For those potentially coming fresh off Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the cyberpunk action-adventure of the moment (also included on our list of recent cyberpunk titles), Flying Wild Hog’s début throwback FPS Hard Reset might take some getting used to. After all, the game’s name could and should be taken in reference to its status as an earnest homage to “all those forgotten Dooms, Quakes, and Painkillers”.

What the ex-members of CD Projekt RED, People Can Fly, City Interactive and Metropolis do is literally drop the you onto a dank, bleak futuristic alleyway, with barrels and crates strewn across the street, glowing power-ups beckoning. Efforts to interact with this architecturally impressive scene will prove much in vain, however, with items merely bumping, bouncing and rolling about; If you discover an explosive barrel or a glowing transformer, you can rest assured its only function is to act as a stationary tool for tactical destruction.

Stuff blows up. Big time. End of story?

Hard Looks

In its outstanding presentation, achieved with a tailor-made in-house engine called Road Hog, Hard Reset presents most importantly a functional façade. The environments are immaculately detailed and flesh out overtly familiar sights for any fan of cyberpunk: The city streets are grungy and gloomy, littered with machinery and debris. Above, a stunning skybox; a vast sprawling future city booming with electronic activity.

At ground level, there is plenty to take in, with dynamic neon lights, signs and electric blue arcs providing mood. In an interesting visual opposition, detail textures are high-resolution while generic world-building textures remain smudgier, illustrating the griminess of the surroundings. For a pure-bred corridor shooter, Hard Reset offers a surprising array of locations. As paradoxical as it sounds, the game’s otherwise generic hallways, streets and corridors remain engaging throughout – at the very least for the very generous 5-7 hours of play the game has on offer, perhaps thanks to the game’s solid aesthetic sense.

While players might not experience much of the city outside the designated corridor, they are certainly able to hear it: Terrific sound design is utilised just as much for combat and action as it is for world building. Interactive advertisements and vending machines are multi-purpose, serving not only as electrical conduits to snare enemies with, but also in creating a sense of place and belonging.

Patrolling hovercars whir past overhead, sirens blaring, with public service announcements imploring players not to vandalize public property (you will vandalize public property). The combat sounds are both heavy and meaty metallic, with satisfying *thunks* and *clanks* and *fizzles* of exploding machinery. In this way, the sound effects accentuate the physicality of Hard Reset’s combat, wherein robots topple over, skitter and crash all over the place. Explosions feel appropriately devastating.

Excellent environmental music by Wojchiech Blazejczyk, ambient and atmospheric, plays in the background intermittently. Heavier, industrial-infused electronic beats are dropped in to heighten the intensity of combat while the more tonal and textural synths are reserved for the quieter moments.

The Flash-animated motion comic cutscenes – clearly done on the cheap, but well enough – stylistically develop slightly as the game proceeds, from slightly tacky to relatively nice. In-game storyline exposition is achieved via radio transmissions, though the gravelly, foul-mouthed main character only speaks during these animated cutscenes. The voice acting itself hardly leaves a lasting impression.

Hard Restart

Old is the new new. Hard Reset inhabits the kind of standard cyberpunkian fare where corporations rule the day, personalities are digital and rogue robotniks are rolling and hating on the streets. Players fill in the shoes of the good Major Whatshisname, working as robot enforcer for yet another Corporation – with a capital C, right? Right! – and nothing, dear readers and players, is ever as it seems.

The names, the faces and the places – Bezoar City, Sector 6, CLN-16, that sort of random thing – are certainly there, but frankly, the game’s exposition is a disjointed, comedic, and often simply nonsensical mess, its dialogic substance formed mostly of curse words and detached technobabble. (Once Greek mythology gets dropped in, one cannot but smile. It’s all very silly, yes, but also curiously endearing.)

“Bezoar this, Sector that” is all pretty much beside the point, though: After all, there are plenty enough bright neon lights and signs, shady streets and exploding robots; that’s as elementary and as visceral a cyberpunk gaming experience as it gets. Klaudiusz Zych in fact states in interview that “[The plot]’s not something you have to pay attention to if you don’t want to – you could just storm through the levels.”

You can indeed clickety-click through cutscenes as soon as the game is done loading the subsequent level. “It’s a shooter, who cares about story!” Some context, a looming MacGuffin, is all you need to kick some shiny ass metal butt. But an uncomfortable feeling lingers, a regret that emerges from this collision of beautiful sight and sound in comparison to the lack of substantial narrative, with the knowledge of merely going through the motions, passing through these corridors and arenas, never once truly connecting on a more sophisticated level with this admittedly fascinating and visionary place.

Despite its obvious narrative failings, Hard Reset does nevertheless create a terrific sense of “being there” given the richness of the world and the physicality of the combat. Sense, it never once makes. It doesn’t… have to?

Hard Shoot

Precognition, shooting experience and luck. These three dimensions play the largest part in the action, which proceeds with minimal bouts of exploration interspersed with waves… and waves… and waves of enemies. Any one battle, poorly anticipated or assessed, can and will result in getting sandwiched and/or cornered. Individually, enemies are seldom very tough, but especially the very first attempt at each major fight can be a tough pill to swallow.

Combative situations are foreshadowed in several ways; there will often be an upgrade station waiting, a closed door to be opened or an electronic shield turned off, and exploding barrels and machines shining in the distance. Often there will also be something intriguing going on in the distance, a little robot scurrying ahead, signalling an imminent encounter. On the “Normal” difficulty, the game is very manageable, (This is why there also exist “Hard” and “Insane” modes.) and indeed many of the rocket-spraying, forward-dashing robots can be avoided with a rudimentary understanding of positioning and circle-strafing, and obviously the streets the are littered with highly necessary environmental elements for electrocuting and blasting the enemies. You can and must create traps with stasis fields, slowing down the advancing onslaught.

Tactical positioning and planning do play a major part in the very biggest of the shoot-outs. Less useful for the player’s survival is a comically short-lived dash, which is often barely enough to get away from enemies, and more often still a fine dandy way of getting caught up in the environmental rubble, a trash bin, a protruding fence, or worst case scenario, an exploding barrel. Bang! Reload. Admittedly, a prolonged run key would have made the game all that much easier. Crouching is not included.

The lavish suite of weapons available consists of two main categories, projectile and energy -based. The two guns, initially an assault rifle and a plasma blaster, neatly transform into the different weapon subtypes, such as a shotgun, a grenade launcher or the compulsory RPG. The upgrade route is altogether familiar and very much resembles that of the Power to the People stations in BioShock. Shooting does have an extra dimension to it, as the forever forward-dashing enemies have to be held at a distance. Many of the weapons have an unlockable secondary fire for this very purpose, and sometimes switching weapons for such defense is key to your survival.

Switching between the subtypes as well as the categories is slow and cumbersome, and often the game is reliant on planning out your each weapon switch beforehand. The switcher also does not loop, instead scrolling back and forth only, which is absolutely an added headache in the heat of battle, especially as the different modes of either weapon are hard to differentiate visually. The game will also fail to register some of your switches and changes, and especially the bigger, more explosive weapons take extremely long to reload or re-energize.

Each these weapons – as well as defensive measures – can be unlocked and upgraded once you discover and amass enough experience pickups, improving them or adding features. As these are littered, for the most part, in the scenery, the game very much rewards a little bit of old-fashioned exploration. Those willing to seek out secret areas will be vastly better-equipped.

