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The world of Jagged Alliance 3 I am Radomir Mirchev, Senior Narrative Designer, and I will be your faithful guide to the world of JA3 and the country of Grand Chien - which is a crazy place, but we’ll get to that later. For those of you who haven't played the previous games back at the time, Jagged Alliance isn’t just another turn-based tactical game. It also features certain RPG elements that are its heart and soul. The player takes command of a weird company of mercs with all their differences, peculiarities, likes and dislikes, and not just a squad of replaceable carbon-copied soldiers. That defined our approach to world building. We wanted to create a game that responds to your actions, characters that have their own agenda, and events that follow their own logic. You can try things, fool around and see what comes out of it. Freedom of exploration We decided we shouldn’t hold the player’s hand or force them down one path or another. Travel on the satellite map, talk to anyone you like, be naughty or nice - or just fight your way to the end of the game without giving a damn. The player freedom of exploration is the core of the Jagged Alliance experience. This approach however can easily lead to confusion. So we did our best to provide hints where the main content is - while we took care not to actually guide the player to “go there and do that”. The quest notes can be picked in a variety of ways - you could find a clue to a story by interacting with an object, talking to a civilian or even overhearing the enemy. For example, a civilian may tell you about a “demon from hell” that is murdering poachers in the savanna and nailing horns on their heads in evil mockery; or you can just stumble upon one of the bodies. In both cases you will be gently encouraged to visit the Poacher camp where you will learn that indeed there is some psycho who enjoys hunting the hunters. You will be promised payment if you find this person and do something about him. The game tracks the development of the story and provides little cues about the sectors it leads to, but you can act upon them at your own pace. In this case, asking around will give you the name of the culprit and possibly the list of the locations where the poachers practiced their not-that-noble craft. If you explore these maps and search the bodies, you may track, or perhaps be tracked by the hunter of hunters. Notice that a gang of bad guys happens to be making a diamond delivery just at one of the sectors you were looking for. This is not scripted, it’s a coincidence - but it surely sounds like two birds with one stone! And when you eventually find that guy, what will you do? Start shooting, or have a chat first? You may don’t like the poachers very much, but what if this person isn’t any better? It’s up to you. We have more than 150 beautiful hand-crafted maps to explore, above ground and underground. It would be pity if they existed only as tactical background to battles, so we made sure to provide lots of little things to discover. Having a diverse mercenary team will open up possibilities - from just salvaging parts of wrecked equipment that can be used to improve the mercs’ weapons, to the whole complexity of a crime investigation. Freedom of choice We wanted to give players as much explicit and implicit choice as possible. But what is choice without a consequence? Ideally, the game would react to every decision you do and reward you with narrative or mechanical consequences - though this is not quite possible to guarantee. Freedom of choice comes with a price: the more branches a conversation or a mission provides, the less content we would be able to create in general. We solved this conundrum by weighing up the content case by case: there are minor encounters that just tell you a story - if you care to look closer; and there are huge quests that span across the map and involve multiple characters and sectors. In total, there are dozens of side quests in JA3, of which no two are alike. We refrained from creating simple “kill” and “fetch” quests. There is usually some kind of a twist or a trap, so watch your step. Choices matter How the story unfolds depends on your actions and you should expect to pay the price for your choices. Killed characters will stay dead, and by dispensing frontier justice you may gain or lose Loyalty with the local population. Your own mercs may agree or disagree with certain decisions, resulting in a Morale boost or loss, and they will sometimes even take things in their own hands. Secret playable characters may decide to join you if they like the choices you have made. And ultimately, by the end of the game the way in which you resolved the main quests and certain side quests will determine the fate of your mercs - and the future of the country of Grand Chien. The country of Grand Chien The wide Adjani river is flowing through barrens, jungles, marshes, savanna and slums. It is a country where ancient traditions are tangled with the somewhat more modern way of life, landmarks from times immemorial lay side by side with gaudy statues and wild gangs fight over the hastily dug diamond quarries. The names of people and places reflect the turbulent colonial history of the country. Although there are settlements with names that indicate their German origin - such as Landsbach and the ill-fated Wassergrab, - the most of the Adjani province is speaking