I am pleased to publish an interview with Andrew Beletsky, game designer and PR-manager at B-Cool Interactive, who was kind enough to give us some more information a the upcoming game Scorpion. We've also added some exclusive new screenshots!

1. Thank you for your time. Can you tell please introduce yourself, your team and what you're working on at the moment?

Greetings! My name is Andrew Beletsky. I'm working as a game designer and PR-manager at B-Cool Interactive. We are young (founded in 2005) but rapidly growing company composed of talented people that all have substantial experience in the CIS game industry. Cossacks series, famous STALKER, Boiling Point: Road to Hell, anticipated Disciples 3 and many more are present in our team-members' portfolios. Currently I'm working on the main character's psychic powers, balance, and of course try to keep in touch with various entertainment resources to keep gamers informed on how things are going here

2. First of all, I've noticed that you mention this game in two ways: Scorpion (The Game) and Showdown: Scorpion. Can you set the record straight? Or are you still deciding on the final name?

Indeed there is kind of mess with naming at this particular moment, so I'll try to be Spartan-short and clear now to explain this both to you and our readers. When the project was started, its first working name was Showdown. Later it was renamed to Showdown: Scorpion and at last, around half a year ago, we decided to keep only Scorpion as a name, because things that the word ‘showdown' represented at first have gone from the game. It was hard to initiate a fast renaming process - many materials had already been sent to print, thus a current situation with different names of the game followed.

In conclusion, the game is, and will be, called Scorpion. And a sheer fact you have asked about it means that re-branding is on its way!

3. Is Scorpion a pure FPS game or does it add some RPG elements? Will it be a tactical game or a "shoot all that moves" FPS?

Well, the game has both tactical and RPG elements in it, and actually is really far from ‘shoot all that moves' games like, for example, Serious Sam. RPG elements are represented by the main character's special abilities (I'll cover them slightly later in detail), their acquisition and development during the game. And you are not supposed, or better said, you can't just outgun everything you see or can meet in the game. Instead we expect a player to be creative with the tools we gave him - his specials and ability to stealth can be combined in various ways to achieve victory where it seems impossible. Thus tactics comes into play. Of course there are moments where you simply bring death and destruction to your enemies - it's an FPS after all! J

4. The gameplay footage from Scorpion looks really good. Does it use a "home-made" engine? What will the system requirements be? Any outdoor levels?

Yes, the engine, called COOLEngine was developed by our team from scratch. It also includes some third-party tools, like Kynapse Kinogon (AI and pathfinding meta-system) and Ageia physics engine. The engine is mostly tuned up for indoor and very urbanized environment and most outdoor stuff like trees, grass, clouds etc are not implemented in its current version.

Quite surprisingly there are few ‘outdoor' levels where you will go out from skyscrapers and sewers to the streets. But do not expect to see something like you are viewing in the window now - those are streets of the post-collapse world. Strong colored smog is in the air, dirt and desolation, broken windows and rusty car hulls, trash and old papers are littered everywhere. Welcome to the future, guys, one we don't want to live in.

What about requirements? They are quite usual for nowadays games, with minimal configuration set on Athlon 64/Intel PIV CPU, Radeon x1600 or GForce 6600. 1Gb of RAM is also a necessity. Recommended values are higher of course. But in general, any game will benefit from a better PC. Scorpion is not an exception.

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5. Will you have a complex story or will that be just the means to go and shoot everyone? Who will be the main hero? When does the action happen?

There is a complex story behind the scene. It will be revealed to the player, but in a gentle manner, thus it will lose significant part of its original complexity. At some stage we considered the option to give the player some text materials, like computer files, letters and holograms, but decided not to go for it. Of course, the amount of information given will be enough to understand what's going on and not to feel like a mindless shooter. Maybe some additional materials and data will be included in the manual or published on our web-page, but this is not stoned yet. 

6. What are the sources of inspiration for Scorpion? Any known books, movies or videogames?

Yea, you hit the nail here. Quite a lot of well known media helped us to create a clear picture of what game we are doing. It's not an easy task to list them all; I'll just cover most notable sources quickly.

