It's a pretty amazing time to be living in right now, because we get to pick exactly which dystopian future we want to be a part of. Google own a menagerie of military robots , which opens up many potential paths involving sentient AIs and humanity's eventual destruction. That's pretty cool in itself, but we can still course-correct toward a Shadowrun scenario. We just need a rival megacorp to engineer some wizards. How about it, Yahoo?
To help us create an accurate depiction of that cybermage reality, Shadowrun Returns' upcoming expansion moves the turn-based RPG action to a new location: the "stable anarchy" of Berlin. Called Dragonfall , the expansion is due out on February 27th, and will not only offer a new campaign and setting, but will also address one of the original game's main complaints with an improved save system. A new trailer details what you can expect.
"A new threat is rising," announces the expansion blurb , "one that could mean untold chaos and devastation. The only clue: whispers of the DRAGONFALL, a long-forgotten event from the earliest days of the Awakened world. As you find yourself drawn into a maze of veiled dangers and strange machinations, you will come face-to-face with a grim spectre of the past… and alter the course of Berlin's future."
As well as the new location and story, players will have access to new weapons and cyberware, and will be fighting new enemies and monsters. Behind the scenes, the save system has been rewritten, allowing players to save the game wherever they damn well please. And thankfully, that functionality is being rolled back into Shadow Returns' main campaign as part of the upcoming 1.2.0 patch .
The expansion's other focus is enhancing the game's user-generated content creator. According to Dragonfall's feature list, the new editor will offer "a wide range of enhancements to the game editor for community content creators – including a scripting system to better control lighting, tracking mission objectives in the main game UI, placing exploding barrels, and allowing players to input keypad passwords and custom text strings in conversations." Campaign creators will also be able to use the Dragonfall assets as part of their missions.
