One of the things I particularly appreciated in the interview was Kilham praising the dynamic nature of Lawrence Holland’s designs.
As well crafted as TIE Fighter’s missions are “cinematically” – there are dramatic beats when e.g. new ships arrive at the scene, the success or failure is often determined by the way the player approaches the mission, for example when or in which order they engage which ships.
I seem to often experience a kind of a domino effect – or even a bit of a butterfly effect – which may end up feeling like an “a-ha!” moment. I have to deal with _these_ ships first to succeed! But it can also end up feeling quite random: a brutally difficult mission, that I may one time simply win, without really knowing why.
It’s a very cool system in the end in my opinion. I don’t mind trying again and again too much, as it ends up satisfying rather than frustrating way more often than not. At least so far – I’m in Battle V mission 2 right now.
That mission has a good example. It has a space platform to inspect and destroy cargo containers. If I engage the already present fighters first, then the additional fighters the platform launches join the fray and I can go deal with the containers with only the platform’s defenses to worry about. But if I go directly to deal with the platform, the fighters it launches will engage me while I also need to worry about the platform attacking me.
It’s pretty impressive how the missions are both finely scripted, but also very dynamic!
.