First of all I want to mention a few great game titles - F.E.A.R., Deus Ex, Chronicles of Riddick, and to some extent Resident Evil. Several movies were a great help for us, too, Johny Mnemonic and Bladerunner are the most important of them as they give us the visual ‘feel' how the bad-scenario future can look, and that becomes a basement for further development of the game style.

But the most important sources were fiction books. Gibson and Sterling novels, true bibles of cyberpunk, and Snow Crush by Stephenson that let our project leader, Eugene Duranin, see the society of the future we were picturing. I'm not going to continue as the list can simply be too long and even if I do, I think that I'll miss millions of sources that are affecting subconsciousness in one way or another.

7. Tell us a few features that will be unique in this game and why would you recommend the gamers to play it.

As we have stated before a time or two, there are no gameplay elements in the Scorpion unique to the genre, but instead we have a unique mix of some elements. Of course we have many interesting features implemented; so let's at first talk about the game as a whole, and then about a unique feature or two.

While cooking the Scorpion, our recipe was simple and effective - mix up good and flexible combat AI, a hero with diverse special abilities and add a bit of stealth action. This has created quite an unusual, unique mix despite elements themselves being common for the genre. The player will get at his disposal not only interesting, unpredictable opponents who are fun to fight with, but also a great array of abilities both in combat and out of it. Thus almost each fight or situation can be resolved in a number of different ways, depending on what abilities and weapons the player will use, whether he will try direct assault or silent elimination, etc. This is further supported by the game's combat AI that ensures no fight will feel the same, as your enemies act very intelligently using cover, retreats and actively maneuvering to push the player out of good defensive positions. Just to help you - imagine it's playing like a mix of F.E.A.R and some elements of Thief series. And the player's abilities are what makes these two different things work together.

Well, as a global picture hopefully becomes clearer to you, it's time to get a look at a few of those abilities I've mentioned. Let's talk about two of them - Mind Control and Rampage.

Mind Control, as it stands from its name, is the ability to overwhelm and subdue the psyche of one enemy forcing him to fight on your side for a limited period of time. This ability is essential when fighting large numbers of rivals, as it does not only instantly decrease their number but also forces some of them to switch their attention to a new threat. You can get control over the most dangerous enemy, or one stationed on the far side of the room to force others to drop good defensive points or invent something more creative to gain advantage where it seems impossible! Of course, there are many enemies immune to such influence, like robots, guard dogs or mindless mutants.

Rampage is in some way complimentary to Mind Control. This ability allows the player to make his enemies fall into wild frenzy and force whole groups of them to fight each other for a very short time. This is a short but very powerful effect which, in combination with Mind Control, can easily turn the tides of nearly any fight. Rampage has a few limitations though. First, enemies immune to Mind Control ability are also immune to Rampage. Second, it's a very expensive ability with huge cool-down, so it should be used wisely. And third, enemies on rampage will not drop their current target, making this ability an opening move to start fight with as if used in combat it won't give the player a serious benefit, if any at all.

8. You haven't mentioned anything about multiplayer. Are there any plans for multiplayer support?

Indeed, we are not planning to include multiplayer in the game release. There are a few reasons for that. First, we have a time limit and now it's obvious we'll be unable to complete multiplayer part in it. Second, as the Scorpion is based and balanced entirely around a single player scenario, and includes a number of non-trivial abilities the player can use, multiplayer balance becomes a very serious issue. Considering the above we have decided to skip multiplayer rather than making a bad one. Nevertheless, we have some further plans for it. If it is decided to work on some add-on, we will certainly include MP in it as well. 

9. Are you thinking about porting Scorpion to XBox 360 or PS3 maybe? Why?

Well, we are not actually planning porting to other platforms at this moment. Of course, the idea to make Xbox 360 version is in the air, but this will probably depend on international publisher's decision or PC version success.

10. Thank you for your time! When can we expect to play Scorpion? Any final words you would like to say to our readers?

We are planning the release on Q1 2008. Honestly want to say more precise date, but can't do that yet. But not a long time to wait anyway

We've enjoyed answering your questions, guys, and will be happy to chat again - it's really hard to cover such a huge game as Scorpion in a relatively small interview. So, you are welcome any day any time! Good luck and good games!