PCF: Why did you decide to put Jedi units into the game, given that we haven't seen battlefield Jedi in the films yet and you've deliberately avoided covering any E2 storylines?

Garry Gaber: We definitely did avoid Episode 2 storylines, but we also knew that Jedi were very popular, and that people would be very disappointed if we didn't put them into the game. They demand a lot of micromanagement, but they can convert, they have lightsabres and so they can become a very powerful unit. 

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Garry Gaber: (Of Ensemble) We learned what their processes were for creating art. We'd find what we could - we work a lot more with concept than they did on Age of Kings - and so we integrated concept art into the process. It helped a lot early on, because we wanted to start balancing the game as soon as possible, since that's probably one of the greatest risks in this kind of game. So we created concept art for everything in the game, and then dropped it into the game - so we had buildings in there that looked like drawings, but at least we got a good idea of what the different units were.

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PCF: How easy was it to implement air units with the Age of Kings engine? 

Garry Gaber: Not as easy as we thought it would be, as it turns out. They had birds in their game, but the birds never attacked you, or had to drop bombs, and they never had to fly over every bit of terrain and have a shadow cast properly. But we really like the implementation we have now, it's very cool and it very radically changes the dynamic of the game from Age of Kings - it gives you a new experience, in addition with the other units we've created like shields and power generators.

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PCF: Which other games did you look at for ideas about air units?

Garry Gaber: Starcraft. That was the one that I was most attracted to. I also looked at Red Alert 2, but that implementation would have been difficult in our game, and we didn't want to do aircraft that flew around a lot in their idle modes, because it would have been difficult to control them. This kind of game is all about controlling your units and doing specific attacks, so we went for the Starcraft style. There are good issues and bad issues about it - you can't do the aerobatics as well, on the other hand you never drift into range of an anti-aircraft turret while you're idling.

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Garry Gaber: When we designed the units that weren't in the films, wherever possible we used concept art or drawings that were intended to be used but weren't, we used those. In the Gungan's case, all the units are based on old drawings created by Doug Chang for Episode 1. Another good example is the un-upgraded AT-ST - it was originally created for The Empire Strikes Back, but the design was discarded. So we used it as it as an un-upgraded AT-ST. It gives it a lot of credibility as a design, and also it's kind of cool to have it in there as well. When you upgrade, of course you become the AT-ST from the movies that we all know and love. We've played with the AT-AT a lot too - you can see he's much bigger than a Stormtrooper now. Still not to scale, though. Unfortunately if we did that he'd be unusable.

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PCF: There are a lot of new directions being opened up for strategy games at the moment, how do you think you're pushing the boundaries with Galactic Battlegrounds?

Garry Gaber: What we're doing, more than anything else is giving players something they can sink their teeth into in terms of story, characters, units, depth. We wanted to give a very complete, solid game, and we weren't looking to push the envelope much - that was part of the choice to go 2D. We wanted to give an experience that would be fun over and over again. As far as being the trailblazers on this one - it's more of a solid experience that will be a lot of fun.