Development and release
The original version of Syndicate is a tactical shooter developed by Bullfrog Productions and produced by Peter Molyneux in 1993. Electronic Arts had wanted to make a new Syndicate game for several years but had not found an opportunity to do so. They hoped to bring new elements and drastically altered gameplay concepts that would suit the franchise's universe. They eventually partnered with Starbreeze, which they recognized as an excellent studio for making first-person video games with distinctive styling.[20] Pre-production of the game began in 2007; it was carried out by a small team of staff members after the studio completed work on The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena.[21] However, mid way through the game's development, there were also many creative differences between the developer and the publisher, and the two companies suffered from an inharmonious relationship.[22]
During the first stage of development, the game had no co-operative multiplayer mode; it focused on the story instead of the cyberpunk element. A year after development began, the game was sent for reworking because the studio thought they had not captured the essence of the Syndicate series. The team had little experience in making a co-operative games due to technological restraints, but decided to experiment with it. The internal reception of the co-op prototype was positive; testers said it fit with the canonical fiction of the franchise. The team had once worked on a competitive multiplayer mode for the game, but thought it was not original enough for inclusion.[23] As the game lacked a cooperative multiplayer element, the developers abandoned the use of an online pass, unlike most EA games at that time.[24]
The development team hoped the new title would appeal to both newcomers and fans of the series, be accessible and introduce the franchise to a broader audience. They assumed most players would not have played the original Syndicate games. The team also considered that because of the change in audience tastes and the introduction of new video game platforms, altering the game's perspective to first-person was a correct decision.[25] Turning it into a first-person game was the first design choice made by the team, who hoped allowing players to view from the agent's perspective directly would make the game more immersive for players.[26]
The team aimed to replicate the playing experience and difficulty of the extant Syndicate. Starbreeze considered the difficulty of the first game to be part of the franchise's legacy and was worth preserving; they hoped the new game would be challenging enough for players without being frustrating. They introduced a rarely scripted artificial intelligence (AI) into the game.[27] The AI reacts to players' actions and was programmed to relocate itself after being attacked. The new game has less gore than the older one; players still can kill innocent civilians but the team minimized these scenarios, which they thought were part of the game's environment rather than gameplay elements.[27]
The game was designed to have a sense of unpredictability so it can be played without confining the player to rules. To achieve this, the company added the breaching system, which adds more varieties of combat and gives players more choices when dealing with the artificial intelligence. The breaching system, which originated as a mini-game,[28] was designed to be simple so it would not interrupt the flow of gameplay. Instead of being purely a first-person shooter, the game features action-adventure elements that allow players to choose their progression and tasks them with solving environmental puzzles.[29]
Because the new game is set within a well-established franchise, Starbreeze tried to retain the essence of the world and rebuild these elements.[20][30] The game's story was written by British science-fiction writer Richard K Morgan, whom the team approached after they read his book Altered Carbon. Syndicate was Morgan's second video-game script after 2011's Crysis 2; he used the original game for reference and included elements that those who had played it would immediately recognize. He preserved the original's dystopian setting and theme, and hoped to use these elements to build a powerful story. Morgan traveled to Sweden to meet Starbreeze's game designers to ensure the game's story would not contradict its overall design.[31]
The team's goal was to make the game different from contemporaneous first-person shooters. The team ensured the game had its own style that would differentiate itself from other games. This was achieved by using a "split-world aspect", which divided the game's into two areas, each with a different artstyle. The team added details and aesthetics to the game's three syndicates in the upper zone so they would easily be recognized and be different from each another. "The Downzone", where non-implanted poor people live, has a different design from the three syndicates. The team took ideas for this area from Mirror's Edge.[20] Both sides were inspired by futuristic films such as Blade Runner, Minority Report and Gattaca. In addition, the split-world concept applies to the gameplay. The Downzone enemies tend to be more aggressive and anti-agents, and some gameplay segments such as the breaching system are inapplicable in such areas.[32]
Syndicate uses Starbreeze's in-house game engine, which had been modified for the creation of the game. The team used Beast to achieve global illumination and a realistic lighting system, and a new physics solver to deliver more physical interactions. The team aimed to maintain a consistent visual quality on all the platforms on which the game was released, even though the PC version had the advantage of higher resolution and frame rate. The engine allowed the inclusion of post-process-effects previously used in Assault on Dark Athena, such as motion blur and depth of field. Their artstyle was changed to suit the game's overall style.[33]
Marketing
In 2008, Electronic Arts announced that Starbreeze Studios was working with EA on two projects; one was a new project set in one of EA's older franchises under the name Project Redlime.[34] The name "Syndicate" was trademarked multiple times by Starbreeze and EA,[35] and a small portion of the game's script was accidentally leaked before the game's official revelation.[36] EA officially revealed the game on 12 September 2011, and announced that it is a reboot for the franchise.[37] A demo of the game, which only included the co-op mode and the "Western Europe" map, was released for the Xbox Live Marketplace and PlayStation Network on 31 January 2012.[38] The game was announced and shipped in under six months; it was released for
