The Lovechild of a Space Shooter and an RPG: Sigma Star Saga

by Louis Bedigian

 

“Sigma Star Saga looks like an RPG but it's really an action game.”

 

 

Since birth I’ve wanted to go into space.  From the time I designed a space ship using high-tech materials (top-secret stuff I can’t talk about) to the time I rode my bike off the roof and flew head-first into a tree, space travel has been my dream.  The sky, the stars, the moon.  It makes me want to run free and howl*.

 

Countless attempts meant countless injuries.  The pain grew stronger each time, and I eventually sold my bike to this kid down the street.  (He had the strangest complexion: his face was green.  He must go through life feeling like an alien living on this planet.)

 

I had hopes of taking my space ship to infinity and beyond.  Unfortunately, NASA grounded it when they discovered a flaw in my Styrofoam casing.  Of all the things that could go wrong!  I knew I should’ve used Velcro.

 

Last night I spent an hour staring at the sky, asking the brightest star to make my wish come true.

 

“Blah, blah, blah  …Have this wish I wish tonight.”

 

And just like that I was transported into a space ship!  We traveled for hours, cruising the Earth like it was nothing.  Wanna go to Tokyo?  Hop in, we’ll be there in an hour!  It was so great!

 

All of a sudden I heard the sound of snapping fingers.  It was Matt Bozon, the creative director of Sigma Star Saga.  He had hypnotized me into thinking I was in space!  Game directors, you can’t trust a one of them!

 

 

 

 

Upon waking Matt told me that if he hadn’t hypnotized me, he couldn’t transport me to the top-secret location where a conference call was to be held.  It was dark, creepy, and there was stuff everywhere.  Oh wait, that’s just my bedroom.  Nonetheless, I had to be here for the call.  Let’s listen in.

 

*Like a lone wolf after sunset.

 

 

The Star That Started It All

 

Call it a stroke of good luck or call it fate.  Sigma Star Saga is one of those games that, if the stars hadn’t been aligned, it probably wouldn’t be here.

 

“The way the game came up, we had been trying to do a contract with Namco,” said Matt, determined to join forces with the arcade game master.  “[They] had this bizarre opportunity to do an unofficial sequel to a game they have in Japan which I believe wasn’t doing so well.  At first we kind of wanted to resurrect that as a brand, but as it turns out we were really throwing out every element of that game and did something completely new.”

 

A Haven for Shooter Heaven

 

Sigma Star Saga uses what the developers refer to as gun data: components that can be used to enhance your weapon.  “The gun data, gosh, how many things are there?” Matt asks himself, trying to comprehend the massive numbers the team has implemented.  “There’s a ton of them.  We’ve had people compare it to Materia in Final Fantasy VII where you can put orbs in your weapon.  That’s good example but it’s not exactly like that.  It’s where you have guns, the bullet begins, travels, and detonates.  You can substitute any one of these gun data things into your gun.”

 

Most impressive.  But how is that like Final Fantasy VII?  Matt answers, “If you have a rapid, you could have a rapid gun that has a bouncing bullet component to it and blows up and splinters into little fragments.  That would be your three gun data types.  It’s a type of cannon that’s shooting rapid bullets that shatter on impact.  That’s essentially the beginning, middle and end of a weapon.”

 

That’s a great concept.  “There’s tons of these different substitute gun data that you can find throughout your quest,” he says.  “Some are really obvious, some are hidden.  You have to use your tools in clever ways.  They’re everywhere.  They’re on the planet, they’re in caves, they’re in star bases.  They’re in places that if you backtrack you might find something really crazy.”

 

Raising our anticipation meter, Matt added one final tidbit about the gun data.  “In testing the game we’d find combinations that would force us to have to re-think things.  Because they’d be totally absurd or totally devastating.  We’d have a weapon that could destroy a boss in one hit.  The combinations are so much fun to play with.” 

 

 

 

We’ve Upped Our Arsenal.  Now Up Yours!

 

“For a few days we made lists of weapons we liked from previous shooters, all the way back to Atari 2600, and encapsulate that type of a gun into one of our gun data,” Matt told us while going over his list of inspired content.  “We took bullets from Atari 2600 Vanguard where the bullets shoot out in the direction that you’re moving.  When you move up and down the bullet moves up and down.  Anything we could think of we’d make a gun data out of.  It was really, really fun.  I can’t wait to see what people do.”

 

“I’m waiting to find someone on the Internet who’s got this gun data that abolishes something we were pretty sure was air-tight,” Matt concluded.  “If there is such a thing I think it’s just going to add to the fun of the game.”

 

Sigma Star Statistics 

• 20 cannon types

• 20 shot types

• 28 impact types

• (Total of 15,680 combinations!)

“Our poor testers at Namco trying to come up with 15,000 combinations,” Matt commented regarding the massive statistics.

 

 

Call and Answer

 

Can you tell us more about the space battles?

 

Matt Bozon: The space battles have a ton of weapons; it’s the top-view stuff that is more tools.  They’re tools, but some of them have secondary effects where you can use them as weapons.  One thing you get early on in the game is like an air hockey buck.  You kick it and it bounces all around the playing field.  It’s a great thing to clear minefields, but you can also kick it into enemies to blow them up.

