Making a strategy game is "harder than people give it credit for," Bit Reactor's CEO Greg Foertsch tells me. The same could probably be said of any game this year in particular, but having spent over 20 years shepherding the art teams at Firaxis on Civilization, XCOM, Sid Meier's Pirates, Alpha Centauri and most recently Marvel's Midnight Suns, Foertsch has seen firsthand what it takes for strategy games to break new ground over the years, and what an arduous road it's been for the genre to get where it is today. Not only was it "late to party on 3D, they were late to the party on consoles," but it's also "suffered from lower budgets, which means it just hasn't pushed in the way that other genres have," he says.
Even now, "it's got some catching up to do," he continues, but there are plenty of reasons to be positive, too. As we speak at the beginning of September, our conversation quickly turns to Baldur's Gate 3, whose enormous success Foertsch cites as a clear and obvious sign that "there's a thirst for something different now," both within RPG circles and, perhaps a little unexpectedly, for strategy heads as well. It's his hope that his own upcoming project, the closely guarded Star Wars strategy game his new studio Bit Reactor are working on in collaboration with Respawn, will follow in these lauded footsteps. "We want to make a game and just have people say, 'Man, that's amazing game, and oh, it happens to be strategy.' That's the goal."
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