An Interview with Tribes: Ascend Developer Hi-Rez Studios

French gaming magazine NoFrag recently had a chance to sit down with Todd Harris, director of Hi-Rez Studios, and ask him a couple questions about their upcoming game Tribes: Ascend.

Originally developed by Dynamix, Hi-Rez Studios aquired the rights to the Tribes franchise in October 2010 and have since then been working on the next two installments, the second being being an MMO called Tribes: Universe. Hit the jump for a summary.

• The game currently supports 32 players, the team continues to experiment with less and more
• Projectiles will depend on your character’s velocity, meaning if you fire a rocket while going 80Km/h, it will inherit that speed
• Tribes: Ascend is a pure multiplayer game, just like Tribes 1 & 2
• The beta will contain two modes: Capture the Flag (with bases and generators) and Rabbit Chase
• The first ingame videos will probably be shown at the end of June
• There is no speed limit to skiing, it will depend on the player’s skill
• The game will contain most of the iconic Tribes weapons and packs, as well as some new ones
• The team respects and listens to the existing Tribes community, but won’t listen to them blindly. Their goal is to reintroduce the franchise and to reunite the 1 Million+ players all over the world, by keeping the basic elements but modernizing the game where it’s necessary
• They’re not sure why Tribes: Vengeance didn’t sell too well, but think it has to do with it being released near Doom3, Half Life 2 and Halo 2. They will keep supporting and improving the game after release and hope for good word-of-mouth
• The main platform for Tribes: Ascend will be the PC, as that’s where the franchise was born
• They will implement ways to coordinate and communicate during the beta, and will add clan support later on
• They will start the beta with 4 maps and use them to balance the game. Afterwards, they will release more
• An SDK will not be made available at launch, but may follow at a later date
• The game will offer the classic three armor classes, but there will be many options to customize your load-out and appearance

Posted by: Andrej

Posted on: June 22, 2011

Drej is a volunteer writer for The Daily DL. He's been into gaming since he was 3 years old and thus knows a thing or two. When he's not busy playing games, watching obscure movies or being an cynic, he tries to write descriptions of himself in the third person that won't make him look like the nerd he actually is. He also knows Japanese and isn't afraid to use it.