French. That’s why at the foot of the Gargantuan mountains lies the small city of Pantagruel, and the map is dotted by Legion military camps with names like Camp Savane, Camp du Crocodile, Camp Chien Sauvage, etc. And since the name of the country itself has already raised some eyebrows, let me present to you the imposing, if not aesthetically pleasing, statue of its founder - the benevolent dictator Généralissime Chien. Some of your mercenaries may express their confusion as to which of the two is the actual Generalissimus, but like I said, Grand Chien is a crazy place. Some mercs fit in naturally, others just try their best. As for the people of Grand Chien, there is no wonder that they do strange things while trying somehow to make a living. We refrained from going into mysticism, but we can’t promise that our characters don’t believe in weird stuff and act accordingly. So if they tell you there is a ghost in the abandoned mansion, or a witch is performing bizarre sexual rituals to the poor mine workers, just take it with a grain of salt, will you? ...Unless it is teddy bears. Be always on your guard against teddy bears. While building the world of Jagged Alliance 3, we aimed to deliver a realistic experience - and generally avoid fiction. However, time and again we had to go back to the confines of Mark Twain’s famous quote: “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.” With regards to good old Mr. Twain, at times we allowed ourselves a bit of fun. Soon enough it will be your turn as well to explore Grand Chien and see for yourself! Radomir Mirchev Senior narrative designer & writer of Jagged Alliance 3 PS: If you have any further questions, or simply wish to chat about Jagged Alliance 3, feel free to join us in our DevStream on Thursday, 20th of April on the THQ Nordic channel: http://twitch.tv/thqnordic Until then, commander! View full article

Character Progression Hello everyone, I am Boian Spasov and I am happy to welcome you to our fourth DevDiary! In it we will take a look at the way we model the mercs mechanically and how they become more powerful, unique and personalized as the campaign progresses. From the very start of the design process for Jagged Alliance 3 we knew that we wanted a classless system for the mercs. Even though some characters might reasonably be considered “field medics” or “explosive experts” based on their starting skillset and indeed the Association of International Mercenaries (A.I.M.) might even advertise them as such on their webpage, we didn’t want to constraint them in such narrow archetypes, nor force the player to use or develop them in a particular way. Advancing your so-called medic to become a top-tier sniper or mechanic should take serious effort, but is ultimately possible and no artificial class definitions will prevent you from doing so. Merc Stats Like in the classic JA games, we represent the basic physical attributes and important skills of each character with a number between 0 and 100. Here is a list of the basic stats that each merc has and their direct effects – some of these may sound a bit cryptic: Health - Represents both the physical well-being of a merc and the amount of damage they can take before becoming downed. Agility - Measures how well a merc reacts physically to a new situation. Affects the total amount of action points, free movement at the start of a turn, and how stealthy the merc is. Dexterity - Measures a merc's ability to perform delicate or precise movements correctly. Affects bonus from aiming and Stealth Kill chance. Strength - Represents muscle and brawn. It's particularly important in Melee combat, affects throwing range and the size of the personal inventory of the character. Wisdom - Affects a merc's ability to learn from experience and training. Affects the chance to notice hidden items and enemies. Leadership - Measures charm, respect and presence. Important for training militia and other mercs. Affects the chance for getting positive and negative Morale events. Marksmanship - Reflects a merc's ability to shoot accurately at a given target with a firearm. Mechanical - Rates a merc's ability to repair damaged, worn-out or broken items and equipment. Important for lockpicking, machine handling and hacking electronic devices. Used for detecting and disarming non-explosive traps. Explosives - Determines a merc's ability to use grenades and other explosives and affects damage and mishap chance when using thrown items. Used for detecting and disarming explosive traps. Medical - Represents a merc's medical knowledge and ability to heal the wounded. Some of you will recognize the names of these stats from Jagged Alliance 1 and 2 but note that some of the particular effects are working slightly differently now. Returning mercs have similar stats to their counterparts in the old games, but these have been adjusted just a bit to account for the time passed and some balancing with the new system. Stats are not static throughout a merc’s lifetime. These can be improved in several ways, including getting trained by more proficient mercs on the team and using these stats efficiently in the field. Gains from field experience are limited and also loosely tied to the regular progression for levelling up – don’t expect your merc to become an expert marksman by repeatedly shooting at bottles in a safe situation! We briefly considered lowering stats due to serious wounds and other negative factors, but ultimately decided