The developers make much noise of the engine’s capabilities for havo… Havok, having tailor-made “the Road Hog engine for the kind of game that [the team] wanted to make”. Indeed, the Hog manages to create a nice enough illusion of destructibility and mayhem even though realistically speaking not all that much gets blown up; beyond a few utterly, beautifully destructible sequences interspersed among the game’s more ordinary scenes, what the Road Hog, a powerful little steam engine if any, does very well to cover this fact up.

Upgrade management as well as general terminal usage are self-contained in the game world a lá Dead Space or Doom 3. The decision not to break the ludic experience with yet another tacked-on interface is a great way of preserving and even enhancing immersion, as the terminals are tactfully made. What does potentially break immersion, however, is a constant battery of holographic backsides plastered over the landscape.

Hard Rest

Hard Reset’s PC exclusivity surely denotes no “Press Start” in the menu, right? Right. In addition to its robust configuration options, ranging from controlling input lag, changing cutscene volume (Wow!) and utilizing a gamepad (though who would, right?), you can also designate a specific monitor to play on in your hardcore dual-, triple- and quadruple monitor get-ups. In addition, the game’s performance is top-notch even on a more modest rig, as Hard Reset performs extremely well even on the highest ‘Ultra’ settings, hovering between 40-60 FPS during most scenes. In the most chaotic of moments it drops right down to sub-20, but the game remains playable even if one doesn’t have the heart to change a thing for those few rare occasions. On a slightly newer system the game slowed down only in the two most demanding scenes and remained playable throughout. The only knock on the engine is that pretty as it is (see image on the left), its stylish and animated main menu is dreadfully slow to navigate with each click taking some seconds too many. Fortunately, the developers have listened to player feedback and have included a “fast menu” option in a recent 175mb patch.

Worst for last: As most of you have heard by now, Hard Reset does not contain a save game function (unless you delve deep into the game’s configuration files to bind the quicksave, which does supposedly exist, but is unbound and unadvertised). Instead, checkpoints. CHECKPOINTS. CHECKPOINTS. Let it be in bold. Strangely enough, checkpoint ‘saves’ can be loaded at will, but actual saving is not possible.

As up in the arms as I am about this (in principle! PC players are above all wo/men of principle!), the checkpoints are fairly well-sprinkled out and are not so much an issue as they are an annoyance. But just one single problem with loading and/or saving can nevertheless have a devastating effect on progress. For instance, after crashing to desktop after nearly completing an end-level battle, I found myself set back three big fights and some fifteen, twenty minutes of play. Fortunately for me, the game had just loaded the wrong checkpoint, but what of other players facing similar situations?

As with many indie games – intriguingly, the game followed an all-new fast-track promotional style by Evolve PR, whom also supplied The Slowdown with a review copy – there was minor worry that Hard Reset might not quite reach its proper bloom over the course of its modest length. This fear is and was, for the most part, unfounded. Though the game definitely stays the course throughout, the difficulty level offers a fine curve; while players will quickly learn the ropes, the game never becomes a repetitive experience thanks to the broad array of weapons and environments available. Larger-than-life surprises are not to be found here, but essentially, the game is well-paced and -structured. If you’re thinking Drug Wars (or Merchants of Brooklyn, as the game was called), you shouldn’t.

The game also has achievements, of course – all 80 of them – which cover both natural progression and additional challenges. Flying Wild Hog’s Hard Reset is available on Steam today; a demo can also be downloaded right now.

Epic had a large presence at DWGE 2010, showcasing their latest development tool, the Unreal Development Kit. Their booth featured a workshop with tutorials on the basics of the UDK, and representing Epic at DWGE were Jay Wilbur, Vice President, as well as Markus Arvidsson and James Tan – two of the independent developers behind UDK-based game The Ball. I sat down with these fine gentlemen to discuss a variety of topics including Unreal Engine 3, the UDK, and games development in general. What follows is my conversation with Jay.

The Slowdown: The Unreal Engine has a long history of licensing and modding; how did the decision to launch the Unreal Development Kit only come about now after all these years?

Jay Wilbur: So, all the while, we’ve always made our games open and available for people to mod – Unreal Tournament 3, going back to the original Unreal. People would be able to use the tools to make their own mod. But that locks those creative endeavours to the game, so somebody else would need to own that particular game in order to play the mod. With the UDK, we’ve freed developers to create standalone applications, turn it into a standalone playable entity – asset, I should say, and then deliver it to anybody who wanted to play it. They wouldn’t necessarily need to own that game in order to play it. So the goal was basically to have more people use Unreal Engine 3 in the development and also have more people be able to play the end result.

Epic has been very regular with its revisions of the UDK, with updates almost every month. What is the process of updating and releasing the new revisions?

Our development team has a roadmap that they’re working towards, and they have several high-priorty features, some medium-priority features and some low-priority features. While we do listen to the feedback that we get, most of the time that same feedback echoes our internal priority list.

Having said that, has there been feedback or requests that you have addressed specifically?

There are times when we get that kind of feedback and it makes sense for us to reconsider our priorities, yes.

The November beta of the UDK basically marks a one-year anniversary for the dev kit – you showcased some of the new additions to the engine in a tech demo video.

It just happened to work out in that time-frame, the development team didn’t work just to make sure [the features in the trailer] were in this release, they just happened to be in the ‘birthday release’.

As of right now, the tools are still labeled as in the ‘beta’ phase. When do you plan to bring it out of beta?

Eventually, yes, it will be out of beta, and the engineering team will tell me when that happens.

There are quite a number of middleware solutions out there such as CryEngine and iD Tech, how does Epic plan to stay ahead of the curve?

We offer the best tools in the business, we have very flexible licensing terms, as far as the product goes, you’ll find none better in the marketplace – UE3 is as premium as it gets. We continue to provide excellent support, we continue to supply the kind of new features our developers are looking for – for example, we’ll be releasing support for iOS and we also have shown off support for Android. So UE3 scales from the very highest of the top-end PCs and consoles all the way to the handheld devices.

How did development for iOS come about? Had you already planned to support the iOS devices somewhere down the line?

It was more along the lines of, with the release of the iPhone 3GS, our engineers came and said “We can support this, these devices have now become powerful enough so that we can support this.” And they did a tech demo which proved the tech. “Scaling down” is not the right word to use, it’s now “powerful enough to support it.” And now with iPhone 4 it’s even more powerful.

Whose idea was it to make Project Sword, Chair’s or Epic’s?

We decided that iOS was a priority for us. Chair is part of the Epic family, so we asked the folks at Chair to come up with some design proposals for a really cool iOS game. And they came up with a couple and Project Sword was the one that we all decided was the best one.

The tech demo came out of nowhere, and struck me as a very polished piece of work for a demo.

There are a couple of things working towards that. One, they’re using UE3, which allows for rapid iteration of super high-quality products, which is another reason why UE3 is always the dominant engine in the marketplace. Two, the guys at Chair are just great, they’re geniuses – Shadow Complex was just genius.

How independent is Chair in the development of their projects? Do they come up with their own ideas for games or are they directed by Epic?

They’re part of the Epic family, so everybody is walking in the same direction, but they’re independent enough, so they come up with their own designs. We didn’t say “make a sword game,” we said, “tell us what kind of game you’d like to make.” They spent their time coming up with various game ideas, from which Infinity Blade was the one that was selected.

Are there other commercial projects in the works for iOS, by Epic or any other studio?

We are working on UDK for iOS so that people developing for UDK can port their games to iOS. We’ve licensed UE3 to several development groups who are making iOS games, none of which I am at liberty to discuss.

