The Making of Syndicate
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Syndicate's unusually dark feel was not restricted to its countenance. Long before Grand Theft Auto, the populations of Syndicate's isometric stages were populated with bit-part, bitmap victims. Self-appointed moral arbiters may blanche at the suggestion, but engaging in wanton, pixel-based slaughter was one of the game's principle pleasures, and was always designed to be just that.
(I wanted to flame them, I wanted to shoot them, I wanted to blow them up,) says Cooper of Syndicate's sprites. (I think we didn't quite implement it as well as we could have. I'd liked to have seen bodies flying through the air; I wanted to minigun people and have them pinned to a wall. All those things we so badly wanted to do, but we'd have been adding another year to the project time, or so it felt at the time. Memory constraints were the big problem.)
From the explosive gauss gun originally an EMP weapon, according to Trowers to what must be the most satisfying implementation of a minigun in videogame history, Syndicate was packed with a wishlist of excellent armaments, upgrades and gadgets. (Once we'd developed the gameplay and we'd got the squad-based shooter element, people started coming up with ideas for weapons,) recalls Cooper. (The persuadatron came out of nowhere, really I don't know to this day whose idea it was. I think Peter's still convinced that it's his. It created something interesting: being able to build an army, and was actually quite simple to do. It could be done a lot better. Ah, if we were to do it again now.)