against this – having your favorite merc permanently crippled is not very fun. Temporary impairments on the other hand, may create a better gameplay experience. Level and Progression While individual stats show how good a merc is with a particular physical or trained skill, the overall experience is measured by their level. Rookies start at level 1 but you can hire more experienced mercs even in the starting team. All mercs can progress up to level 10, raising their salary and evolving their stats along the way. While the merc level offers some direct mechanical benefits such as better Crit rate and improved Chance to Hit for attacks made against lower-level targets, each level up also grants the opportunity to specialize the merc further with a perk of your choice. Each perk is associated with a particular Stat and requires a certain proficiency with this Stat (currently the minimum requirement is 70 points). Perks with silver and golden icons have stronger effects and more demanding prerequisites - respectively 80 and 90 points in the particular Stat as well as at some other perks associated with the Stat taken at previous level-ups. Perks associated with a particular Stat are designed to synergize well with each other and are often most helpful when you focus on a playstyle that makes good use of this stat. For example some Agility perks synergize on creating a very mobile character that doesn’t have to spend too many AP for movement: Hit and Run (requires 70 Agility) – Gain Free Move after Executing a Melee attack. Frogleaping (requires 80 Agility and 1 other Agility perk) – increased Free Move range when starting your turn in Cover. Traits and Talents Not all perks are granted by level progression. Mercs are different and their starting perks differ as well. Each merc comes with some predefined Traits as well as a unique Talent. Traits are usually minor effects that represent a basic personality quirk or inclination of the merc. They don’t grant huge mechanical benefits and we usually use them as a tool to make the mercs more distinctive. For example, some mercs like Dr.Q. come with the Martial Arts trait but it is entirely possible to make an awesome and very effective melee fighter without this trait, focusing on improving melee stats and picking related level-up Perks. Some traits, like Psycho or Negotiator, unlock unique conversation options in addition to their mechanical effects. Zoophobic – loses Morale when attacked by an animal Psycho – sometimes decides to use more vicious attacks than the one selected. Unlocks additional conversation options. Stealthy – harder to spot by enemies while sneaking. Slightly increased chance to kill an enemy outright when attacking from stealth. A Merc’s Talent is a unique Perk, exclusive for this merc. It might be an active ability like a signature attack or something more subtle, but the important thing is that no other merc in the game has this ability. Our design goal was to keep the Talents grounded in reality so don’t expect any overly fantastic or unrealistic effects here. A Talent is not meant to be a fantastic effect but rather a mechanical representation of the one special thing that the particular merc truly excels at. Double Toss (Fidel) – (active skill) attacks with two grenades at the same time. Boutique Explosives (Barry) – produces Shaped Charges periodically. Shaped charges are special explosives with a directional blast. Find my Feet (MD) – spontaneously becomes Inspired, gaining additional Action points and increasing team Morale during combat. That’s all for this DevDiary, I hope you enjoyed the preview of some of the mechanical ways to make a unique character in Jagged Alliance 3. Please don’t hesitate to comment and ask questions in the thread below! Boian Spasov Lead Designer and Co-creative Director of Jagged Alliance 3 View full article

DevDiary 3 - Making a Mercenary Hello and welcome to another DevDiary for Jagged Alliance 3. My name is Boyan Ivanov, and I am the co-Creative Director of Jagged Alliance 3. Yes, another Boyan no to be confused with my dear friend and college Boian, whom you already know through the first DevDiary. What made Jagged Alliance 1 and 2 so special was the cast of unique and quirky mercenaries under your command. There were many memorable personalities, and every player had his favorites. Some of mine are Barry, Fox and Tex from the first installment. We knew that to make a great Jagged Alliance sequel we had to have a big roster of mercs, and we had to get them right. Tex – Cowboy of the Rising Sun Speaking of Tex, while he was a bit too busy being a B-list movie star in Jagged Alliance 2, he’s back in action in Jagged Alliance 3. To tackle the challenge of recreating the old mercs like Tex we need to do our research. We began by creating a profile document for each merc with their background and story or at least what was known about them. We then extracted all the voice lines from Jag 1 and 2 to get the vibe and feel of the character. Combing all of those for additional information and character quirks and idiosyncrasies. Like Tex calling enemies rustlers and asking you if you prefer Clint Eastwood or John Wayne. We knew we wanted to advance the timeline only by a couple of years and we wanted to reflect that in some of the characters. For Tex things weren’t going all that well in Unfinished Business (the expansion to Jagged Alliance 2) and as B-list action movies fell out of fashion