How does porting work? Can developers who already have a PC build of their game made with UDK easily port it over to iOS?

They can use that as the starting point. Whether it will port well to iOS really depends on a number of different factors. In particular, depending on the control schemes, so if you’re going to use a tilt control mechanism, or multitouch or tap to control. If you’re using a lot of physics, or doing a lot of advanced lighting effects that a PC with a high-end video card would be able to handle, you may have to scale some of those back on the iPhone, just to take advantage of what that platform has to offer. But if you do have a game on UDK for the PC and you want to bring it to iOS, you have a great starting point.

How do you think developers will approach the handheld platform, with regards to the different challenges posed by aspects such as the controls?

It’s up to the developers. We’ve selected a number of different input methods. With Epic Citadel we have the dual-thumbs or tap-to-go. Infinity Blade uses finger motions to control the sword, and you use gestures to create magical symbols on the screen.

What do you think will be the deciding factor for gamers when it comes to touchscreen games? What makes a game competitive in the touchscreen gaming space?

That’s a good question. I think it’s going to depend on the quality of the game. In any entertainment marketplace, it’s going to be the quality of the game that predicts the sales. If the game is really really good, you know, you look at Gears of War, Unreal or Halo, those kind of games are really really good, and they sell a lot of copies.

The iPhone is great, but I’m an Android kind of guy. [Waves around the Nexus One phone being used to record the interview] Will we ever get to play UE3 games?

[Takes out a Galaxy S, shows Epic Citadel running on it] We’ve done some development on Android. That’s Epic Citadel running on Android – now, this is not for public release. It’s on iOS first, and then once the iOS version is released then we’ll start considering Android.

What are the challenges in developing for Android? The demo there seems to be running great.

It runs really well and really fast. One of the problems with the Android marketplace is hardware fragmentation, that’s a really big issue. The other thing is marketplace fragmentation, there are so many different appstores out there. The Android marketplace is a little more difficult [to develop for] because there is less control. I think the Android marketplace is robust … I find it very easy to buy things on it, it’s just that Apple has very tight control. So anything in the Apple world is perfect. It’s just perfect. We like that, we like that a lot. We know that it’s just gonna work. Sometimes that’s not always the case in the Android marketplace.

Google are continuously updating the Android platform, particularly now the OS is on the cusp of a major update; are you waiting on any particular change on their end?

No, right now all our development activity is focused on iOS, it has nothing to do with anyone else.

How did your relationship with Teotl Studios come about and how did The Ball come to be a showcase title for the UDK?

They developed their application and we became aware of it just because we watch the marketplace. We see who’s developing stuff. We actually have one of our support guys in the office just every once a week look over the internet and see what cool new stuff is out there and he sends us a little note and says “hey, this is a cool new thing.” And when something is really cool we reach out and say “hey, we want to put you in our showcase, we want to show your stuff off.” And the Ball was one of the applications we showed off. They were born from the Make Something Unreal contest and they did very well. We have haven’t set plans but we’d like to eventually probably look at doing another contest like that with the UDK. That’s how developers get noticed. The best way for a developer to get noticed using the UDK is to make something really cool, and release it!

The UDK’s licensing model seems to be more affordable for independent developers. How did you decide on that model?

We sat down and thought, what’s a good, fair and equitable set of terms for what we’re offering? What is the right model for the UDK developer? I think we settled on the right model.

What have you seen here at the Dubai Games Expo? What do you think of the local gaming development scene?

I’ve been traveling to Dubai since the beginning of the Dubai Games Expo. I see a vibrant, a very interesting yet under-serviced marketplace – under-serviced by Western game developers. I see a wealth of talent and a wealth of consumers with nobody connecting them. My goal here is not necessarily to sell games, it’s not necessarily to sell engines – though don’t get me wrong, I want to sell engines. My primary goal is to teach the talent how to create games so that they can create companies and build wealth of their own then eventually we can come back and sell licenses to them. I think right now the ecosystem needs development and my goal is help build that ecosystem. I’ve been over for the last three years when the show started and I’ll be back next year.

What are Epic’s plans for PC gaming? The Gears of War series seems to be very much focused on the consoles.

Bulletstorm will ship to the PC. Gears of War is published by Microsoft, so the direction that we take for Gears of War is set mostly by our publisher. But Bulletstorm is scheduled to be released on the PC.

What is your relationship with People Can Fly and how did Bulletstorm come to be?

Epic and People Can Fly came together with Gears of War. PCF was that team working on Gears of War 1 on the PC. They did such a great job, so we got closer and Epic became a partner with PCF. PCF developed the Bulletstorm intellectual property, then we stepped in to help them find a publishing deal with Electronic Arts. We did all the legal and business work to make it all happen, and now that it’s in full development we help in the production. We help wherever we can. We have a full-time producer, Tanya [Jessen], who is assigned to work with PCF, and we send people over from Epic headquarters to Poland to help PCF on a regular basis. Bulletstorm is awesome, it really looks like a lot of fun. It’s like Burnout with guns.

Thank you, Jay, enjoy your stay in Dubai!

We are grateful to Jay for his time as well as to Dana Cowley and Sarah Asby at Epic for arranging our meeting. Stay tuned for the next part in this series of interviews, in which I talk to James and Markus about developing The Ball and go into further detail about the independent development scene.

In addition to this interview, we have also simultaneously published our review of the first chapter of the game here at The Slowdown. “Over the Edge” can be downloaded from Skygoblin right now.

The Slowdown: Starting off, I would like you to return to the origins of the series for a minute: In the manual provided with “Over the Edge,” you reveal how the game’s origins actually lie in brainstorming sessions with your colleague, Mathias Johansson. How big a catalyst, though, was simply finding the correct tool to work with?

Theodor Waern: There’s no point denying that when me and AGS first laid eyes on each other, we both knew it was love. I realized right from the start that this was THE tool for me. The learning curve was perfect. I had a problem, I banged my head at it, I solved it. I had another problem, I banged my head some more, and I solved that one too. It has been that way ever since I started production on the game and I doubt I will ever come to a complete stop.

For a guy like me who knows what he wants, knows a little about basic scripting, and doesn’t mind the fact that making adventures actually is a bigger adventure than playing them, AGS truly is the perfect tool. We have had a rather stormy relationship though, me and AGS. But in the end my bugs have always been solved and we’ve made sweet, sweet adventure game love again.

l think the Journey Down might have had a chance without AGS though , the setting and characters just needed to get out of my brain. It would however most likely not have been a game. Maybe a graphical novel or just a large series of paintings or something. I’m incredibly glad it turned out as a game though. I have learned so much from the experience it’s just ridiculous.

The game’s storyline has seen quite a few revisions since 2005. When you finally hit on the current plot as we players will get to know it – what was it that made you go “This is it!”? Four chapters of storyline is no joke to commit to, after all.

Honestly, I think what made me finally lay down the script and say “this is the way it’s going to be.” was the fact that I felt I just kept pushing things around and never actually got around to finalizing the first chapter. Let’s face it. Four chapters, as you mentioned is a HUGE effort. I certainly hope I will release all four of them but who knows?

Now at least I can be certain part one got released. I would however not have released, had I not finally landed in a version of the plot that I felt comfortable with. Simplification was the key here. Strangely I found that the more twists and important characters I removed from the plot the better it became.

