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Bringing Pern to life

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News by Gestalt Co-Founder and former Editor-in-Chief
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Anne McCaffrey's world of Pern was first brought to life in her novel Dragonflight more than twenty years ago, and now UbiStudios UK are hard at work on Dragonriders, a computer game set in Pern. But as lead designer Oliver Sykes points out in a developer diary, because of the vast scope of the world "bringing Pern to life has been no easy task". One of the first problems was "when and where to set the game so as not to interfere with any of Anne's established 'Pernology'", maintaining the consistency of a world that already spans 17 epic fantasy novels.

"We had a free reign to do pretty much what we wanted, but such is the fan base that any contradiction to the existing works would be very much frowned upon! So we decided to set the game at a time that Anne hadn't chronicled, not use any of her characters but create a completely new cast in which Anne's existing world could be our stage."

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