Introduction

Developer Deep Shadows and publisher Play Ten Interactive are actively working on White Gold, an open world first person action-RPG that is aiming to outdue the efforts of Far Cry. FiringSquad got a chance to chat with the dev team at Deep Shadows to learn more about White Gold.

FiringSquad: First, how did the idea for White Gold come about?

Deep Shadows: Our scriptwriter and designer were in Latin America a couple of years ago and they brought a lot of photos and ideas from there. When they arrived, we decided to do the game with an unique Latin American flavor, facetious conversions, beautiful landscape and original ending. Mixing action and RPG for this project seemed to work really well.

FiringSquad: What can you tell us about the game's main storyline and playable character?

Deep Shadows: Let the main plot be our secret for the moment. The action takes place in one of the small Caribbean countries of the year 2010. The political and military situation there is very complicated - the government is trying to smash the guerrillas, and drug mafia troops fight for control of coca plantations. Banditry and corruption are flourishing. The main character is a former officer of the US special forces, now working in a Private Military Company. He and his friends are hired to perform a certain high profile investigation, which would plunge them straight into the boiling pot of today’s Latin America.

FiringSquad: What can you tell us about the game's island setting? Will the island be completely open for the player to explore in the game?

Deep Shadows: The action in White Gold takes place on various islands, from tiny atolls with only a handful of palms, up to huge islands with several towns, hamlets and bases of the feuding factions. The total size of the game’s map is over 140 square miles, and all terrain in the game will be absolutely open to explore. The world is seamless, so you will not see any loading screens in the game or anything that would deter you from playing. You can visit bustling settlements, crawl around windswept mountains and dark jungles, explore sandy beaches and underwater caves, and even venture into ancient ruins to learn some dark secrets of the America’s prehistoric past. All islands are unique and very diverse. The players will be in a familiar, but dangerous environment nearly all the time. But some things they can discover along the way will be so ugly, that even mutated giant mantis would seem to be quite nice critters.

FiringSquad: What sort of missions will the player have to accomplish in White Gold?

Deep Shadows: Players will find a lot of different missions in the game. Whatever you like - from simple “delivery” quests to difficult forked tasks where you have to hack into computers, hunt for the drugs and antique contraband and so on. Do not forget that White Gold has a free gameplay, so there’s a myriad of varieties in quests and ways to accomplish them. You will have both non-linear and linear missions. Every player would be able to choose the gameplay style that is the most appealing. We understand that in a game where player is given a complete freedom of action, where everyone can choose their own way to reach a particular target, it is easy to become confused. Therefore we’ll add a lot of helpful NPCs, hidden diaries, notes and similar things that would provide guidance. But we never force the player to make a choice; we only suggest.