Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector, set to release on Jan. 31, is more of an anthology than a traditional video game sequel, with a new protagonist, location and survival system completely changing its core gameplay. While the excellent story-telling and dice-rolling mechanics remain the same, the game and its predecessor are more like second cousins than siblings.
"There's definitely characters returning," creator Gareth Damien Martin told GLHF. "It's not like there'll be tons, but there are some key ones that I felt were really important. How they return is always a fun moment to create. I'm a big fan of those little surprises. That's one of the things I'm most excited to see people react to when the game comes out."
Citizen Sleeper was a breakout success. Only Martin's second game, it tells a grounded, human story of a Sleeper; not quite a clone and not quite a robot. Despite landing on a winning formula, Martin plans to shake things up with the sequel.
"I felt that players had their story for their Sleeper in the original game," Martin said. "And I didn't want to take away from that, but I did want to be able to build on the characters and the stories from the original game. It felt like a time skip would be a nice way to do that, because it allows me to create some distance from the original, an unclear distance, and have characters reappear. Players have to work backward like, 'I've seen this person before, but how did they end up here?'"
Not only are some characters returning, but hardcore fans should be able to connect the dots from the first game.
"It's something I began to set up with the DLC," Martin explains. "I purposefully sent characters off into the Starward Belt and mentioned it at various points so there were loose threads. It's not because I had some kind of mastermind plan. It's something I do when I'm running a tabletop game. I always try to leave myself threads."
The original Citizen Sleeper featured multiple endings depending on who you've met and chose to help out. Characters could have very different outcomes based on the decisions each player made. Moving forward, Martin has changed up how the ending will play out for the sequel, further diverging from the first game.
"The endings we're doing differently," Martin says. "I don't have anything to say about it because I'd love people to discover it for themselves, but it won't be the same. It's a slightly different structure this time around. I enjoy keeping people guessing. It's different, but it captures the spirit of the first game and the way the endings worked."
This won't be the end for the series itself, either. Martin has bigger plans for the universe of Citizen Sleeper, but those plans do not include more video games.
"As long as people keep saying, 'We really like these very human stories,' I will happily keep making them," Martin tells us. "But I'm done [with] video games. Citizen Sleeper 2 has an ending of sorts. I'm working on developing a tabletop game, which will be Citizen Sleeper 3."