Lightbox opens up on Starhawk single-player, says you'll "get your 60 bucks worth"

Dylan Jobe, president of Lightbox Interactive, has said when the team sat down to design the single-player portion of Starhawk, first and foremost, Lightbox wanted the game to have a bit of twist so it would stand out from a typical shooter.

Speaking with the PS Blog, Jobe said one of the ways the team went about this, was to provide players with combat challenges instead of a linear experience.

"The shooter genre is packed with mega-juggernaut great games, but shooters are also due for a twist," he explained. "In most single-player shooters, you play a linear experience: event, event, event, set piece, event, event, event, set piece.

"With Starhawk, we wanted to give the player a combat challenge: Here’s what’s going to attack you, here’s when it’s going to attack you, and here are the tools you can use. Now play it however you want."

Jobe said this approach to development was "easier said than done," because it introduced quite a few bugs in the design process that needed to be worked out. To Lightbox, the extra work was worth it in the end because now, "different players will stumble across many different strategies for success" using as many scenarios as possible instead of a fixed few.

While Jobe and the rest of his team are still holding much of the single-player campaign content close to their chests, the firm feels players will be "pleasantly surprised" due to the number of enemies and encounters which won't be present in the multiplayer portion.

"The campaign isn’t based on the multiplayer maps, either," he said. "This is a narrative-driven single-player experience, with unique maps and encounters all the way through the game. They range from small battles in the desert to huge space battles around capital ships to defending this huge space train to the epic confrontation with Logan — it’s quite diverse.

"There are a lot of toys in this toolbox and you’re going to get your 60 bucks worth."

Starhawk is out in early May on PS3.