Bwana, Kito and Lina

A major part of development for you indeed seems to be polish – especially in terms of pacing and balance. We already know, from your deleted scenes thread, how you ultimately decided to scrap a considerable portion of material from the game. On the one hand, how hard is it to leave materials behind, and on the other hand, how important do you consider it for a designer to be able to swing the axe?

Making games is all about swinging axes. I work with online games for a living, mostly making content. I know for a fact that when we develop new features, try unproven techniques and new ideas, 80% of what we create is thrown in the trash. Not because it wasn’t good, but because it was for one reason or another, just mixing up the experience and blocking the parts that really mattered. I am convinced that throwing away stuff that confuses the player is incredibly important, and learning to do this is a must if you want to deliver a game with good flow and pacing.

To my surprise, you had stated before that “Most characters in the Journey Down are based on African masks of one sort or other”; while playing the game, I was almost certain you were utilizing Maori Tiki and/or Polynesian Moai as the foundation for the game. So, my question is this – you’ve actually not utilized a specific culture or mythology, instead going for a more eclectic mix of influences?

Kito is based on a east African style called Makonde, while Bwana, Lina and the main bad dude are all based a central African style of carving called Chokwe. Most of the other characters are actually just a big mess of different ideas and influences. There are definitely some Tiki and Moai influences in there somewhere! I have a couple of African art books that I like to skim through a couple of minutes before I go to bed now and then.

I haven’t copied any masks from them but I’m certain they have influenced me greatly. When it comes to designing characters for such a low res game though you really need to cut a lot of corners and remove a lot of the fine details, this changes everything a lot, so in short, let’s just say it’s a big mess.

What about the names – like Bwana, Kaonandodo – are these broadly African too?

Most names were just randomly given to the characters without any research whatsoever. There are however some exceptions. One of the two goons name’s is “Bunga” (not sure if this is mentioned in chapter one) his name, Bwana’s and Matoke’s are all Swahili words (Tanzania, Kenya). There are probably more of them in there somewhere I just forgot they have a meaning heh. So to actually answer your question: Correct, it’s a mess of different styles/mythologies/cultures.

While many players have already pointed out various parallels to Full Throttle and Grim Fandango – the first being thematic, the other stylistic – I strongly felt the episode also carried a Monkey Island feel to it. Apart from Kingsport, there are seven bays that surround St. Armando; will this maritime aspect return in the forthcoming chapters?

Yep. For some reason the maritime theme and adventure games go well together, no point fixin’ that which ain’t broken eh?

Aye aye! What probably reminds people most of Full Throttle, then, is probably your skilful combination of 3D CGI with 2D animation. How early in development did you make the decision to complement 2D with pre-rendered 3D?

It is fun that people have spotted the similarities with Full Throttle visually. This was my number one source of inspiration when it came to mixing 2D and 3D. I have looked at those cutscenes many a time and wondered why on earth they looked so damned good.

I think the first 3D item that appeared in Over the Edge was the crane. I knew what I wanted the puzzle to be like and I realized I would never have the patience to draw the crane in all of its angles so I made a simple non-lit 3d scene and without any real effort it melded nearly seamlessly with the 2d art. That’s when I  realized I could stick 3D in there and get away with it. After that I just kept going with the car in the intro and the airplane. I even had a quick go with Bwana as a 3D model but I gave that up fast. Character rigging and animation is a whole other science in itself and I would have no chance making that look as good as I wanted it.

Over the Edge’s puzzles gelled and rolled like no other adventure game in my recent memory. Is there a specific game or series that would exemplify the tradition and style of puzzles that you’re aiming for?

Adventure gamers in general won’t agree with me here, but my personal opinion is that a good puzzle is an easy puzzle. They make things flow and since they are easy they are more common and hence give the player feedback more often. It keeps people engaged and interested when things are happening. The only downside with an easy puzzle is that you need many of them to compensate for how fast you solve them.

What makes a puzzle a good one to you, then?

Admittedly a good difficult puzzle can be a lot of fun if it is well written and perfectly balanced, this however is seldom the case. I think the mood in an adventure game is totally ruined by “rub all items on all items” brute force puzzle solving. It flattens the whole experience. So do walkthroughs. If the player resorts to either of these, it is my opinion that the game has failed in keeping the player within the game world and has let them wake up from the experience that is the game. That is obviously a bad thing.

However, all games no matter how well written are full of moments when one resorts to brute force though, I’m sure people playing “Over the Edge” have done so as well.

A Waern puzzle!

One thing that does set your game apart from many other AGS-built adventures is your use of the 1995 “big” sprite style that is principally more about lines, shapes and forms and less about individual pixels – something that I’m sure is not lost on players. Did it take you long to discover a suitable workflow for doing art and animations in the very modest resolution of 320x and, more importantly, as a developer, what do you like best about the miniature work space?

The small workspace is great for efficiency. I love having those kinds of limitations. The more limitations you got the faster a project can be finished. On the character side however, I honestly think work might have gone faster if I had higher res and better alpha, as I would have less of a headache battling sharp pixel edges, so I’m not quite happy with the workflow I ended up with on them. Had I aimed for a more of a “pixel art” style, low res would be a blessing, now though… it mostly slowed things down. The best part with going low res is definitely how much faster work goes on cut scenes and backdrops, and the lovely retro vibe you get from the low res certainly adds to the mood as well. The low file size of low res games are nice as well.

I’d like to know a bit more about the background music. Beyond D’souza’s bubbly contemporary reggae stylings, what really stands out to me is how there seems to be a specific theme for every location, no matter how quickly they may be traversed by the player. It would be very interesting to hear about the way you two come up with a suitable tone and style for each scene.

Once I had explained the overall mood I was after, the reggae mixed with the jazz, Souza just went balls out crazy and started churning out tunes like mad to the different environments. We had a very simple workflow there where I made some short notes on what I wanted focus to be on, he made a first test, sent it to me, I give him some simple response (usually regarding what tempo things were in), he made the fixes, and we stuck it in game. He has been great at handling my feedback and implementing it immediately, just amazing.

The cut scenes were a lot more work though. I had to film the movies and send them to him so he could synch the music 100%. Also, the music in the cutscenes is split up in lots and lots of small bits, so the music wont break if people start skipping dialogue etc. I’m very proud of how well we made that work. Next time though I’ll most likely disable clicks during cutscenes, the result was good, but I’m not sure it was worth the effort.

The swift-but-sweet sax interludes, then, how did those come about?

That is a pretty interesting story actually. These sax samples were the first I added. Why? Back then I didn’t have any music, and I desperately wanted some. I headed to freesound.org and started hunting for jazzy little tunes to go with my slapstick animations to give them some punch. Just something temporary. When I thought I was starting to wrap the rest of the game up I figured it was the right thing to do to send an email to the author and ask if it was ok that I used his samples for a game. Amazingly enough he answered: Sure. Do you need anything else? My simple response to this was:  I need an entire soundtrack. He charged into the project head on with no sign of hesitation whatsoever and has produced things like crazy for me since. I owe him a lot.

Finally – and this is something that is very often brought up with AGS titles with great production values – what’s your take on voice acting and indie adventure games? I personally kept on reading Bwana’s lines aloud along the way, mon!

Heheh, me too, mon. I love it when games have good voice acting, it adds so much depth it’s just mad. There are actually lots of good freeware games out there with quality voice acting. Where they get the talented people from, I have no idea. I would love a voice over version of “Over the Edge” but I really don’t have a clue how to pull that off. It’s a BIG project, and honestly voice acting needs to be good, simply “ok” voice acting sinks a game in my opinion.

