Syndicate Wars is an isometric real-time tactical and strategic game, developed by Bullfrog Productions and published by Electronic Arts. It was released for DOS in 1996 and for the PlayStation in 1997. It is the second video game title in the Syndicate series, retaining the core gameplay and perspective of the original Syndicate, but with a setting 95 years further into the future.
A first-person shooter follow-up (simply titled Syndicate) was developed by Starbreeze Studios and released in February 2012. This was followed by a spiritual successor (developed by the Syndicate Wars producer and lead programmer Mike Diskett), Satellite Reign, in August 2015.
Plot
Syndicate Wars follows on from to the events in Syndicate, taking place 95 years later (in the year 2191). At the game's opening, the player-controlled syndicate (called EuroCorp) is at the peak of its power (achieved during the previous game), a megacorporation controlling the world through a combination of military and economic power, and technological mind control, using the CHIP implant technology they developed. Corporate decisions are facilitated through a number of AI entities connected through a global communications network.
As the game opens, this totalitarian status quo is threatened by the emergence of a virus named "Harbinger" in the global communications system, damaging mind-control CHIP implants and leaving citizens vulnerable to co-option. Some of the newly liberated persons, dubbed "unguided citizens", choose to engage in an armed insurrection. The Unguided appear in early missions as random antagonistic elements, but over time form a well-organized militia.
Viral damage to the global network causes disruption to Syndicate coordinations, with individual stations isolating themselves to avoid receiving rogue communication. The London station, as the headquarters of the EuroCorp syndicate, attempts to regain authority via direct intervention by the game's signature quartets of heavily armed agents.
The virus was released by the Church of the New Epoch, a religious group led by a group called "The Nine" and following a religious text known as "The Book of Cataclysm". The Church are seeking to undermine the world rule by corporations in favor of subjecting its parishioners to its own variety of mind control. "Harbinger" was their first step in demolishing the existing world order. The stated origins of The Nine differ between the in-game narrative (which identifies them as an offshoot of a EuroCorp research group named C3 (the Cybernetic Cognition Conference)), and the official strategy guide, which names the Otherworld Research Group, a group of top scientists who were researching alien technology found at an archeological dig site near Reykjavik. In-game, "The Codex" is a repository of advanced technology; in the strategy guide "The Codex" is an encrypted set of alien technological information. however, they can choose to control agents from either EuroCorp or the Church of the New Epoch.
The game preserves the isometric view of Syndicate, while adding rotation and pitch controls over that view. The player commands four agents (or acolytes, when playing as the Church), either singly or in groups, to complete a series of globally-located missions, the objectives for which include assassinating a specific target, or stealing a specific object. Mike Diskett (the game's producer and lead programmer) described the multiplayer mode as "a mixture of Quake and Command & Conquer, because you end up with the Quake aspect of just going out there to kill as many people as possible, but you also build bases up. This isn't something we've designed in; this is just how we ended up playing it."
Differences in PlayStation version
The PlayStation version of the game features a different introduction cutscene and differences in certain levels compared to the PC version.
Development and release
Syndicate Wars was developed by Bullfrog Productions using a modified version of the engine used in Magic Carpet. Mike Diskett recounted that:
<blockquote>... in the first [Syndicate], one of the biggest complaints was it was an isometric view and if you walked behind a building, that was it, you couldn't see yourself. So now you can walk behind buildings and simply rotate the map so you can always keep yourself in view. We had to wait for a while for the technology to catch up so we could actually do that.</blockquote>
The AI was also enhanced so that enemies would work as a team, whereas in the original Syndicate each one would act as though unaware of the other members of their group. Instead, in 1996 it was released for DOS, with the delayed PlayStation version arriving in 1997. A Sega Saturn version also began development; with Bullfrog's head of conversions, Steve Metcalf, explaining that the Saturn market was not large enough to cover development costs.
Bullfrog Productions also released an official guide to the game, which was printed by Prima Publishing in 1996.
In 2008, a digital distribution of the PlayStation version of the game was released on the European PlayStation Network.
GOG.com released an emulated version of the DOS version for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X in 2013.