he had to don his six shooters once more and sign back up with AIM. Suit up! The next step was to create a visual concept for the merc. We had to recreate the characters as full 3D models in the game world. This was a big challenge – recreating the faces was the first hurdle. We had portraits from the original games and those portraits managed to convey a lot with just a few pixels. Translating that to a 3D model proved a big challenge. One source of inspiration were your discussions and comments. We have been reading and listening to forums, discord and reddit. We greatly enjoyed the fan casting in the thread and tried to imagine the awesome hypothetical Jagged Alliance movie. All of this inspired us to make our character concepts even more detailed and thorough. Next came the merc’s outfit. Initially we began with a system of combining uniforms, different armor and combat gear pieces. Reflecting what the character had equipped. This didn’t turn out as well as we expected. Mercs were hard to distinguish from enemies and looked very similar to each other. Their uniqueness was completely gone from the visual side of the game. We played around with colors and attachments. Turns out you can’t change the colors of camouflage gear all that much and with too many attachments characters started looking like Christmas trees. We decided to go in another direction – each merc has a unique model with his own style. Reflecting the character rather than the situation in which the merc is right now. We designed each outfit based on the personality of the merc to make him or her look instantly recognizable. Each character profile was filled with references of what we wanted them to look and small details to make their personality stand out. Tex was easy to figure out – after all he’s a modern-day cowboy, action hero - but some characters were notoriously difficult to pin down. We had to dive back to our memories of the early 2000s and research trends from back then to get the time period correctly. The Newcomers As is tradition, a new Jagged Alliance installment brings some new faces to the ranks of AIM. Creating new mercenaries was one of the most fun aspects of developing Jagged Alliance 3. One newcomer you might have seen in the cover art is Fauda. Kevi is a veteren heavy weapons and explosives expert. She joined the Peshmerga with her brother Zoran but after his death she was retired and joined AIM as a life of fighting was all she ever knew. Fauda went through many iterations during development. She began as a young and eager expert sniper but that seemed to similar to other characters in the roster. We decided to switch her specialty to heavy weapons and explosives and with the change Ian Currie came up with the idea of ageing her and giving her a gruffer personality (if you don't know who Ian is, check out the second DevDiary). As the character took shape her story came about with her life as a fighter and the fate of her brother. As you can see her look also went through a lot of iterations and exploration until we found something that fit her character well. Finding a voice The vision of the characters is definitely important but what was most striking about the mercs in Jagged Alliance 1 and 2 was their voice. Having fully voiced characters back in ‘97 and ’99 was rare. Having 40+ main characters and NPCs voiced was practically unheard of. The mercs and characters in the world of Jagged Alliance 3 are fully voiced once again. And they have a lot to say. As in the previous titles, mercenaries express their quirky personalities throughout the game. They will often chime in with comments about the situation, your actions and their colleagues and teammates. Missing a shot in a fight will have some mercs curse, others offer a helpful tip. If a merc thinks that a shot is particularly hard to make they’ll voice their opinions and cheer if they actually hit. They will also praise or complain about the success and failures of other mercs in your team. Relationships and negotiating Mercs have their own likes and dislikes. They have relationships with other members of AIM and these are not static – they can change in the course of the game. Tex for example likes to work with Fox and will often praise her even if she misses an important shot: Tex: “Fox make even bad shot look good!” While Fauda doesn’t really mind Fox initially as a teammate she can begin to really dislike her if let’s say Fox fires a stray shot and hits Fauda. Fauda: “Instead of checking your make-up you should check your fire!” Characters are also not always happy to work with you. They may have specific requests like having one of their friends on your team or proving yourself in combat first. Or they may judge your actions – Fauda won’t be happy to work with you if you haven’t won at least 3 battles in the recent days. Tex: “Fox is there? She should be fighting in big movies, not little battlefields. She is so talented! I will be honored to work with her again. I will change schedule for this.” Fauda: “Working for you is dull and pointless. I came to fight and kill the agents of Shaitan. Instead, I sit in camp doing empty work. I spit on this. If I am to be doing nothing you will pay me more!” Merc’s wants and desires are not static and change and you will experience different events with each playthrough based on the team that you pick and what happens throughout the campaign. Independent Agents AIM isn’t the only place you can find characters ready to take up arms and fight the good fight. As you delve into the world of Jagged Alliance you may find characters that can join your team if you help them with their own woes. Though we will keep their identities on the down low for now to avoid spoilers. And there’s one more web site that can help you find a mercenary that fits your specific needs. Yes IMP is making a comeback with a new personality test to make certain that they find the best match for you! That’s all from us for now. See you soon in the next DevDiary. Boyan Ivanov Co-creative Director of Jagged Alliance 3 View full article

