Since that first game, Ritual hasn't done much with the SiN universe. There was an expansion pack, Wages of Sin, done by developer 2015, but Ritual has mainly worked on various licensed properties. That's changing with Sin Episodes, a series of nine shorter serialized Sin games that will be made available via Valve's Steam digital distribution service. Each installment will most likely feature 4-6 hours of gameplay or so, hopefully delivered every six months. At first it seems like an odd model for a first person shooter, but Ritual plans to take full advantage of the episodic format rather than simply split one huge game up into bits and pieces. The company is putting a lot of confidence in the game. In stark contrast to its licensed work of the past few years, development is fully self-funded, with no publisher issuing directives.

"It feels really good to be working on something that's our own again," said Ritual's chief designer Tom Mustaine when we met up for a long talk at last week's Consumer Electronics Show. "We've been doing other people's stuff for a few years now and we definitely always put lots of energy into it, but with the original Sin and now this we really have a lot of freedom, and it's great."

The near-future world of Sin is one of private security forces that do the job the government can no longer manage to do. The player took the role of John Blade, head of a security force called HARDCORPS, whose investigations into a drug operation and bank heist morph into uncovering a conspiracy involving biotech mega-coporation SinTEK. SinTEK is headed up by the beautiful and brilliant Elexis Sinclaire, whose experiments with human evolution employ some rather questionable ethics. Of course, it falls to the player to take down SinTEK. In Sin Episodes, SinTEK is back in the news and attracting lawsuits and controversy aplenty. Guess who's going to take care of it? You'll be setting out to clean things up with the help of your no-nonsense HARDCORPS teammate Jessica Cannon.

The nine episodes will be split into three trilogies, each with a contained story arc. The whole body of Sin Episodes will also have a broad arc that spans across all the games. The team is making sure, however, that each episode will be a complete package in its own right; if you play episode two, then episode five, you should still be all set.

A lot of effort has gone into living up to the Sin name by making the world as immersive and interactive as possible. Each episode might be only several hours long, but Ritual aims for a much higher content density than most games do, meaning that players will hopefully enjoy spending time in the world to try things out and explore. "Things are destructible, things are all usable," said Mustaine. "We want to make sure that if the player presses 'use' on something, something will happen." To that end, Ritual designers watched testers during development to see how they tried to interact with the world in an attempt to fill in actions they may not have thought of initially. Said Mustaine, "Interactivity is our big bullet point." The physics system used in Valve's Source engine also underwent some tweaking. For example, different types of pressurized canisters will have different reactions to being hit with ammunition, and this will frequently also be affected by where the canister was puctured. The trajectories of objects you throw (by way of Gordon Freeman's patented Look Ma No Hands method) are affected by the angle at which you pick them up.

There are detailed interactive consoles, working appliances, various electronics to be turned on and off, and so on. You can also call a huge list of secret phone numbers from any in-game telephones and hear actual voices on the other end; Ritual accepted submissions for this particular bit and put the good ones in the game. Oh, and "the soda machines harass you too," notes Mustaine.

That whole interactivity thing extends to the overall gameplay as well. The game tracks an absolutely ludicrous number of statistics--your hit percentage, what weapons you use, what part of the body you typically aim for, how you try and outwit the AI, what environmental elements you're using as weapons, and so on. Many of the stats are easily viewable to the player by way of a series of charts and graphs. What they all do is dynamically adjust the difficulty of the game to suit the player's abilities. If you're sinking headshot after headshot, the enemies will decide it's time to start wearing helmets. If you're not fooled by the AI's tricks, you might see more of your enemies drop in from helicopters. This happens seamlessly; the point is to make sure that casual or unskilled players can still play through the game without being frustrated, and really hardcore gamers have enough challenge to keep their interest. Mustaine commented that "we had a hardcore CPL gamer sitting next to a guy who had never played an FPS before and they finished the whole game within 15 minutes of each other." While doing all this, the game will assign you a long nickname based on your in-game habits. One demo that was running described the player as an "elite bunny hopping magnum master." I was assured that there are an enormous amount of combinations.

There are some other interesting interactive features going on that specifically make use of the episodic nature of the game. The game also tracks what enemies the player kills and what enemies he doesn't, which can lead to a unique approach to continuity. If enough players, say 80%, complete a particular task, the designers will take that into account and ensure that the next episode treats that task as having been completed as part of the plot events. This might take the form of an enemy that the player isn't necessarily expected to kill, for example. "We're the only game I know of other than MMOs that does this," said Mustaine.

Continue to page 2 for this article's second episode. Oh, I slay me.

In terms of the fundamental gameplay, what I saw of Sin Episodes delivers essentially what you'd expect from this kind of context-driven FPS. The action seems to be pretty constant, with the player doing plenty of running and gunning. Ritual also promises sections featuring vehicles. Unfortunately, I didn't get to try those out myself, but I did see a demo of a section in which the player is riding shotgun as Jessica drives a car through a level, allowing you to make with the shooting through the window (or door, if you decide to shoot it off). Each gun has a secondary fire function, and to my great relief every gun also has a distinct melee attack, something which I personally think is unacceptable to omit in FPS games since Halo. Every gun also has the ability to be zoomed, either through an iron sight or a scope.

