Hannes Appell · Director of Cinematics

Yeah, I'm definitely confident. The number of scenes we have is crazy high.

Brian Chambers · Development Director, Foundry 42 Frankfurt

But we knew that for a while.

Hannes Appell · Director of Cinematics

So there's lots of things going on, but for example, we have lots of scenes that are comms calls, and these comms calls are kind of easy to set up. So there's a big chunk that is comms calls. Then there's lots of scenes that are kind of drifting into gameplay territory, where we are just helping out or supporting. And then, of course, there's a big bulk of scenes that are the social interaction, interstitial scenes during each chapter, which is a big part of the story. And then a small but very important part is the full-on filmic cinematics, which is the stuff that is the most fun.

Brian Chambers · Development Director, Foundry 42 Frankfurt

Those are the ones you always get excited about the most, right?

Hannes Appell · Director of Cinematics

If I have control over the camera, I'm in love. Because then I can get really close to the characters, I can change my lenses and everything. But our rule set for Squadron normally is: if we can do it, it should be coming from player agency. We still stay in the player's eyes. We have some cases where, if the player is not present in the scene, yes, we will cut to this, and then we can cut to it filmically.

Brian Chambers · Development Director, Foundry 42 Frankfurt

That's interesting to note, that we're doing as much as we can to keep control in the player's hands. Even though there were some, as we were talking them through, where we kind of had to take control away from the player, we didn't want to completely, so we put them on rails. But again, there's so many of these that are interactive, if you will. Somebody approaches you and, hey, I can go this way and hear part of the story, I can go that way and come back to this later if I want, but you're making a choice, and whatever choice you make, something new clicks off and you run down that route.

Hannes Appell · Director of Cinematics

I'm fighting a constant fight. Some gamers out there probably are like, oh god, this guy is a cinematic guy. He will fight for quick time events and framing dead bodies instead of actually discovering them, and stuff like this. But there's this back and forth between design and our department where we went through these scenes: does it make sense to take away the camera for a certain bit and only give you look control? Or do we want to give you full freedom, but then can we funnel the player into a certain view? It's an ongoing process, but I would say I'm happy about the balance that we have in the game. It's definitely not something that's constantly on rails, or complete freedom.