Neo Steam editor Jason Ruper on bringing steampunk to MMOs

by James Egan May 30th 2009 at 5:00PM

Filed under: Classes, Interviews, Free-to-play, Neo Steam

One of the upcoming free-to-play titles that Massively had a chance to see this month is Neo Steam: The Shattered Continent from Atlus. Our hands-on gallery feature is a good introduction to the look and feel of the game world, but now that Neo Steam is in open beta, we're expecting more info about the game to be forthcoming.

We came across a ZAM interview with Neo Steam: The Shattered Continent lead editor Jason Ruper, conducted by Andrew "Tamat" Beegle. Ruper gives some background on the game's setting and lore, saying, "The game has a lush, fantasy-steampunk setting, and everything -- from the machine wasteyards and polluted rivers to the rickety vehicles and the ancient ruins from before the shattering -- contributes to this setting and reminds you that your nation is in a state of reconstruction as well as in the middle of a cold war."

He also explains a bit about how they try to engage players with the storyline even in the beginning of the game. "After the early levels, you can not only invade the other nation's soil, but you'll even get quests to assassinate some of their leaders in various towns and outposts," says Ruper.

The game has some unique classes and skills which Ruper mentions, namely the base Machinist class and the specialized sub-classes: Galvanists, Tinkerers, Artificers, and Gadgeteers. He also discusses Neo Steam's PvP, pets and customizable personal siege engines, and the relatively new idea of bringing steampunk to MMOs. If you're interested in Neo Steam: The Shattered Continent, Jason Ruper's interview at ZAM is definitely worth a read.

Tags: andrew-beegle, atlus, atlus-online, atlus-usa, classes, free-to-play, interviews, jason-ruper, neo-steam, neo-steam-the-shattered-continent, pvp, steampunk, tamat, zam

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Kaamos said on 8:49PM 5-30-2009

I will love the storyline, atmosphere and content of that or any steampunk mmo. There needs to be more out there, I loved Anarchy Online, but its too old now ;/

Quests said on 5:08AM 5-31-2009

Yikes! characters look amazingly stupid.

direct question: another WoW clone?

Hardy said on 10:39AM 5-31-2009

http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/feature/3092/page/1

"#1 WoW Clone

By far the most over and misused word in the MMO dictionary. In theory, the term WoW Clone refers to a game that so closely resembles World of Warcraft that it could have been grown from its very DNA.

In recent years, this term has been applied to almost every single P2P MMO either in production or released. It is applied to any game, it seems, that makes use of: an RPG style user interface, quests, level progression, guilds, instances, zones, swords, the list goes on.

While World of Warcraft does indeed make use of all of the above mentioned elements and more, the fact of the matter is that they were not the first, and they will not be the last. Many of the elements that are pointed to as evidence of a WoW clone are rather fingerprints of the genre as a whole. Quests, for example, have been an integral part of not just MMOs, but of RPGs from the very beginning, the same goes for concepts like level progression, guilds and the fantasy setting. While Blizzard may have created a formula that improved the way that these elements are presented, World of Warcraft remains just a stepping stone in the overall evolution of the genre.

It is certainly easy to understand a desire, amongst players and developers alike, for change and innovation within the genre, but labeling each and every new MMO release a WoW Clone in the way that some people have been serves to do nothing but reduce the entire genre (both pre and post World of Warcraft) to a single game.

It isn’t necessarily a departure from the conventions of the genre that people are looking for so much as it is a bit of obvious innovation."