Hello everyone – I’m Matt Walker, Production Manager at Camouflaj, Inc. – and I’m happy to announce that after a long wait, République: Anniversary Edition will finally be released on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation VR on March 10th!
République started in 2011 as a true passion project of Ryan Payton – Metal Gear Solid and Halo veteran – who believed that democratizing game development led to a place where you didn’t need hundreds of developers working 24 hours a day. 24 to produce AAA game content. After one of the first notable Kickstarter campaigns in 2012, the team released République Episode 1 on mobile in 2013.
At its heart, République is a stealth game. Game designer Paul Alexander provides insight into our approach to making stealth gameplay stand out from the rest of the pack:
“We knew from the start that we weren’t going to build a conventional stealth title,” says Alexander. “Hope is full of different types of weapons and gear, and tons of resources. She’s a captive trying to escape. Rather than beating us at every turn, we’ve pledged to embrace her, giving République more of a “stealth survival” feel.
In order for the game to have meaning, we’ve also focused on storytelling – again, game designer Paul Alexander expands on this point:
“A lot of how we approached the narrative experience grew out of episodic game development,” says Alexander. “We knew we wanted to build a rich world with many different stories happening simultaneously and lots to discover below the surface, while building towards a larger picture of what Metamorphosis is. The exact way we chose to do that evolved and changed as each episode came out and we heard more from fans about what resonated with them Coupled with our own excitement about where to focus our attention after each episode we ended by taking the story of République in unique directions… but the final moments and big reveals that République has in store were on our minds from day one.
10 years after the company was founded, the team has taken the time to reflect on what they are most proud of and what we have learned since. Lead author Brendan Murphy mentions,
“I’m proud that we were able to tell such a large and exciting s tory, especially given its origins as a mobile game,” Murphy says. “I would contrast it with any other cautionary tale about 21st century surveillance put on film, or in literature, or in other games. It really rewards players for listening, watching carefully, and scrutinizing details, in a similar way to how spy agency analysts scrutinize our private data and communications. We’ve learned that these threats to privacy and democracy are far greater and encroaching faster than we even imagined when we made the game.”
And from game designer Simon Messenger:
“I think the most important thing we learned was how to work effectively together as a business,” Messenger says. “The episodic nature of République meant that in many ways we had delivered 5 games by the time the story was complete. As a new studio finding its footing, nothing we’ve done since could exist without this foundation we built by finishing an episode, putting it in the hands of fans, then learning from challenges and community feedback, and putting all of that experience into our next episode. we had gone from a group of talented individuals to a team that knew how to take a game to the finish line.
We decided to revisit République for our 10th anniversary to look back and honor where we started. With the new Anniversary Edition developer commentary, we hope fans and newcomers can not only enjoy a thrilling stealth adventure, but also learn a bit more about what’s going on behind the scenes of the game’s development. .
Our goal has always been to create meaningful, high-quality games – and we hope you’ll join us in playing what we have to offer – starting with République: Anniversary Edition.