Legacy and Writing Hey everyone, my name is Ian Currie and I’m happy to welcome you to another Jagged Alliance 3 DevDiary. I am one of the original creators of the Jagged Alliance series and have been working with THQ Nordic and Haemimont on Jagged Alliance 3 for a couple of years now. I’m excited to share some of my thoughts with you! The original Jagged Alliance games Jagged Alliance dates back to the latter half of the 1990s where the first game was released somewhat under the radar but was considered a critical success. It was quite ambitious—a strategy game with tactical combat, a large cast of colorful characters, role-playing elements, and a storyline with multiple outcomes. It was unique in allowing players to form a party of characters but using pre-existing individuals who had distinct personalities who had both strengths and weaknesses. It was further unique in that these individuals didn’t always get along with each other and could sometimes, to the surprise of players, act out. Like a lot of entertainment, it also sprinkled in a good dose of humor. While it was followed by a small mission-based sequel that introduced multi-player gameplay (titled ‘Deadly Games’), the original game was preferred for its more open-world feel. This, along with many other aspects, was expanded upon in what became a more appropriate sequel to Jagged Alliance. And that brings me to Jagged Alliance 2, which was certainly one of the most ambitious projects I’ve ever worked on and a true labor of love for myself and the team that developed it. It expanded upon the first Jagged Alliance in almost every aspect. Players could employ multiple squads and create their own merc, experience side-quests along with a variable storyline, taunt the main antagonist by sending them flowers. They generally experienced a game that played out differently each time, including more in-depth tactical combat and many easter eggs that we delighted in creating. Many of the characters that players grew to love from the previous games returned along with many new characters. One of the goals of the Jagged Alliance series was to create tension between the attachment to characters and the need to acquire more skilled team members. While Jagged Alliance 2 was very successful, the owners of the development studio decided to focus on other business opportunities and the studio closed down. The intellectual property was sold and my teammates and I all moved on to other gaming studios. Jagged Alliance 3 A couple of years ago I was contacted by THQ Nordic to see if I’d be interested in helping a team of developers to create a new Jagged Alliance game. I was initially skeptical as there had been some Jagged Alliance games released over the years and none of them impressed me. Making something I could call a ‘true’ Jagged Alliance game would be a complex and daunting task. THQ Nordic assured me that they were going to take their time and ‘do it right’. I was told that they were boldly calling it Jagged Alliance 3 as it is intended to be the true spiritual successor to Jagged Alliance 2. To be honest, while I loved the idea of working on a ‘true’ Jagged Alliance game, I didn’t want to let myself get too excited. It wasn’t until THQ Nordic showed me an early prototype and I read the design documentation that I allowed myself to become somewhat optimistic. Then I met with the design and production team and was impressed. OK, I was interested; what did they need me to help with? The answer was creative writing: the story, the quests, the characters, the mercs, the dialog etc. While I had certainly contributed to the writing, the person who really owned all that work on Jagged Alliance was my partner and good friend, Shaun Lyng, who was no longer available. Hmmm, could I do it? I decided to reach out to a former colleague, Dan McClure, who is a game industry veteran and published author. Luckily, Dan agreed to sign on and the two of us became very good partners. Working with Haemimont Games We quickly got to know the developers at Haemimont Games and started working with them on the story and timeline for the game. It was so much fun! It wasn’t long until we were throwing around ideas for quests, discussing which mercs would be ‘back’ and of course, the new mercs – which is always exciting. Many of these personalities are like old friends that I’ve truly missed. One of my favorite features of the game is the conversation system – the part of the game that allows players to interact with various NPCs (non-player characters) in the world. In Jagged Alliance 2, this feature was very limited – you could only choose a general ‘approach’ (e.g. friendly, direct, threatening). Jagged Alliance 3 introduces a robust conversation system that allows for a much more engaging role-playing experience and will often include participation from some