Hello there. Please, present yourself to our fellow readers.

— Max Tumin, manager of the JA3D project.

First of all, what stage is the project in? When is it planned to be released?

— The project is in the finishing stage, the release is scheduled to this fall.

The release will be reales in english first, doesnt it? Do you plan to translate the game or will some side company work on it? And what term do you paln to put the game on the market in?

— The relsease version will be in russian and we`ll translate it for the Europe and US release. The russian version will be out first.

Tell us in brief, please, about the game plot. Will it be another “kill-the-dictator” task, ot there`ll some kind of intrigue?

— Yeah, it`ll be just antoher “kill-the-dictator” work with a bit of intrigue in the same time. But I`ll not tell you a word — you`ll find it out in the game yourself.

What part do quests in the game take? Are they now essential or optional too?

— All the quests are optional, and only the mission objectives will be still essential, but not even all of them. I.e, there will be, for example, the primary objective to capture the millitary base and the secondory, non-essential ones: to free the captivates, don`t let the general get away and so on. And there might be extra quests.
For example, from one of the prisoners of from the general himself.

Is there only one branch of the story or there will be an opportunity to take the other employer side?

— There`s only one employer. We have only one story branch too, but is has branches itself, i.e you can go by the “trunk” or may choose the “curved” path. The curved one is more interesting and easier, but longer as well.

How does traveling through the strategic map look like? Will it be the old one, as in JA2, or restricted by something?

— There won`t be any traveling at all, for the game is mission based.

Tell us, please, how do the missions look like and how will they be given to the player?

— The game will be conditionally divided into 4 episodes, that will have a few missions each, the one is primary and the rest is complementary. The player decides himself what to do first and in what order, but there is a small drawback — if he decided go through the main mission and did it succesfully, the rest of the quests may, most likely, disappear(and may not — it depends on the episode). And moreover, the side quests passing and the course of it influences the further game difficulty. There are 21 missions altogether.

Does one have to create an alter-ego in the begining? Will it me complementary? Or won`t there be no main hero at all?

— It will be a complementary feature. The overall creation process will look like the one in JA2.

And I`d like to mention the crew :). Will the mercenary organizations(A.I.M., M.E.R.C.) undergo any changes? Will there be a possibility to hire the locals into the party?

— It was the publisher desire not to include the M.E.R.C. organization, and the A.I.M.staff will be reduced to 30 mercenary by the will of the publisher too. And there will be some locals.

So, someone left, for sure, and some fresh men has taken their places?

— Nope, there won`t be any fresh men by the will of the publisher.

Will you raise the veil of mystery on the possibility for the player to meet his old NPC friends from the first or the second part of the game on the battle-field?

— I wouldn`t.

The merc`s stats, as we may see on the screenshots, are left the same. But have you done anything with perks or skills?

— No, it`s all the same.

Can players reckon upon armored vehicles?

— No.

Wild life has been certainly changed too? If the orignal had the killer-cats, then there`ll be peaceful and not so friendly forest dwellers, right?

— There won`t be any cat equivalent, for there is no possibility to move through the global map and, more over, no free locations for them to live in.

How its going on the fire-arms field? It`s well known, you`ve widen the weapon line. Don`t you afraid, it will ruin the balance?

— It has nothing to do with the balance, just to let players toy around with their favourite guns, not just plain usual M16 and AK47. What I mean is, each weapon class will have twins with slightly distinctive stats. The might be differences in the type of ammo used, in a magazine capacity, outward appearance, of course, and so on.

But wouldn`t we go over the problem that the origianl JA2 had, where a machine-gun was an ultimate weapon.
Will there be any use for the cold steell arms or pistols not just in the begining but throughout the whole game time?

— A machine-gun won`t be the universal weapon. It`s heavy and it requires lots of AP per shot. The cold arms and pistols would be usefull, but only as the last-chance weapon or if you need to eliminate your foe noiselessly (a pistol may have silencer installed).

And how does things with the dubbing and the soundtrack stand? Will we hear the old familiar voices?Or will you invite new actors?

— We`ll try to hire the same actors that dubbed the translated version of JA2. Alexander Shukaev does the scoring.

You`ve ofthen said the game would be friendly in the temrs of mod-making. What exactly does it mean?
Could we expect you to bring some kind of editors or other software, you`ve used during the work on the game?

— It means, all the resource will be open to the limit. Or rather, they`ll be “closed” a bit (passwords on the pack files, compiled .lua scripts) in the begining, but we`ll “open” them up after a while (after a little while) and upload the .lua script sources and the mission editor. So it`ll be easy to make mods, missions and even new campaigns. And new arms or whatever, too.

Thanks for the answers. We wish you to release a game that will be no less or even more “killer” then the original :).

— Thanks, go buy two copies of our games apiece!!!