The magnum's secondary fire is particularly interesting. Due to the plot of the game, many enemies you'll face in the game are mutants. These mutants will actually evolve into larger creatures if they're left to their own devices for a long time or if they come into contact with a toxic mutagen--which, this being an FPS, is usually stored in destructible canisters. However, they'll also devolve to their smaller forms if hit with an antigen, and the magnum's secondary fire shoots depleted uranium rounds, which penetrate thick surfaces and double as an antigen. The mechanic is just another touch that lends some interactivity to the game world. It's worth noting that mutants can grow really, really large. They start out as little green imp-like creatures but can eventually become huge hulking white spiky beasts two times the height of a man--if you don't take care of them in time, that is.

There is also a Half-Life-esque health recharging system, with wall mounted devices that replenish hit points. Instead of being permanent, however, you can remove the health canister from the device and tote it around with you for use in another one later. If you happen to get injured in a fire fight, just drop the canister and shoot it to release a healing gas. You won't gain as much health as you would in one of the machines, but it helps.

Visually, Sin Episodes has drawn many comparisons to Half-Life 2, which the team believes is somewhat due to the distinctive lighting model used by the Source engine. There have also been some screenshots and videos released with placeholder art from Half-Life 2 which won't end up in the final game. Sin was a very over the top game, and while Ritual is toning that down a bit with a more serious edge for Episodes, the game is still maintaining that higher-contrast feel. The game's visuals, particularly the character models, are very vibrant, with a color design that's much more bold and arresting than the somber muted tones of Half-Life 2's dystopic world. Speaking of the character models, Mustaine pointed out that, "Every model in the game has gone through a ridiculous amount of iterations... We're perfectionists with stuff like that." I saw some evolutionary screenshots that certainly backed that up. The high-contrast aesthetic is most effective when it's out in full force rather than when it's only a subtle part of a scene--which is in line with Sin's over the top nature--so hopefully Ritual has enough memorable setpieces to keep that visual momentum flowing throughout the game.

Episode 1: Emergence Coming Soon

Ritual plans to release the first episode, Emergence, within this quarter of 2006, so expect to see the game by the end of March. Right now, the quoted price is "under $20," but there's a chance it will end up at $14.99. After that, the next installment should come later this year. There won't be a multiplayer component in Emergence, but that's something the team hopes to get out in episode 2 or even beforehand if possible. It also looks like there's a good chance people who preorder Emergence will get a free copy of the original Sin and its multiplayer component through Steam, similar to Valve including its older Half-Life products along with the various Half-Life 2 packages. Ritual is also working on a complete Source rebuild of Sin, though it's unclear when that will be available. Unlike Half-Life: Source, which simply plugged old geometry into the new engine, this project actually recreates all the visuals from the original game up to modern standards. Those who missed the first game and are too jaded for 1998-era graphics should keep a look out for that.

If all goes well, Ritual will eventually bring the games to retail shelves in compilations of three episodes each, though that's of course a long way off.

Sin Episodes on Xbox Live Marketplace?

Given the digital delivery route Ritual is taking, the team is strongly looking into the possibility of distributing the game over Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace for Xbox 360. The main problem is that at the moment, Microsoft demands that downloadable games be limited to 50MB in size. To be honest, this strikes me as rather odd considering they just released a demo that's 1.25GB. Here's to hoping they rethink that limitation. Tom pointed out to me how well-suited the game is for Xbox Live already; with its huge number of tracked statistics and achievements, it seems like a no brainer to translate those elements over to Live's Gamer Card system.

It's Tom Mustaine

I learned some interesting things about Ritual's Executive VP and Chief Designer over the course of a few hours of conversation. You may find them interesting too! Hopefully there's nothing I'm going to write here that will result in a stern email being sent my way.

Mustaine is a pretty distinctive last name, and probably the best-known person to bear it is early Metallica member and Megadeth founding member Dave Mustaine. "People always asked me if I'm related to Dave," he recalled, "and recently I was at a Megadeth concert, and it turns out I am." Go figure. After the show he approached Dave, who was surprisingly accomodating, and they ended up tracing their family histories back far enough to find out that they are in fact from common descent.

Tom is also someone who appreciates the ability of games to form an emotional connection with players, whatever kind it may be. "I understand a game has to be profitable, I mean I'm half businessman here," he commented, "but at the end of the day if a game captivates an audience that's what it's all about." He rattled off a string of games, most of which I can't recall at the moment, but one of them was Katamari Damacy (PS2), designed by game industry newcomper Keita Takahashi. We got into a discussion about Takahashi, and I happened to mention his desire to eventually leave the industry to design children's playgrounds. At the mention of this, Mustaine was visibly surprised, after which he said, "I'm really interested to hear that, because I'd like to make playgrounds." That desire was actually an early interest of his, one which led to his current occuptation. "I designed all kinds of playgrounds as a kid. That turned into D&D modules, and then I moved into level design. I went to id, and then I started Ritual, and the rest is history." Really, this section of the article only exists to feature that coincidence, the slim chances of which were exceedingly mind-blowing to me.

So There You Have It

So there you have it. Hopefully you know something about Sin Episodes, as well as about one of its designers. Look for the game when it appears on Steam sometime early this year.