Hopefully, some time in the future, a voice acting solution will come my way. I too would love to hear Bwana’s nice relaxed attitude pour out of my speakers. One day this might come true!

Thanks again to Theodor Waern for his time and answers. While chapter two of The Journey Down, called “Into the Mist,” is slated for a summer 2011 release, “Over the Edge” is available right now at Skygoblin.com. Finally, if you didn’t yet get your full share of information on the game, our review can be read here, and there exists a production thread with big versions of some of the paintings for the game, and another post contains sketches and deleted scenes from Waern.

Maro Hüllen, with Pet

In today’s interview, we talk to the original designer and primary illustrator of The Whispered World, Marco Hüllen (on the right), in the hopes of shedding more light on the curiouser details of the development process of the game – especially, on details that are still left uncertain for non-German audiences.

After all, German fans of the adventure game have had the privilege of reading Marco’s posts on various adventure gaming forums – as well as having already played the game. For those of us not yet in the know, the interview below should hopefully reveal some further facets of the make-up of the wildly imaginative ride that is the six-year development process of the game.

Finally, please do remember to take a look at our introductory post to The Whispered World – the article, written in conjunction with this interview, details the game’s history from inception to conception, between the years 2004 and 2010, and should by all means get you better prepared for the game’s release on the 23rd.

A special thank you goes to the very genial mister Hüllen, who braved our questions despite a minor language barrier. Therefore, the interview has been translated, from German into English, by Martyn Zachary and Richard Scary for The Slowdown. The original answers, in the German language, will also be published on the website later.

The Slowdown: After having worked so long on a project that began way back in the first half of the 00′s as an university project, are you feeling any fatigue now that the game is finally coming out?

Marco Hüllen: A little, but the joys do outweigh the fatigue. When I first started work on the game, I never expected it to become such a marathon for me. Much has been enjoyable, and a lot was equally frustrating. In the end it all came together nevertheless, and with that in mind it has all been worthwhile.

How long have you been working on the game, exactly?

Oh, it has already been quite a few years: I started work in the year 2004, with The Whispered World as the topic of my diploma thesis. When I completed my degree in late 2005, I made the decision to develop the game further at Bad Brain Entertainment, for whom I had done graphics on some other titles during my studies.

Unfortunately, the company went bankrupt after about six months and I did no further work on the game. After that I became lead artist at Independent Arts Software, where I worked on games for the Nintendo DS and Wii. In 2007, I came in contact with Daedalic Entertainment by chance, who then inquired if I would continue to work on the game at the studio. Thus my work at Daedalic began in September 2007, where I worked on the game, together with the rest of my colleagues, for almost 2 years as lead artist and game designer, up until its release in Germany in August 2009.

Was your graduation project more a visual arts or a game design project?

I did graphic design and illustration at the Rhein-Sieg academy of arts. Though my diploma thesis focused more on illustration and advertising than on game design, I nevertheless wanted to put on display as much actual game as possible, and developed a story, a trailer and a demo for the game in which important features of the game’s design, like Spot, some puzzles and characters were shown.

A Background Sketch

There is some mystery as it relates to the original playable demo you released for the game back in 2005. How close was the game to a full release at that time?

The demo was part of my dissertation and really just a snippet from the game. Since I did the demo completely alone it only had 4-5 rooms, but did already contain basic animations for the main characters, Sadwick and Spot. In contrast, the game now contains 60 rooms, many people have worked to improve the game and the character of Sadwick underwent a complete redesign.

How does the 2007 German-only trailer figure in all this, then? What was its function? Did you design the trailer all by yourself, as a marketing vehicle, for instance? It still contains the previous version of Sadwick, and borrows music (“Ano natsu he”) from Miyazaki’s renown anime, Spirited Away – do I see a Studio Ghibli influence there?

The trailer was, like the demo, part of my thesis and was not meant for public consumption, as it contained music from the film Spirited Away. Miyazaki’s films have been a great inspiration to me and the music was only meant to illustrate where the direction of the music and the atmosphere of the game should go.

We’ve come to understand that Bad Brain’s Wolfgang Kierdorf effectively owned, at one time, the licensing rights and the characters of The Whispered World. How did that come to happen, and how did Daedalic eventually get the license?

Bad Brain never did have the rights to the game: Only the portion of graphics and content that was created during my stay at the company belonged to them. Around the same time, the game’s story capsized completely, and really had hardly anything to do with my original vision. It wasn’t until Daedalic that my story was picked back up.

Daedalic then bought the existing parts from Bad Brain, and came to an agreement with me in regards to my rights to the game.

From what I understand, your relationship with Bad Brain Entertainment was never quite as poor as reported in the English-speaking press. For one, the contractual issues you had with them seem to have been overstated. In your opinion, does Bad Brain’s legendary bad reputation relate more to their high-profile issues with Autumn Moon and Bill Tiller?

While there were indeed many problems within the company, I’m very reluctant to talk ill of Mr. Kierdorf, who was essentially a great boss. I have never interfered in regards to his failings in successfully delivering on his promises with A Vampyre Story, and have only learned about the problems via the gaming press. It does seem that something went wrong there.

In retrospect, how would you characterize Mr. Kierdorf, who is often demonized and vilified among adventure game fans?

Ultimately, Kierdorf is just someone who enjoyed the adventure game genre as much as I did, and he had huge plans for huge games. Unfortunately, nothing ever became of it in the end, as we all know.

The absolute worst period during the development of The Whispered World?

When management of the game at Bad Brain completely changed and I was no longer able to see much of what I had once planned. I believe it’s good that that the game was not brought to completion at the time.

As the game’s credits roll, you are quite strikingly credited for a vast amount of different tasks and developmental roles; How large a percentage do you estimate your final contribution to the released version to be?

Most of my work was done with the backgrounds, which are largerly mine, and also the characters, which I have created myself with a few exceptions. Apart from that, I designed the entire interface, many items and some animations, like the running animations for Sadwick and Spot. Most of the other animations have been done by my colleagues at Daedalic, who have all done a great job.

Above all, I would like to praise Simone Kesterton and Gunnar Bergmann especially. There was a summary of my story that I had already done during my thesis, and together with Sebastian Schmidt and Jan Müller Michaelis Spitzname, we worked it out further.

I was also involved in game design as well as one or two 3D effects.

Claas Paletta’s FAQ for The Whispered World lists further influences than just the aforementioned Miyazaki: Classic fairy tales and adventure games like Monkey Island. Would you agree with these? Any other influences you had back when you first started work on the game?

Yes, Miyazaki was indeed the biggest inspiration for the game, but other fantasy films from my childhood, such as The Last Unicorn, or Labyrinth, had a great influence on me as well. The game even contains elements of the movie Fight Club, which inspired some of the plot twists.

What has most recently motivated you as an artist? A film, a work of art, an album?

I am an enormous film buff, and love stories with oddball characters; Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie, as well as the wonderful music of Yann Tiersen, have inspired my newest hobby project, Limbus. For me, music is one of the most important things in being able to dive into a new, different world.

If I’m painting a picture or two, I tend to listen to the same music again and again – I know that might sound crazy to some, but it really helps me to convey the atmosphere I’m trying to imbue the images with.

Sadwick the clown, then. How did the transformation from the old Sadwick (on the left) over to the new design happen? The previous iteration appears to me more child-like and innocent, unprepared, with the colour red ultimately striking a parallel more towards children’s entertainment.

