There was big news from Palladium Books last month with the surprise return of Rifts Promise of Power. The tabletop games publisher’s popular sci-fi setting had once been a respected computer game on Nokia’s ill-fated Ngage. Now, decades later, Rifts Promise of Power Reforged is about to launch a crowdfunding for a remake of the game.
We’re less than 24 hours from launch, and you can be among the first at BackerKit.
It’s such exciting news, such a turn up for the books, that we tried something a little different, and both Kevin Siembieda and Sean Owen Roberson were great sports and agreed to this video clip interview.
We’ve a transcript below.
Speakers:
- Andrew Girdwood (Interviewer)
- Kevin Siembieda (Creator of Rifts)
- Sean Owen Roberson (Creative Director, Palladium Books)
Andrew Girdwood: Hi, and thank you! This is an exciting project, and I imagine it is a bit terrifying for you too. So I appreciate your time.
Kevin Siembieda: Andrew, we’re happy to be here. You know, I wouldn’t say terrifying. I would say a little scary only in that our specialty is doing tabletop role-playing games like Rifts, which I’m the author of, and other games like Robotech and Heroes Unlimited and the Palladium Fantasy RPG. So, this is something new for me. In particular, Sean actually went to school for this kind of stuff, so he feels much more comfortable with it, but it’s a little scary because we don’t really know what to anticipate as far as sales and fan reaction. We’re super excited about it, but we don’t know how the fans will react. Positively, we hope, because Rifts: Promise of Power is a great game.
Sean Owen Roberson: Hi Andrew, it’s nice to meet you. My name is Sean Owen Roberson. I’m the Creative Director at Palladium Books and Kevin Siembieda’s business partner. Kevin created Rifts a number of years ago, and we’re excited to bring this project back to the fans. It’s one of the things that we hear them talk about a lot.
Andrew Girdwood: Alright. My first question is for people who might not have heard of Rifts, and for probably more readers who haven’t heard of Rifts: Promise of Power. What’s the elevator pitch for the tabletop role-playing game? How would you summarise it in just a sentence or two?
Sean Owen Roberson: What is Rifts? That’s the age-old question. I like to call it “post-apocalyptic Avengers.” If you’re familiar with the Marvel movies, you have heroes in power armor, powerful wizards, or psychics, or really skilled heroes, and they’re all facing off against end-of-the-world, apocalyptic-type threats. Sometimes it’s the Coalition States, which is what would happen if America turned bad, feared magic, and decided all of it was forbidden and was going to get gunned down as soon as they could make it happen. You also face off against plagues and alien invasions and demonic invasions that happen when the Rifts—which are portals in space and time—open up. Basically, magic comes crashing back to the Earth in the near future, and humanity is pushed to the brink of extinction. Rifts takes place as the heroes are starting to reclaim the Earth from all these bigger problems that are plaguing humanity, and also from the new denizens of Earth, which include other aliens and dimensional beings, as well as things that we’re familiar with in fantasy like dwarves, elves, and orcs.
Kevin Siembieda: Well, I think Sean summarized it quite well, and that’s the tricky part with Rifts. There’s so much to it, it’s so unique, that it’s hard to describe in a single sentence. But I do have one—I’ve stolen my elevator pitch from a friend, and it goes like this: “Think Star Wars mashed together with Lord of the Rings, only bigger.”
Andrew Girdwood: And after all this time, why now to bring Rifts: Promise of Power back? And I’m also curious, why TransPerfect as partners? What do they do that’s special?
Kevin Siembieda: Well, for us, it feels like it’s been forever for Rifts to come into a video game medium. It’s something we’ve wanted to do forever, and we were happy when Nokia was doing a mobile game for the N-Gage, and then that whole thing kind of fell apart. It’s something we’ve wanted to do for a long time. And with Sean’s expertise in video games combined with TransPerfect’s expertise, it felt like it was the perfect time. As for why TransPerfect, we’ve been working with them for a couple of years now. They did the sculpts, as Sean mentioned, for the Ninja Turtles crowdfunder. Wonderful work! Their real expertise is working in the digital medium on video games, and so they’re the ones who are going to be doing all of the coding, really, as well as upgrading the artwork. They’re just this amazing, massive studio, and they really know their stuff, and they just seemed like the perfect partner. So that’s why them, now.
Sean Owen Roberson: Why Promise of Power now? It’s something that is great to do, but we didn’t really have the ability to do it. Rifts: Promise of Power came out shortly before the Nokia N-Gage was discontinued. It was a flagship title; it won GameSpot and 1Up.com’s Editor’s Choice Awards for the various things that were on offer at E3 2005 for the Nokia N-Gage. But unfortunately, shortly after the game was released at the end of 2005, it was announced that the Nokia N-Gage was going to be canceled. Despite its positive reviews—it was nominated by the editors of Computer Gaming World, Electronic Gaming Monthly, and the U.S. Official PlayStation Magazine as the best mobile game of 2005—the game didn’t really get a chance to shine like it should have.
So it was one of those things where we always thought, “Wow, this would be really fantastic if we could do it, but we don’t have a studio. We’re a tabletop role-playing game publisher, not a video game studio.” Well, as we were working on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness Redux Edition, which we successfully kickstarted, we got to work with TransPerfect Gaming to sculpt the miniatures for that. We also got to see some of their work behind the scenes with a neighboring video game studio, Stardock Entertainment. They worked with TransPerfect on Sins of a Solar Empire II; TransPerfect did a whole ton of art assets for that game, which looks fantastic. And so, as we built this really fantastic relationship with our partners at TransPerfect, we realized, “Wow, now is the time.” We have a studio led by guys that are industry veterans with experience working on things from like the Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Crimson Skies, and lots of other video game properties. This makes the impossible happen: work with a studio like TransPerfect to bring something like this back in the Unity engine for PC. So that’s the long answer to the short question.