of your mercs. This can range from simple comments to more helpful observations and plays out differently depending on the situation, adding to the game’s replay-ability. We iterated on the design until we were all happy with it and seeing it all come together was immensely satisfying. I’m very proud of what we’ve done here as it allows for so much more interaction between the player, the NPCs and the mercs, and allows us to tell a much deeper story than in any previous Jagged Alliance game. Working with Haemimont has been very rewarding. They’re not only a team that has worked together for a long time, but their expertise is evident in everything they do. Watching the game take shape over the past couple of years has been amazing. Graphically there is so much detail in the game, from how all the mercs in the game have custom avatars, to the carefully crafted environments and of course the combat system is equally rich and rewarding. Jagged Alliance 3 truly is bigger and better. Sometimes it’s just so hard to believe that after all this time, I’m working on another Jagged Alliance game. I consider myself very lucky and can’t wait for you to experience the game. Thanks for reading! Ian Currie Director of Jagged Alliance 1 & 2 Writer of Jagged Alliance 3 PS: You might also enjoy the new trailer about my involvement: View full article

Welcome to the first Jagged Alliance 3 DevDiary! The DevDiary is a place where we can discuss specifics about the game, share some insights about the development process, and offer perspective on what game-shaping decisions we make and why. We’ll do our best to talk about cool, interesting topics, of which we’d love to hear your feedback! Hearing your suggestions will help us make the best game we can, and also understand what our fans care about. It was really hard for us to keep silent for so long, since there is a lot we want to share about Jagged Alliance 3. It may go without saying, but thank you for all the love and patience, we really appreciate it! Jagged Alliance 3: Our Vision Hello and welcome to the first DevDiary of Jagged Alliance 3 in which we will present our vision for Jagged Alliance 3 ! Since many of us in the dev team are lifelong Jagged Alliance fans it is easy for us to assume that many readers of this article will also be intimately familiar with JA1 and JA2, however we will try to avoid this trap and present the information in a way that is accessible to newcomers as well. Overall, our goal is not only to introduce you to our game, but also to the principles that led us through the years-long development journey. We don't plan to focus on details just yet, there will be time enough for this in upcoming DevDiaries down the road. Ever since the first pitch document we wrote we were certain about one thing - there was a particular feeling from Jagged Alliance 1 and 2 that made them special and we wanted to recapture it in our sequel - a unique combination of simulative turn-based combat, colorful characters, strategic management and the exploration of an open RPG-inspired sandbox world. A true sequel should rely on all of these pillars in order to recapture the charm of the first two games, so let's visit each of these points in turn. Simulative Turn-based Combat If we have to describe our combat philosophy in a single sentence, it would be "deep turn-based combat that takes a realistic approach and allows a fine level of control." There's a lot to parse here, so bear with us while we dissect this sentence... "Deep" means that our goal is to offer interesting decisions and no single right answer to any given situation. Sid Meier once famously said that good gameplay is a "series of interesting decisions" and this is a statement that we very much get behind. We want to reward mastery and creative thinking, to have many moments that make you stop and wonder how to proceed, weighting pros and cons and visualizing possible outcomes in your mind's eye. "Turn-based" should be self-explanatory, but it must be mentioned because it is so central for Jagged Alliance. While historically there have been some experiments with real-time gameplay in the world of JA, this was never a direction we were interested in or considered for this project. "Realistic approach" doesn't mean that we want to necessarily simulate reality in every minute aspect, but rather that we aim to keep things grounded in reality - both in the visuals and the gameplay aspect. Weapons can jam or break down, simulated bullets can penetrate materials and bodies to cause collateral damage and severe wounds persist for days instead of being magically healed in an instant. We like to think about our approach as "action movie" realism where guns feel like guns but the good guys can still kick ass against seemingly impossible odds. While many recent turn-based games have chosen to become more "abstract" and limit each character to 2-3 significant actions per turn, we went the opposite way. Jagged Alliance 3 gives you much more detailed control over every combat decision. Our Action Point system allows this precise management and mechanics like stances, aiming, body part shots and weapon firing modes allow you to customize your approach for every single shot. The Heart of the Game - our Mercs Jagged Alliance was always about the mercs! No other game from that era has such a humongous cast of fleshed out and detailed main characters as Jagged Alliance 1 and 2 did and we are certain that