When people talk about the Golden Age of Television that followed in the wake of David Chase’s groundbreaking series The Sopranos, you’re likely to hear a few usual suspects touted as examples: Mad Men, Lost, Breaking Bad, etc. But there’s one show that deserves to be in the conversation just as much, even though its genre exterior might not fit with the grounded prestige of its contemporaries: 2003’s Battlestar Galactica. A reimagining of the short-lived, mostly forgotten 1978 series of the same name, the Battlestar revival was a monumental critical success that almost immediately overtook the cultural presence of its predecessor with just a two-part miniseries and four seasons.
With its complex, character-driven storytelling and nuanced approach to grand ideas like conflict and survival, Battlestar Galactica arguably paved the way for our contemporary era of smart sci-fi on television, continuing in the thought-provoking tradition of shows like Star Trek and going on to inspire works like The Expanse and For All Mankind. The show was so popular that it received a spin-off and broke out into other media, most notably video games – up until recently, the last release in the franchise was 2017’s Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock. Now, after almost a full decade, fans have gotten the chance to return to that universe, courtesy of Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes, a brand new roguelite strategy game developed by Alt Shift. Those same devs (creative director Julien Cotret, lead game designer Simon Swinscoe, and lead narrative designer Martin Ringot) recently sat down with Inverse to talk about what it was like bringing Cylons struggle to PC.
