Jagged Alliance 3 Dev Diary sheds light on quests and world-building

Soldiers of fortune working in Grand Chien can look forward to adventure. A new developer diary for strategy RPG Jagged Alliance 3 highlights the work going into world design and side quests present in the game.

Written by Senior Narrative Designer Radomir Mirchev of developer Haemimont Games, the dev diary dives deeper into what players can expect as they explore and fight their way through the fictional African nation of Grand Chien. 

As a follow-up to 1999's classic Jagged Alliance 2, the game world of Jagged Alliance 3 is patterned after the unstable countries often written about in semi-fictional magazines like Soldier of Fortune and made the subject of Hollywood action movies. And like those action movies (as well as Jagged Alliance 2), Haemimont emphasized giving players agency while they navigate the area with their squad of unique mercenary soldiers.

The game won't "railroad" player progression to pursue the main story. Instead, it uses a hint system to encourage exploration and signal to the player that a point of interest or other activity is present in a certain sector. For example, quest notes can be acquired from conversations with civilian NPCs or interacting with objects in the world. There will be multiple ways to encounter quests based on a player's approach towards a relevant trigger.

The quests themselves will also allow freedom of approach, as well as rewarding payers with consequences in both narrative and mechanical terms. Even outside of individual quest choices, Jagged Alliance 3 characters and the local populace will react to players' actions with boosts to loyalty or morale (or penalties, if they don't like your decisions).