As if yesterday's tech and art reveal wasn't enough, today saw the venerable PC Gamer magazine declare 2023 as the "Year of RTS," with Stormgate as it's cover feature! Most of the information provided is going to be old news to those of you that have been following Stormgate's development since it was announced during the Summer Games Fest this past June. That being said, we did get some new that that looks fantastic (including a mech rendered in engine!) and some more specifics about what the engine will be able to support.
Campaign Information
Outside of some information about where the idea for Stormgate was first generated (in Jesse Brophy's back garden while a lawn mower drowned their conversation out in the background!), the first bit of big information we got was that the first campaign focusing around either the Resistance or Infernals (and therefore not some unannounced third race). Not exactly groundbreaking, but nice to see it confirmed.
The other interesting thing is the concept of a living world. Starcraft II's campaign felt like a retelling of a story that has already happened - the nature of the serialized campaign format allows Frost Giant to develop a campaign that adapts to events in the game, with "characters that die off, characters that change sides, factions that go through ups and downs, and changes in their power dynamics." In other words, a living world with stories told through multiple campaigns instead of one static story. To do this, they've been working, not only with former Blizzard Lead Writer Mickey Neilson and Narrative Designer Whitney Beltrán, but also Marv Wolfam, who co-created Blade and wrote the Crisis on Infinite Earths CW Multiverse crossover saga. Neilson and Wolfman were previously known, but Whitney Beltrán (State of Decay 2, multiple Dungeons and Dragons products) is new (and a big name to add to the IP).
Finally, one of the arguably most important revelations is something a bit more technical - they plan to allow us to explore the perspectives of different factions in the same mission, something rather novel to RTS games (and game storytelling in general).
Technical Information
This feature was much more of an art dump with some lore information, but we did get a couple things on the technical side. The first big revelation was how many units the engine can support in current testing - 1300 per Tim Morten, significantly more than an Blizzard-style RTS to date (at least without significant lag). This allows them to really dial in the asymmetry of the two announced factions and allow the Infernals to really embody this "world-conquering" swarm of creatures from all over the cosmos. They also talk a bit about how the Resistance will field fewer, tougher, and larger units in comparison (seems like we got that one right!).
Getting Involved
As always, if you want to engage with the Frost Giant developers and get information from them as they post it, you should sign up for their newsletter, head on over to /r/Stormgate on reddit, and sign up for the beta and wishlist the game on steam!