Developer Diary: Art Director John Miles

Bullfrog days..... Although, regretfully, I never directly worked on Syndicate or Syndicate Wars, I had the pleasure of being at Bullfrog and working with Sean Cooper (the original designer of Syndicate) on Dungeon Keeper 2 and subsequent titles. Sean was, and is, a great guy to work with. Somewhat of a unique character; hard working, direct, honest, passionate and above all great fun, especially on a night out!  

 

Syndicate..... The game that wouldn’t die.... Since the original in ’93, Syndicate has always been one of those titles that gets dev guys excited. You only had to mention the iconic three syllable name and you saw the glint in their eyes. I can’t quantify the actual number of times Syndicate was resurrected as a concept within EA but I was lucky enough to be party of at least two of them before this one developed with Starbreeze. Good to finally realize it’ll see the light of day.

 

Richard K Morgan ...... Syndicate to me has always embodied that certain style of Film-Noir Cyberpunk. Growing up I loved Blade Runner and Terminator. More recently I was excited and intrigued to read Altered Carbon (by Richard K Morgan) It felt like the modern day Blade Runner and also very akin to the Syndicate world we had milling around in our heads. Whilst on holiday in Thailand, I took it upon myself to Google Richard and contact him out of the blue. I remember a weird conversation outside a Thai restaurant in Ko Yao Noi where I asked if he was interested. ‘You’re kidding aren’t you!?’ was his response, he was a massive gamer and really keen to work with us on a new title.

Starbreeze .... I was at the outset of Syndicate when it was placed with Starbreeze. My regular trips to Uppsala, Sweden consumed my life as we tried to figure out what Syndicate would be 18 years on from the original. After a 7 month concept phase with the team I was seconded onto other EA Partners projects, the penultimate being Crysis 2 working out of Frankfurt with the talented Crytek team.

 

Returning to Syndicate after Crysis 2, I was once again immersed into the World of Syndicate. It didn’t take long for the seedy grim of corporate espionage to get into my pores!

 

Art Style .... Syndicate is future retro; it’s comical to see sci-fi movies from the 50’s and 60’s and look at the imagery they thought was the future. I dread to think what my grandchildren will think when they see our interpretation. Syndicate’s context and backstory is an extrapolation of current events, technologies and social behaviors.  

 

As we blindly march on into this social media future, we’re happy to offer up our most personal information and photographs. Trusting the faceless corporations never to use any of this info against us, or for their own gain. Stylistically Syndicate is a kind of retro future, full the sci-fi that was cool in the 1980’s. Personally I love the tech feel of the 80’s; the explosion of home computers, cyber punk, and trench cloak clad replicants marching to the tune of Kraftwerk.

 

Whilst we’re on the subject of tunes, I have to hand it to 3 musical geniuses; Russell Shaw who create the original Syndicate theme music in glorious early midi, Johan Althoff the composer at Starbreeze and Skrillex who mastered the instantly lovable dub track used on our announce trailer. More world class DJ remixes on the way!

If you’re interested in following the daily twists and turns of development then follow my random sub 160 character ramblings on twitter- @johnmiles_ea

Over and out for now.... John