everyone who played the old games remembers their own favorites. We knew that the heart and charm of Jagged Alliance is closely tied to this ragtag bunch of unlikely heroes that always manage to feel alive, talkative, witty, and full of character, and we tried to bring back as many as we could in Jagged Alliance 3. There are around 40 mercs in the new game - most of them are old favorites but there are many newcomers as well! More than just pawns in the player’s hands, the mercs are rarely indifferent to what happens around them - they interject in conversations, form relations, make jokes, hold grudges, react to the combat situation and always tend to find a way to express their personality. Some of the hardest, but also most rewarding decisions in the project wеre who to keep from the original cast and who to sideline for potential future content, how to make these classic characters feel authentic and how to create new mercs that can stand on their own next to them. There is no single main character in Jagged Alliance, or rather each merc is a potential main character, so all of them should be worthy of this role! Other than the character and personality of the mercs we had to consider their mechanical representation as well. We didn't want to put our characters in a narrow box so a classless combat and character development system seemed most appropriate. Even if a particular merc advertises himself as a "Doctor" or "Explosives expert", they can develop in any direction and are not limited by a predefined combat role or an artificial "class". Beyond their raw mechanical stats (such as strength, marksmanship, leadership, etc.), mercs are further differentiated by various quirks and perks. Some of these are predefined for the particular merc (such as "psycho" or "claustrophobic") while others are gained as the merc levels up, allowing a degree of customization and specialization as the campaign progresses. We are itching to share more details, however this is a subject worthy of a separate "deep dive" DevDiary later on. Since our characters are so important, we knew we wanted to get the voiceover and their voice responses as good and authentic as possible. The decision that every line in the game will be voiced was made at the start of the project, but the final recordings are always done closer to the end. After making a proof of concept test with recorded voices just for a few characters, we used a software solution to generate "proxy" voices just to be able to test the game and iterate quickly without recording voice overs at each cycle. Strategic Gameplay in an Open World "Grand Chien is a hellhole..." - this phrase quickly became a running joke in the dev team since these were the first words from a placeholder introduction we had in our developer build for a long time. The text itself is no longer in the game, but the country of Grand Chien is still very much there. Grand Chien is a fictional third world country, facing turmoil during the early 2000s. The time period and the setting itself were carefully crafted to convey a somewhat nostalgic "old action-movie" feel. This is reflected to a point in all aspects of the game, from the gameplay and visual style to the user interface. Beyond timeline considerations and tactical combat gameplay, we needed a world to accommodate the strategic and RPG elements in the game as well. Our satellite view map offers a bird's eye view on this world: From here you manage the strategic aspect of the game - organize your mercs in squads, travel around, capture territory, clash with enemy patrols, and intercept convoys with valuables. Time is the most important resource here - even when idle, your mercs can be put to good use in special operations. Healing wounds, repairing damaged equipment, organizing defenses, and scouting for valuable intel all take time, and since most of your mercs are operating on a contract, time is money! After a brief initial sequence, there is no imposed order in which we are expecting you to go through this vast satellite map. The world is meant to be open and not to railroad your experience in any way. Each sector in the Sat View map corresponds to a unique handcrafted map where both combat, area exploration and interactions with NPCs happen. A significant part of our gameplay takes place in non-combat situations and focuses on exploration, choice and conversations. Even though Jagged Alliance 3 is not a full-fledged RPG, our goal was to create a persistent world that responds to your actions and is changed by your decisions, much more than in the typical tactical game. This ties nicely with the individuality of our characters that we already talked about, allowing us to offer different content and opportunities depending on which mercs are in the current group. In Conclusion To recap all of the information above, here are the pillars of Jagged Alliance 3, as our team sees them: Deep turn-based combat that takes a realistic approach and allows a fine level of control A large cast of quirky and unique mercenaries Strategic gameplay on the satellite view map A vast handcrafted open world to explore and shape with your decisions We hope this article answered some of your questions about our vision for Jagged Alliance 3 and planted the seeds for many future DevDiaries! What aspect of the game excites you and resonates with you the most? What would you like to read about next? Boian Spasov Lead Designer View full article