Andrew Girdwood: I haven’t played the game, but I’m pretty excited by some of the character classes mentioned in it. This might be a tough question: which do you think is the most iconic of the Rifts character classes that you can play in the game?
Sean Owen Roberson: That’s a great question. We have 17 character classes in this game, which is a lot for most tactical role-playing games that you’re going to run into in the video game sphere, but it really speaks to the breadth and depth of the Rifts setting. There are a few that come to mind that I want to mention real quick. There’s the Ley Line Walker, who is the master of the ley lines. These are rivers of magical energy that crisscross the Earth, and being able to harness that energy makes them some of the most powerful wizards in the setting. There’s also the Burster, which is a powerful psychic who is pyrokinetic; they control fire and flame and melt through demons, monsters, body armor, and high-tech weapons.
But I think the one that people recognize—fans will recognize the most—is the Glitter Boy, which is a pilot of a chrome-clad power armor that is the legacy of 300 years of heroes. These suits were passed down by survivors during the time of the Great Cataclysm, and they wandered the wilderness kind of as knights-errant, protecting humanity and keeping it from being destroyed by the invading aliens, demons, plagues, bandits, raiders, and all the other kind of stuff that comes with that territory. So that is a fantastic character to play, and it was my choice playing through the game the first time myself.
Kevin Siembieda: Well, that’s really a bit of a tough question because everybody has their favorite. And asking me what I think is the most iconic or favorite, it’s like asking a father who’s his favorite child. I love them all. I thought Sean gave a great answer. I think for a lot of people, it’s the Ley Line Walker, as Sean mentioned, and for many other people, it’s the Glitter Boy or it’s the Mind Melter. They’re all excellent characters. They did an excellent job in bringing the world of Rifts to life.
Andrew Girdwood: Okay, it’s been a while since we had the N-Gage and the first version of Rifts: Promise of Power. How has the tabletop RPG changed in that time?
Kevin Siembieda: So, that’s the beauty of bringing Rifts: Promise of Power to life now. The RPG and the world in the tabletop environment have not really changed; it’s just been expanded dramatically. We’ve done more with the Coalition and the Splugorth and Atlantis and the Black Market and other things. But everything in Rifts: Promise of Power still applies. It’s still totally valid and totally up to date with where the tabletop game is.
Sean Owen Roberson: That’s a cool question. It’s really interesting. Promise of Power came out, and it had a new character class that Kevin really liked called the Elemental Fusionist. It was something that hadn’t been done in the tabletop role-playing game yet, and now the core rulebook for the Rifts tabletop RPG includes the Elemental Fusionist as one of the classes. So there have been some really neat things that have come out since then as well. Since 2005, there have been over a dozen sourcebooks, the newest of which was Titan Robotics, which was a sourcebook that I co-wrote that dives into the legacy of Archie 3 and includes lots of new guns, power armor, and robot vehicles.
The things that are coming to this new version of Promise of Power: Reforged, as we rebuild the game using the original art and other assets in the Unity engine, is this game is going to have a new full widescreen resolution, as opposed to the very small screen that was on the Nokia N-Gage, as well as a lot of interface updates and other quality-of-life improvements that we’re really excited to bring to Promise of Power in the modern age.
Andrew Girdwood: And lastly, who are the baddies in Rifts: Promise of Power?
Sean Owen Roberson: Who are the baddies? That’s a great question. I think Rifts has some of the best bad guys for you to fight against in any role-playing game that I’ve played. I really enjoy the Coalition; they’re the kind of faction that you love to hate. You understand that they’re motivated by what would happen to America if demons invaded, sorcerers went power-mad, and people used psychic abilities and just completely went out of control. Well, you’d crack down on that, and you’d start shooting magic-users or aliens on sight and saying, “Hey, this is Earth. We need to retake Earth.” That means that each individual soldier is indoctrinated this way in this authoritarian regime.
So, that’s who you fight against at the beginning of the campaign: these black-armored shock troops called Coalition Dead Boys. They’re the grunts of the Coalition military, and they can call in airstrikes, power armor support, and artillery, and work with genetically modified dogs called Dog Boys. At the beginning of the game, that’s who you’re facing off against, and you’re actually fleeing from their power to try and get out of Coalition-controlled territory. Later on in the game, though, as the plot progresses, you transition to battling against lots of other varied enemies. There are over 50 different types of enemies in the game, including demons, monsters, and magical creatures, as well as bandits, headhunters, and stuff like that. So the game has a wide variety of bad guys to fight against. But when you say “baddies,” it definitely made me think of the Coalition.
Kevin Siembieda: Well, I think Sean gave a pretty good answer. I don’t want to say too much because we don’t want to give away the story that people will be playing. But, you know, it starts in North America, so you’re dealing with Coalition Dead Boys. And then it goes to England, and it goes to China. And as Sean said, you’re battling all kinds of different things: dragons and demons, and Dead Boys, and other potential villains and their henchmen. So, yeah. Like I said, I don’t want to say much more because I don’t want to give anything away. And thanks for having us, Andrew. We appreciate being here.
Andrew Girdwood: Thank you.
