Strange Brigade was one of many games which was playable at this year’s EGX event, which took place last week in the UK. During the event, I had the opportunity to discuss Rebellion Developments’ most recent title with Robbie Cooke, the studio’s Head of Marketing.
Prior to the launch of Strange Brigade, I also had the chance to interview Jason Kingsley, the CEO of Rebellion, about what inspired the game. With the game now released, and the post-launch schedule detailed, I was interested to hear Cooke’s thoughts on how the launch had gone for Rebellion, and what the studio may have planned for the future of Strange Brigade.
Robbie Cooke on Strange Brigade’s Launch and Post-Launch Content
Since the launch, how do you think that Strange Brigade’s performance has compared to, well firstly Rebellion’s expectations for the game, but also compared to the release of previous titles?
“It’s difficult to tell at the moment with it being a new IP, and sales for companies like Rebellion now, it’s not all about launch week. So we didn’t quite get into the top ten in the UK which we have done previously, but when you look at the long-term sales of some of our games, something like Zombie Army Trilogy, it didn’t chart all that high but then had massive spikes when there were sales or when a promotion came on, and has done really well for the company; so it’s probably a bit too early to tell.
“You can just see the reception of the players, and that’s the thing the developers really care about is seeing the reviews coming in, and reception both from press and from gamers has been really positive, so I think we’re confident that with the word of mouth and with some things we’ve got planned in the future that I think this one’s going to do well for Rebellion.”
So, following on from that, what area in particular do you think have resonated well with the fans, or have received particularly positive feedback?
“It’s almost unanimous I think; the narrator, and the theme behind that; the voice that the game has. It’s not the first game to have a dynamic-style narration but the way it’s done and the theme of the game is very different; that kind of matinee feel with a kind of an unreliable narrator hasn’t really been done, I don’t think, before, and it seems to really resonate with the players. That as a theme and the locale seems to have gone down really well.”
On the other hand, are there any areas which you think Rebellion might tweak, change, or improve based on player feedback since launch?
“That’s an interesting one; we’ve had a lot of people talking to us about balance of the weapons and the way that loot is collected. So, at the moment if someone… you can steal other people’s loot. Now, to some people that is something that needs fixing, but to some of our designers in the forums that’s something that’s absolutely deliberate, so some of that is a bit up in the air. It might be in the future that it’s about choice of offering how people play. I can’t confirm any updates on that. Obviously there are a few small fixes that we need to do; we had patches out in the first couple of weeks just to iron out a couple of small things, but actually it’s been one of our smoothest-ever launches. We’ve been really happy about it.”
Aesthetically-speaking, Strange Brigade’s obviously quite a far cry from most of Rebellion’s previous games. Do you think that style change has been well-received by fans since launch?
“I think so. It’s not… I think a few people have thought, ‘oh, we’re going for a kind of historical thing’; it’s actually more supposed to look like a film set, and I think people have reacted to that. You know, we’re not trying to show a historical depiction of Egypt in the 30s; it’s trying to be more like a Hollywood film set with wooden towers and things falling over.
“So I think that’s gone down well, and I think that as a nice reflection, or sort of opposite, to something like Sniper Elite, which is a lot more grounded in realism and has a lot more research put into how the buildings look and the scenery and that kind of thing; I think it’s gone down well – but I would say that, because when you see the positive comments those are the ones that tend to stick with you.”
Thus far, Rebellion has announced around three months’ worth of content within the Strange Brigade Season Pass. Is that the full extent of the Season Pass currently, or is that just what’s been announced so far?
“That’s the extent currently but it doesn’t mean we won’t do stuff in the future. It’ll depend on how that content goes down. I think with Sniper Elite 3 it was, we actually ended up releasing a couple more extra packs than originally planned, and so people who had the Season Pass got even more than they were expecting. I can’t say that’s going to happen for sure, but it’s something that may happen depending on how the next three months go with development. Obviously, as a studio, we need to be moving on to other projects, whether that might be another franchise that has another game waiting in the wings, or whether a new IP; so, that’ll be up to our owners and some of the creative people at the studio to decide.”
