General Update #28

Hey there!

We hope you had fun with the new version of Silent Echo. Today we'll talk about some of what's coming in the next patch and how we plan to roll out the conclusion to Silent Echo's second chapter.

Pocket sized mass destruction

Before we get into the chapter's conclusion, I'd like to take a moment to talk about a new feature coming in the next update, which is ultimate skills.

In the next update, you will be able to acquire your first ultimate weapon, the Nova Cannon, and its associated skill, which will be in a new fourth slot. These weapons are particularly destructive and capable of wiping an entire squad of enemies in a single shot. However, it will take a while before you get use it again.

Ultimate skills work differently than their cooldown based counterparts, which is what you've played with thus far. They use a charge system, with one charge obtained after each turn, up to a maximum of 20 for the time being. The interesting aspect of charges is that they carry on from combat to combat until they are spent.

As enemies are about to become tougher and meaner, these ultimate abilities are a good way to get yourself out of a sticky situation. Will you be the kind of player it keep it ready for the right time, or the kind to use it as soon as it is available? We will see ;)

Moving forward with the story

We feel the overall content currently available in Chapter 2 is enough to warrant moving on with the main campaign.

We plan to roll this out in two phases, as we still have some content left to add to Chapter 2. With the next update 0.2.3, we will add the final section of Chapter 2's campaign quest.

There are a few ways this final sequence plays out, but most notably, some consequences if you refused to free Sylvia when you first met her.

Afterwards, a new intermission sequence will be added in 0.2.4, giving a look at the events happening in parallel at the company's headquarters, before we jump fully into Chapter 3.

Starwatch Academy

Last time, we spoke about our desire to start to separate the play area's of Starwatch, namely into the Cruiser and the Academy itself. One of the reasons we gave for this was to make experiencing the different interactions and events the game has to offer more coherent. From a writing and design standpoint, keeping the universe consistent is important to us, and we've tried to prevent any quantum loop situations where Characters could be in two places at once.

But the reason we're excited about actually following through and doing it this way is perhaps even simpler. We've established a cast of supporting characters at the Academy to interact with and spend time with, and aside from Lt. Ann and Zara, none of these can be easily explained away on the player's cruiser. Which leads us to the next important step, in that we need some counterparts to populate the cruiser. Given that it's an exploration ship, and likely to run into some rough patches here and there, you can bet that these additions to the roster of characters will be unique and exciting in different ways than the Cadet's ever could be. (Did someone say alien waifus?)

But that's enough about the cruiser for now, after all, the game is quite literally titled Starwatch Academy. All the fun, new things on the cruiser aside, we're not going to be pushing the content at the Academy aside in favor of it exclusively. We still have stories to tell, and threads that we started to lay a while back to follow. Stories dealing with Hana and Irene and their unwilling transformations are only the peak of the iceberg, as we intend to delve deeper into the politics of the Academy, and the consequences of your actions, both within and without it.

Have fun!