The Technomancer Announced, Interview
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Only a few niche outlets covered the announcement of The Technomancer, a spin-off of Mars: War Logs from publisher Focus Home Interactive developed by Spiders, and we never received any assets or press release, so forgive me if I haven't covered the title until today. According to Game Watcher's report this sci-fi action-RPG will put players in the shoes of a technomancer, one of the factions present in the original Mars: War Logs, and will feature more complex quests and a faction system, among other things:
You play as a rookie technomancer tasked with finding and securing artifacts and technology from lost Earth. Details on the main story were scarce, but a big part of it seems to involve dealing with the revelation that the technomancers' strange magical abilities are powered by mutation - mutants aren't popular on Mars to say the least, and enemy factions who discover your secret will be rubbing their hands in glee.
Quests are now more complex, branching affairs. There are six factions in the game (the junk-collecting, trade focused Americans and the underhanded, sneaky Thieves were mentioned at the event) and depending on how you choose to approach a mission you might earn favour with one at the expense of another.
Combined with new 'charisma' options for talking your way out of tricky situations, and a day/night cycle that puts time limits on certain missions (deserters you fail to capture in time may pop up later on to cause you trouble, for example), Spiders hope to avoid "go here and kill this" repetition. The game will also feature five different companions, who can leave the party if you antagonise them too much.
RPGWatch has an interview with the developers that I recommend you read if you're interested in the game. A snippet:
Couchpotato: You just announced a new RPG game called Technomancer this week. Would it be possible to share the a brief sample of the game's setting/story?
Jehanne Rousseau: As I've said before, The Technomancer takes place in the same universe as Mars War Logs, but in another corporation, called Abundance (they were the guys in charge of the prisoner camp at the beginning of MWL). You play as a young technomancer officer, and you have just learnt the great secret that links all the Abundance technomancers together (during the prologue): The technomancy comes from a mutation that seems to date from the first colonists. As you can perhaps remember, the mutants on Mars are treated like animals, so if this secret was to be revealed, the technomancers would suffer greatly.
Abundance (which is deeply inspired by Stalin's USSR) has a spy and surveillance force called the ASC. These guys want to discover the technomancers' secret and will do everything to obtain this information. So your main mission is to find all the clues and relics coming from Earth to try to find out why this mutation appeared, and most of all to contact Earth, and escape this hell on Mars.
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Couchpotato: On the topic of customization - Will you be able to customize your hero this time?
Jehanne Rousseau: Partly yes. You won't be able - as in Bound by Flame - to choose your hero's sex, but you'll be able to choose his face, haircut, skin and eye color.