Is the structure of releasing post-launch DLC story chapters something which Rebellion might do again in future, whether with Strange Brigade or with other titles?
“It’s an interesting one, because the way DLC is released these days is changing. You know, lots of games go in, like a Rainbow Six or other types like that, where the content is not necessarily fixed; it’s more about the basic game experience on launch day and then the way that they run with seasons of content and timed events. This is very much still a – you know, we didn’t want a Destiny-type experience, while loads of us love that game, we didn’t want an experience where you felt like you had to log in every week, and then something would completely change in six months’ time.
“So with Sniper Elite 3 and 4, we had this episodic approach where we added three more missions that were an extra campaign. We’ve done it for Strange Brigade because we think that’s the way people see value in their Season Pass. Just as a kind of back-end type thing, our conversion to people who buy the ultimate edition with the Season Pass included is very strong, so people clearly think it’s good value for money.
“We don’t want to shortchange anyone. We certainly think we offer quite a lot of content for our Season Pass, and we tend to tell people as early as possible what they’re getting, because there have been some games in the past that have said, ‘Here’s the Season Pass, you pay for it but we won’t tell you what you’re getting.’ We wanted to avoid that so we made it very clear, basically from when pre-orders went out what was coming. We’ll see if it works; the industry changes pretty quickly, so we’ll have to see about what we do for future projects.”
Each of the DLC releases coming in the next few months is launching alongside several free maps for all players. Is that a release format which Rebellion could aim to continue long-term to keep more players coming back to Strange Brigade?
“Yeah, we wanted to make sure that the multiplayer side with playing co-op, that people aren’t divided by the maps that they own. So, obviously campaign has got a story element and you can have much more… while you can play all the modes solo, campaign is one of those things where we don’t mind giving out, well, having paid DLC. But, for Horde and Score Attack, similar with the adversarial multiplayer in Sniper Elite 4, we thought, ‘It’s better if we keep all the players in the same community.’
“You know, we don’t want to split them up. We’re not Fortnite; we have a small community and we want to keep them happy, and we thought, ‘It’s always nice to have something that we feel we deserve to ask money for alongside some things that we think actually will help benefit the game and community for free.’ So, it’s a model that I think we’ll continue.”
Is the aesthetic of Strange Brigade as it stands at the moment relatively concrete, or could future content feature different settings, enemies, and so on based on other ancient cultures besides those that are already in the game?
“I think the world of Strange Brigade is ripe for expansion. We haven’t really planned it yet; we’re going to see how the post-launch content goes down and our long-term plans for the game, but I think that the world itself is ripe for extra stuff. We’ve already had a three-part comic in our Dredd magazine. We’ve got the side-book as well – the novel, that we’ve written. So, there’s definitely… we’ve got the writers and the people to come up with cool stuff and I think people would like to see more of that, but it’s too early to say whether it’s going to be done.”
Looking ahead to the future, do you think Strange Brigade represents anything of a sea change for Rebellion, or will it be a one-off before the studio returns to more established IPs like Sniper Elite?
“We like to have a mix of both actually, at the same time, so currently we have Strange Brigade, which is a new IP, we’ve been working on Arca’s Path VR, which is a new IP, and which is actually done by another studio. So I’m sure that we’ll be returning to IP that Rebellion fans know and love, but I think generally at any one time there’ll be a mix of new IP, new franchises, and stuff that people already know and expect to come from Rebellion. Evil Genius 2, for example; we haven’t spoken a lot about it, but it’s very much still in development.”
One final question; do you think Rebellion sees Strange Brigade as the start of a new long-term franchise, or will that be determined by how players react to the content over the next few months?
“Well, we’ve already seen a great reaction. I think it’s going to depend partially on… I mean, I’m in marketing, so I don’t make the calls here; the best thing about Rebellion is that the creative decisions don’t come from marketing or finance, they come from Jason and Chris, who own the company, and they come from ideas within the company, from the developers. So I think it’ll be up to them to decide, ‘Is this a series we think we can really do justice and carry on, or is it time to move on to another IP?’