out as interesting:

DD: What do you think it was that made SSI games so special, and do you believe those traits are still applicable now?

DS: In many ways the small, ever changing hardware systems gave us a lot of opportunity for creativity in game play. SSI was also its own publisher, which meant there wasn’t a large committee of non-gamers to dilute the vision. Further, art and audio were less prominent, and it was game play which was a key differentiator. I was even doing art for Eternal Dagger.

And, once you had a critical mass of wargamer and RPGers together at SSI, there was plenty of opportunity to cross-pollinate and get good feedback on ideas. The creators of Master of Orion sent their product to us to see if we would publish it. We sent them back eight pages of suggestions, along with our bid. Micropose outbid us, but the majority of our suggestions appeared in the game.

DD: We’ve seen in recent years the idea that even genres such as the RPG and strategy game need to be more visceral in order to be commercially successful, with action combat systems replacing more traditional turn based pacing. How do you see your game fitting in to the market from a commercial perspective?

DS: We discussed the choices between a real-time paused system (Bioware) and full turn-based in 3D (X-Com). With the success of crowd funded games like Wasteland 2, Torment, Divinity: Original Sin, and so on, we see there is a viable market for turn-based combat. Since turn-based provides the player the more complex and cerebral experience, we chose that option. Using a 3D based world, we will also have the option to use the camera to add visual excitement, setting the scene and so on.

This pretty much validated my belief they were stirred from their slumber by the success of other turn-based games, though don’t misunderstand that as me complaining.

Shelley also went on to say that while they *do* want Seven Dragon Saga to be a franchise, they are also looking into exploring established IPs as well.