NUK: What advantages will the player have depending on the star ship combinations they make?

MR: It completely depends on the situation. Different pilots each give you a really powerful super ability that’s going to have to charge over time and then can make a decisive difference in a battle. For example, Judge has the ability to slow down time. Chase is all about speed, so she can use an ability called the Doppler effect that allows her to fly super-fast. Mason, who is the new leader of the Starlink initiative is able to call down an orbital strike from the mothership.

In addition to the pilots, each weapon is going to give you different types of fire power. And each of those will be more dependent on the type of enemy you’re facing. So maybe against a bunch of smaller, fast enemies, you might want to use like the Flamethrower; a short range area effect weapon. Whereas in a dog fight, a longer ranged high rated fire weapon like the Shredder might be better.

NUK: With the exploration and combat, Starlink: Battle for Atlas looks to have a lot of depth in its gameplay. Is that an indication that you’re designing this to appeal to gamers as well as families?

MR: Yeah absolutely. Our team is made up from veterans from Ubisoft’s biggest franchises: Far Cry, Watch_Dogs, Assassins Creed, Splinter Cell. So for us it’s very important to create that really deep, open world experience that players can get lost in. We play-tested the game with a wider range of audiences, a wider range of ages, and we’ve been really encouraged by the extremely positive reaction we’ve had from all sorts of different groups.