And what became of his tail?

We wanted to develop a look that would appeal to an older audience, and subsequently a character with which we could express more emotion, which was immensely important for the game. His lion’s tail, from that time, became a casualty in the process.

The character of Sadwick, in some ways, exudes the bitter-sweet melancholy of Charlie Chaplin’s The Tramp in his 1928 silent film, The Circus. How did you arrive upon the character of the clown?

What I’m referring to here is the cruel existential position of the circus performer; the showmen and -women of the circus are also perpetually outside society, bound to their work and travel. Is Wanderlust the source of Sadwick’s melancholy?

Sadwick the character was meant to be very unsatisfied with his current life, completely ready to break free of its constraints. We often have to hide our true feelings in life, like feign happiness just to make other people happy, even though what we’re feeling might be the complete opposite of that. We all have surely smiled to a loved one in mourning even though we were full of grief ourselves.

Thus, a clown that is unhappy with his own life seemed to me to have fine contrast that would then distinguish Sadwick from other characters in adventure games, and breathe enough life into him, to make him sympathetic and tell an emotional story in a world that is just as fragile as Sadwick is. I hope the players will empathize with Sadwick enough, so that they can laugh with him at the end of the game but also feel a hint of sadness.

This all begs the question: How closely does The Whispered World of today resemble your original vision of the game?

Apart from a few exceptions, the game became what I had wished for. Though surely one’s never 100% satisfied – that would be a crying shame, after all, since you should always try to better yourself.

Now that the game is nearly ready and published, did it originally ever cross your mind that the game’s development could become such a wild ride?

Never ever!

A do-or-die question, a high-priority issue the ambiguity of which is torturing non-German players all around the globe. Which is it, yes, which is it – is Spot a worm or a caterpillar?

A caterpillar, with a few special abilities to boot.

Finally, now that the game is finished and released, are you going to be working on other projects with Daedalic?

I work as a concept artist at Related Designs at the moment. But you never know.

At this point, I would like to take the time, once again, to thank Marco for his answers, hopefully we all now have a better idea of what went down behind the scenes. Here’s to hoping that The Whispered World is not the last of Marco’s fantastic graphic design on adventure games.

For Hüllen’s personal website, check out Fantastic Creatures; The Whispered World’s official website can be found here. The game is out in the UK, Scandinavia, Spain and Italy on April 23, 2010, and on the 26th in North America. So far, the game is digitally available at Direct2Drive, GamersGate and The Adventure Shop. Daedalic also promise a release on Steam.

Cover Art

This week, after a brief stretch of inactivity, The Slowdown prepares to turn its knobs to full blast with five days solely dedicated to the German-made, apocalyptic fantasy point and click adventure, The Whispered World!

I consider this week, from the 19th to the 23rd, just as much a return to my gaming roots – the adventure game genre – as it is a gesture towards the game’s only true leading man, lead artist and designer Marco Hüllen, who has in my mind received far too little attention in the English-language press for his imperative contributions to the game’s development. His omission from the game’s marketing discourse, in a way, is an example of the disconnection in-between different subsections of gamers as demarcated by language.

Therefore, the week starts with full force tomorrow, Tuesday the 20th, with a detailed timeline of the astonishing six-year development history of the game, detailing many of the turning points and pivotal moments of a process that in many ways culminated back in the August of 2009. For comparative purposes, the article also contains rare screenshots from the original demo version way back from 2005!

Sadwick and Spot

On Wednesday, we will be posting a translation of our one-on-one interview with the game’s lead artist and original designer, Marco Hüllen. Among the topics discussed were the scholastic origins of the game, Hüllen’s past and present influences, the role that the infamous Bad Brain Entertainment played in the game’s development, and the formative origins of the protagonist, Sadwick the clown. Finally, we’ll at once discover the true nature of Sadwick’s sidekick, Spot!

For Thursday, I have prepared a thickly descriptive interpretation – a review, if you will – of the very generously paced demo of The Whispered World that is currently available for download from Deep Silver.

And to seal the deal, Friday the 23rd (the game’s EU release date) comes with a tiny surprise!

Note: This post will be updated with links to the respective articles to reflect the state of the upcoming coverage, so stay tuned for more! I hope you will all enjoy these articles as much as I have enjoyed working with Mr. Hüllen for the past few weeks!

• The Whispered World Week, Day 2: Tuesday

• The Whispered World Week, Day 3: Wednesday

• The Whispered World Week, Day 4: Thursday

• The Whispered World Week, Day 5: Friday

You’ve probably also noted how we’ve yet not engaged ourselves in the “best of” discourse, at all; we enjoy making lists just as much as the other guy, sure, but perhaps unsurprisingly also tend to get over-analytical and –intellectual with the concept.

Therefore, as our final post of the year, the three of us have jotted down our personal lists of the decade. The simple rule was not to make it too difficult for ourselves. Therefore, I have sought to paint an impression of the zeitgeist, warts and all. Very subjective. Nabeel wanted to paint a portrait of himself as gamer, and Richard hoped to be accurate and inclusive. The games listed below have not been included based on their perceived merits or qualities; instead, we selected them with the aforementioned focuses in mind.

All three free-form lists after the jump. Here’s to a new gaming decade, everyone!

Martyn

For me, Half-Life 2 and its subsequent episodes appear as a towering, majestic entity that (fore)shadowed much if not all of the narrative-based action gaming of the decade, also figuring as far more important a game for me than the first one was or ever will be.  The looming, perverse presence of Counter-Strike: Source, similarly, cannot be understated. The ever-improving Source engine – along with Steam and Steamworks, obviously – have given us a brilliant platform for modifications. Unreal Tournament 2004 played a similar, if smaller, role (with Air Buccaneers, Alien Swarm and Killing Floor to name a few examples).

Where S.T.A.L.K.E.R. left a Fallout-like (i.e. very permanent!) impression on me (as did BioShock, though to a lesser degree), Left 4 Dead brought us all together as friends in the zombiecalypse, and that’s as high a praise as one can give for a game. Our horrifying late-night “Survival” grindfests, no matter how barbaric, repetitive and artistically insignificant, were in many ways the defining events of the year and continuously succeeded in bringing out a persevering sense of purpose and camaraderie.

Often curiously absent from these toplists is No One Lives Forever 2, which, together with the first part, is by far my favourite FPS series (…not made by Valve, anyway). I think I can speak for Richard in that we both hope Monolith would proceed with another creative 180. Another common absentee remains Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, cherished by some, disliked by many and altogether forgotten by most. For me, Troika’s swan song is the epitome of a multi-faceted, mature gaming experience that leaves a lasting intellectual mark on its players.

I also very much remain a fan of IO Interactive’s Hitman series, which always succeeds in taking me to places even despite their obvious, obvious flaws. Remedy’s narrative noir wonder Max Payne also warrants high praise from me, especially the sequel, The Fall of Max Payne, which I have replayed far more times than any other game of this decade, including three times in the row. And yes, I did come out of the experience relatively unscathed. The hype and youthful excitement leading up to the ultimate release of the first Max Payne, too, remains the most memorable out of all.

Grand Theft Auto IV and San Andreas, both wondrous escapists’ delights, offered me tremendous amounts of pleasant time away from reality – what more is there to say? Vice City may remain the creative highlight in the series, but the aforementioned gave me a longer stretch of unadulterated play. The very same could be said of Tabula Rasa and EVE Online, though I ultimately spent very little time in both.