 

It’s a lot like the games I played a lot that influenced me as a designer.  I pulled a lot of inspiration from games like Radius, R-Type, there’s probably a handful of others I’m not thinking of.  Those in particular, the side-scrolling battles, they [the battles in Sigma Star Saga] are side-scrolling.  They’re pretty quick: tons of action going on.

 

You have to destroy a certain amount of enemies before the battles will end.  They’re turn-based battles.  It’s like a fight with a bunch of Imps and Ogres in RPGs, a traditional RPG, except it’s more action.  You’ve got to blow up 30 guys, you’ve got to tear through them, so you start picking off the ones that are the weakest.  I would also compare it to if you pop in a quarter and play 15 seconds of Galaga.  You’re just tearing through waves of guys, and then when the quota’s reached you’re put back on [the ground].  These things come up very frequently

 

You’re harvesting experience while you’re in the shooting stage.  Sometimes the action freezes and you level up and your gun power is better than it was before.  We’re doing other difficult stuff like killer bombs.

 

 

 

Are all the battles in space?

 

MB: The side-scrolling ones are in space.  They’re random battles.  But sometimes it’s stuff like flying through caverns.

 

So you’re always flying during combat?

 

MB: Yeah, you’re always flying in battle.  Some are random and some are actual full-on stages like you’ve come to expect from a regular shooter.  You might fly a stage that’s six or seven minutes long with a boss at the end of it.  That would wrap up an entire chapter in the game.  There are battles on foot, but they’re not the kind of battles where you’re harvesting experience points.  It’s more like, I’ve heard people compare it to Sword of Mana.  You’re walking around and there’s a guy in the way so you smack him out of the way, and maybe he drops a little health [item] for you.  That’s more of the action on foot.  But the real action, the action players are going to care about, are in space.

 

If you touch a monster instead of smacking it – that’s how battles are encountered?

 

MB: No, battles are purely random.  Touching enemies in exploration view, the top view, you just receive damage.  And you do share damage between your ship and your character.  When you’re in the ship there’s no way to get your health back.  If you’re very close to exploding and you can clear the random battle you’re in, your best bet is to go after some weak enemies and destroy them to get health out of them.

 

Can you give us some examples of the other weapons?

 

MB: There’s six weapons. You start with the pistol.  You get the puck tool you can kick around.  I know we’ve released a few shot showing him fly around with the dragon fly wings.  There’s a really weird thing near the end of the game where you can turn into a puddle.  I think in the puddle you can sneak past enemies and not even have to deal with them.  So much stuff happened in the last month.  There’s a speed-running tool that’s great for getting around the map.  The random battles trigger a lot like Pokemon battles where you’re roaming through the grass.  That amount of frequency.  When you’re running, you can get around a lot faster without being sucked into these battles.  The boots that you run with are pretty good for that.  They also have a second effect where you can jump off cliffs and smash with him.  It destroys enemies and there are certain objects you can destroy while free-falling.  From E3 [in May] to the time the game ships, vast amounts of changes and improvements.

 

What are some more of the things you can do while on foot?  Are there any puzzles to solve?

 

MB: It’s not really a heavy puzzle game.  There are certain things where you can use your tools to get past certain obstacles.  But that’s more like a [barrier] to your progress [than a puzzle].  Most everything in the top-view has to do with moving the story forward.  It’s not like in Pokemon where you have to push blocks and figure out how to get to the other side.  We don’t do a lot of that.  Sigma Star Saga looks like an RPG but it’s really an action game.

  

 

 

You mentioned that the game is 20 hours long but said that some players could complete it in 10 hours.  Are there any side quests – things that you can but don’t necessarily have to do for fun or for extra benefit?

 

MB: There’s one thing that I should keep kind of sketchy, but we do have a second play-through.  The way that you get that is by beating the game one time.  After that there are certain changes that will take place that will encourage players to want to play it a second time.  Along the course of the game, a lot of the reason why I think some players can beat it faster than others, a lot of the impressive gun data are hidden.  If you don’t go out of your way looking for them you’ll miss them.  What this will probably mean for most players: if they’re underpowered against a particular boss, they will either harvest experience points and try to level themselves up so that their bullets will cause more damage.  Or they’ll go explore.  I guess I kind of think that the less-skilled player will explore and find some of these crazy gun types that will let them defeat the boss.

 

Sigma Star Saga has many different locations.  Can you return to completed locations at any time?

 

MB: Yes.  You can go back. There’s times when for story purposes we don’t allow you to go back, especially in the beginning (we didn’t want players backtracking a lot).  Once you leave the first planet we don’t let you go back there to pretty close to the half-way point in the game.  We didn’t want the player feeling lost.  We have your commanding officer and other characters to report to.  The story moves you to other stations, and you just don’t have access to the [previous] planet for a while.  But eventually you can backtrack to anywhere you want to go.  I guess I compare that to Metroid Fusion.  By the end of the game you have access to the entire map so you can get the 100% rating.

 

 

Thanks to everyone at WayForward (developer of Sigma Star Saga) and Kohnke Communications for having a wonderful conference call.