Update #29
A peek behind the curtain at character animation... and shouts out to some chummers!
Hey hey! Mitch here.
The team is tearing it up on
Shadowrun: Hong Kong! Lot's of great stuff getting into the game in all departments and we have strong momentum. Just what you love to see in game development.
Before we share today's peek behind the curtain, we want to thank the 95% of Backers that have filled out their survey. But, we still need the last 1,760 of you to go to this link:
HONG KONG BACKERKIT, click on “
Didn’t get your invite?” and follow the instructions.
Remember, we won’t be able to send your rewards if you don’t fill out your survey!
Once we lock down the site, there will be a few days of order processing and then we’ll be able to send out our first wave of digital rewards. Depending on your reward tier, this will include the soundtracks and/or keys for
Shadowrun Returns and
Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut, the Shadowrun 5th Edition Tools Box, and your Out of Print Sourcebooks (including any extras you’ve purchased).
One last thing, the Second Chance Backer site will also remain open until April 15 so if you know anyone who might have missed out on the Kickstarter and would still like to be a Backer, just send them this link:
Shadowrun: Hong Kong Preorders.
Okay - on to some fun stuff!
In the last update, I mentioned that our new animator, Jakob, was upgrading some old animations in order to get his feet wet before busting out new stuff. Today, he's gonna share some of that new stuff!
Jakob: He-Who-Rocks-the-Anims
Hello! My name is Jakob and I’m the new animator on the Shadowrun team. I’m extremely excited to be working on Shadowrun and, hopefully, you’ll see that passion spill over into the game. I’ll be creating an extra level of immersion through animation with small things like ambient animations for NPCs in the background as well as designing new animations for the super awesome skills that have been added to
Shadowrun: Hong Kong. One thing I really want to tell you about, though, is my favorite character you’ll be running with in Hong Kong -
Gaichu!
Gaichu is a samurai and one of the ways we can show this is through his movements. To help catch the nuances of his traditional samurai technique, I looked at a lot of older samurai films such as The Seven Samurai. However, Gaichu’s also a ghoul and, typically, ghouls are deteriorating and don’t have complete control over their muscles. This leads to the very unique way Gaichu moves about the world, how he swings his katana and how he deals with his opponents.
This is why Gaichu is getting a whole suite of animations where you’ll be able to see the fusion between his ghoul deterioration and his samurai training. Everything he does is his own, and no one else has the same exact animation due to his unique situation. This, in turn, makes him standout an incredible amount compared to other people you’ve met in our previous Shadowrun games.
What's a samurai without a little stabby stabby?
As you can see, Gaichu can utilize either side of his ghoul-samurai duality. He has an assortment of ghoul based attacks, as well as a number of new samurai-katana based attacks.
What's a ghoul without a little rippy rippy?
And then there's this...
But that’s not all!
Gaichu is just one of the many characters who will get unique animations. Not all characters get full new suites of animation like Gaichu, but, oh boy, there’s a lot of new stuff coming. Almost all of the existing animations are getting pushed farther to be more appealing, and all of the unique skills your team members and you acquire will have their own animation sets. The goal is to make you and every other character you come across somewhat varied in some form or fashion. I want to try and capture the diverse universe that is Shadowrun, and a great way to do that, is body language.
Overall, I’m so excited to be working on a game that everyone on the team and all of the fans are so passionate about! It’s great to be surrounded by people constantly pushing to bigger and better heights, and to have such a dedicated community at our back.
That’s all from me!
--Jakob
Shadowrun Universe News
Later this month, Jordan Weisman, Mike Mulvihill and I will be running the shadows with our friends over at Cliffhanger Productions in their game,
Shadowrun Chronicles.
Here are the dates we'll be playing along with you:
April 24 - Mitch (me)
May 8 - Jordan (creator of Shadowrun)
May 22 - Mike (3rd Edition Game Line Developer)
Cliffhanger also made us a special coupon code to activate a nifty in-game Harebrained Schemes T-Shirt. The code is: ‘TURNBASEDROCKS’ and it will be valid until May 2nd. Just press the “Coupon” button from the launch screen and enter the code.
This will work for anyone who buys (or already owns) a Standard, Deluxe or Super Deluxe Edition of
Shadowrun Chronicles. For those already running the Early Access version, the shirt will become available with the launch version of the game, so you need to be a little patient.
Shadowrun Chronicles is available as an
Early Access game on Steam and you can pre-order the boxed edition on Amazon. Chronicles will launch on Steam, Humble Store and other platforms on April 28th.
Also, veteran RPG, Sci-fi and Horror writer Jennifer Brozek (who also helped out with the writing for
Shadowrun Returns) recently released her new Shadowrun novella,
DocWagon 19! It’s available on Amazon here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UZERM84