In my primary area of interest, adventuring, the decade belongs wholly and only to the indie sector: Yahtzee’s Chzo Mythos (including Art of Theft, which kept me hooked for a good few weeks), Wadjet Eye’s Blackwell series, Herculean Effort’s Apprentice. Origamihero’s surprisingly adult, Beneath a Steel Sky -like Reactor09 and Harvester Games’ Downfall also remain some of the high points of the decade creatively. So many a good free adventure was released that I did not have nearly as much time to dedicate to Telltale Games, for instance, as I thought I would – very much a tell-tale sign of the make-up of the decade!

Nabeel

1998 was a pivotal year for me as a gamer, it marked the moment in my life when I switched from being a primarily console gamer to a PC gamer. I still kept aware of titles on all the platforms, but I no longer bought consoles and instead focused on upgrading my rig. So the decade that followed really was a period of discovery, of expanding my horizons and getting into genres I previously had no experience of at all. And I most certainly didn’t go about it in an orderly manner – I rarely play games as soon as they come out – as I’ll get to in more detail.

I may have boarded the PC gaming bandwagon in the year in which ground-breaking titles such as Half-Life debuted, but I was struggling with the latest releases on a machine that had no 3D accelerator. It was in 1999 that I purchased a Voodoo Banshee, and there my real foray into hardcore shooters began. Replaying old games with the improved hardware, like Half-Life and Quake II, I was also able to enjoy the eye candy of new releases like Unreal Tournament and Aliens vs. Predator.

It was Irrational Games’ sci-fi FPS-RPG hybrid System Shock 2 that was, I think, the game that prompted me to start exploring other genres. The game had a lot more significance than I was even aware of at the time; not knowing anything about its prequel or the influential developers behind it, I was simply drawn to the setting and premise. Upon release, however, I realised I was out of my depth. The wealth of options and choices stifled me, I hoarded items and skill points and was too terrified of using them lest I made the wrong decision. So Shock 2 had to be shelved for the time being.

The following year witnessed the introduction of another significant series, Ion Storm’s Deus Ex. Similarly genre-bending, it motivated me to give RPGs another shot – and being so much more forgiving and accessible than Shock 2, I was able to grok it and finally learn how to make decisions regarding character development and moral choices. So it was not until after I finished Deus Ex a few times that I had the guts to return to Shock 2 a couple of years later, and with my newly acquired gaming skills managed to defeat SHODAN. I eventually played the prequel and the spiritual successor, BioShock, but Shock 2 still remains my favourite in the series and perhaps my “game of the decade.” I return to it time and time again, be it with new functionality and sheen thanks to mods, or on a jaunt with friends in co-op multiplayer. Looking Glass’ legacy continued to inspire me in the latter games in the Thief series, Thief II: The Metal Age and Thief: Deadly Shadows.

Two titles that best illustrate my constant meta-game of catch-up are Planescape: Torment and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. The former a ’99 release and the latter ’03, I only finished them for the first time this year. Sands of Time had me entranced by its charming tale deftly woven into the gameplay, and I was sorry not to have played it sooner. Torment celebrated its 10th anniversary earlier this month, and I felt it was a great time to finally finish it with the same perseverance I needed for Shock 2. It was another game I had gotten and attempted years ago, but couldn’t progress past a certain point, and so had to put on hold. And yet again it was a game that blew me away and became an instant favourite: the text-heavy content that explored themes greatly intriguing to me forced me to put up with the clunky Infinity Engine interface and mechanics. I was awed by the strange setting and became attached to the characters, and so it was hard to let go by the time the game reached its moving conclusion.

I guess I can’t go on without giving a mention to the incredible Half-Life 2, which I was very late to the party on due to not having the required hardware at the time of release. Despite experiencing it well after the hype, I recognised the feat of story-telling that it was. Max Payne was a confident homage to film noir, a genre to which many of my favourite movies belong. I am not a big strategy gamer by any means, but I loved Stardock’s Galactic Civilizations II and Sins of a Solar Empire for their slow, accommodating pace. Portal brings a smile to my face whenever I hear it mentioned, a true masterpiece of efficient narrative and design.

Mass Effect fulfilled the sci-fi film nerd in me, and I get chills hearing the main theme. The Slowdown crew had some good times together battling hordes in Left 4 Dead, and I look forward to more in the sequel – now with cricket bats and electric guitars [Ed. note: B-b-but what about the baseball bat?]. Batman: Arkham Asylum finally did justice to my favourite superhero, providing a detailed and delightfully well-realised world to explore.

It’s been an awesome, important decade for me. Here’s to the next.

Richard

Valve’s titles have been the decade-defining ones for me: Half-Life 2, together with its episodes, are hallmarks of design, functionality and immersion. The amount of time I have spent on Counter-Strike: Source and Left 4 Dead is not funny any more, with the aforementioned not even all that enjoyable; it’s the social interaction that makes these games worthwhile.

Deus Ex is one of the most immersive video game experiences for me to date. This might have something to do with my budding fetish with cyberpunk, a theme that we still see utilized in games far too seldom. Bioshock eased this yearning to an extent, but the diminished role of interacting and the transparent linearity of the game did not work as well for me. Anarchy Online managed to capture my interest for a while due to its positively different, cyberpunkish world. Tabula Rasa, too, broke the conventions that initially drove me away from AO; sadly this wasn’t for long until the premature closure of the game.

Out of all the Legend of Zelda games released this decade, Majora’s Mask stands out as my favourite: A bewildering world and a story with surprisingly dark undertones and unmatched time-based gameplay create a wonderful experience. Wind Waker, includes many of the above, with added audiovisual treats and a joyous, functional world. Metroid Fusion and Metroid Prime are both games I have fond memories of, Fusion also being the first story-driven game in the Metroid series without compromising traditional exploration and with Prime perfecting the atmosphere and game mechanics. Truth to be told, Metroid Fusion is actually the game I’ve completed most often. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga is another example of Nintendo’s fine offerings, deserving a special mention for it’s tongue-in-cheek humor and successful flow.

IO Interactive’s Hitman series – especially the second game – and Remedy’s Max Payne both fill gaps of rarely explored subject matter and excel in storytelling. The serial killer theme is present in Grasshopper Manufacture’s killer7 too, a game that also defies definition in every single possible way. I’ve yet to come by a game as distinct both visually and aurally, not to mention less comprehensible.

Monolith’s offerings, particularly the No One Lives Forever series, have been a steady source of entertainment. Both F.E.A.R. and Condemned: Criminal Origins are great games in their own right, the latter getting a special mention for being the most demented game I’ve played this decade, but these are not comparable to their previous outings. The original Painkiller, too, holds a special place in my memories, being the epitome of fast action and clever design. The dream-like atmosphere and pacing are hard to come by.

We shan’t forget the many modifications released for Valve’s Source and Goldsource engines; Afraid of Monsters: Director’s Cut and Paranoia are both wonderful examples of dedication with their carefully crafted atmosphere. The amount of cheap laughs we had with pre-commercial versions of Garry’s Mod is staggering, and Action Half-Life 2 has seen far more game time than it would logically deserve.

So far, there are apparent similarities with Martyn and Nabeel’s lists, but I’ve yet to add my guilty pleasures to the mix: You Are Empty is an example of a game that’s bad but still alluring. It’s evident that the developers were trying their best, but couldn’t quite pull everything off. What they did get right is the hopeless atmosphere and a definite sense of being alone. Gothic 3 was a surprisingly enjoyable experience despite all the bad press it received elsewhere. It managed to fill the sweet spot Oblivion never did for me; this was of course after all the community patches had been applied. In a way S.T.A.L.K.E.R. could be included in the same category, easing my adventurous needs. The sense of wonder while traveling the Zone, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.’s barren yet living world, remains special.

There’s not one single game that could better capture the feeling of breezing through a jungle for half an hour and then realizing you have to walk back after guerrillas fell a tree on your shining mobile. Boiling Point: Road to Hell defines broken, even more so than Gothic 3. Nevertheless, the entertainment value is there, together with a unique atmosphere.

Finally, here are some of the stories from our Featured category:

• Hard Reset Review
• Interview with Epic Games' Jay Wilbur
• The Journey Down Interview with Theodor Waern
• Interview with The Whispered World Designer Marco Hüllen
• The Whispered World Week

Thanks for reading, see you all next year!

When I play a game at less than maximum settings, there is a nagging feeling I get that is separate from the disappointment in the reduction of graphical fidelity, or the dismay that my PC is getting long in the tooth. I find myself wondering if I’m really experiencing the game as it was intended by its creators. Developers speak more and more about wanting to deliver an experience to gamers, and wanting them to play it just how they envision. I think about the interpretation of what I see, and whether what I’m seeing is ‘canon’. If the object detail is down so low that I can’t tell what a character is wearing, am I missing a crucial point about that character? If I make a certain conclusion about a room that I wouldn’t have if I could only read the writing scrawled upon the walls, is my understanding of what happened ‘non-canon’? It’s a minor point but it’s something I keep thinking of in an age of games that are finally able to tell stories with every kind of narrative device available.

Of course, console gamers don’t face this dilemma at all. A console game plays the same on every unit of that console, and developers have a lot more control on how the game will look and perform without having to think about different hardware combinations and permutations. So I’m just restricting this thought experiment to PC games. There are a number of questions that follow this thought. Does it really matter if the graphics are not at the very max? Would you even be able to glean some higher level meaning or nuance from the details? Are we at the stage in game technology where this would matter, and developers can use this level of detail to add subtle enhancement to a games story and atmosphere? If so, in what games released today would it make a difference? A few games came to my mind immediately, and I’ll restrict my selection to just these few already installed on my hard drive so as not to belabour the hypothesis.

Having run through a few of the games for screenshots, I notice that the most common method of adding things to the world in order to enhance the narrative is to place detail textures in select places. Items like posters, decals and video monitors strewn all over the place are an easy enough way to make the environment seem more real and provide opportunities to convey key ideas to the player. Ultimately I suppose I’m not looking specifically at the term ‘canon’ but more at the ‘intended experience’ and what the player is supposed to see on their journey through the games.

2007 was an eventful year for gaming, and Portal was one of its biggest surprises. Stuffed into the Orange Box compilation amongst other big titles, it would have been overlooked if it weren’t for its refreshing puzzle mechanics and delightful storytelling. Much of the story was unravelled through the use of the environment, with writings scrawled upon the walls by the people that had passed that way before you.

Considering the minimal approach to narrative in Portal, these scribblings have quite a high priority in getting across ideas to the player. As you can see in the screenshots above, though, the words are unreadable at the lowest texture settings. A key theme of the game is the isolation and loneliness of the test subjects, and the two high points in this otherwise dark setting: the weighted companion cube and cake. Someone playing at the lowest settings would miss these details, arguably missable but still enriching flavour.

Another critically acclaimed game that year was BioShock. Hailed for its literary headiness, it too is rich in story and utilises various devices in telling the tale of the failed utopia that is Rapture.

As with Portal, there is a lot of flavour detail in BioShock that just adds to the atmosphere and the overarching story of the world. Posters and billboards advertising plasmids are hung up on the walls throughout the city of Rapture. Every now and then you come across bloody messages painted on the tiles by deranged splicers. Though not essential to understanding the story, they all help the player piece together what happened to bring the once thriving city to its desolate state. As you can see those details are sacrificed in the name of performance, lost in a blurry mess. A player strolling past them without knowing what they say would probably not be able to appreciate the depth of the fiction that fleshes out Rapture and its short history.

However, it seems there are some decals that are deemed too important to be affected by the graphical settings. Early in the game, the player stumbles onto mad surgeon Dr. Steinman’s turf, and his twisted worldview is there for all to see in his crazy writing, low settings or high. It’s clear that the developers wanted to be sure the player understood what kind of person they were up against, a distinctive character with the motivation and means to be considered more than just an overpowered splicer.

Moving right along, I thought I’d stop over briefly on last year’s Left 4 Dead. Valve’s co-operative zombie shooter shares with Portal a minimalist attitude as far as story goes, with the focus on the replayable experience. The player gets to know what’s going on in the zombie-infested world of the game via two main devices, the characters’ dialogue and the … wait for it … writings on the wall.

As is very evident, there isn’t much difference in the overall quality of the game, and certainly not in the decals. The story is easily discernible on the most sluggish of rigs.

Before we conclude I would like to take a slight tangent in the discussion. So far we’ve only been looking at things in games that are simply decoration, that add to a player’s passive understanding of the world. But games have moved on from there, and now rely on these details to not only inform but require the player to engage and interact. Case in point: Batman: Arkham Asylum. We have already voiced our excitement about Arkham Asylum here at the Slowdown, being big fans of all things Bat. When the game finally arrived on the PC it didn’t disappoint, and delivered a fantastic experience like no other Batman game has. One of the things it does best is cram in so many elements into a relatively small area, making it feel like a living and breathing incarnation of the world we know so well. We mentioned the PhysX features in the demo review, and how it adds things like breakable floor tiles and fog particles. I don’t think we need to include this in our discussion, as it’s obvious that losing those things makes no difference to a player’s understanding of the game.

What I want to focus on is an interesting aspect of the game which is the Riddler’s challenge. Throughout Arkham Island are mementos corresponding to the various infamous characters in the rogues gallery – most of whom are not present otherwise – each of which the player is instructed to seek out. They serve the dual purpose of nudge-winks to fans and a source of experience points which players can use to upgrade their gadgets. Hence both story and gameplay are served in one stroke, and the player’s ability to recognise each item is dependent on whether the graphics can present a clear image of the objective. Above are a couple of the very few examples I could find that show a difference between lowest and highest settings. Exhibit A shows the Riddler’s own cell, dotted with his trademark question marks; with the textures turned down the symbols are less sharp but still readable. Exhibit B is a grim scene orchestrated by the sadistic Zsasz, with tally marks to signify his work. While all the objects in the room are reduced to blurry surfaces, the key items are still clear as ever, allowing players to identify the objective.

Most other cases are like Calendar Man’s cell, pictured here, hardly any change at all with the textures sharp and unblemished. So again we have a situation where the important objects in the environment are favoured so that the player can have pretty much the same kind of experience regardless of their system.

I guess my fears are a little unfounded, in this era of HD gaming when even low-range rigs allow us to play games more or less as their makers intended. Obviously my sampling is very limited to be making sweeping judgments like that, but I think it’s safe to assume games are not going to look like a mess of dirty polygons at minimum settings like they did a generation or two back. And as noted before, this is a console-led generation, which dictates the decisions behind the general art direction and quality of art assets. It also means I won’t have to upgrade for some time yet; with the technology bar almost stagnant during this console cycle I can rest assured I am going to be able to play games without my completionist conscience nagging at me to upgrade.

Steam Ad for Jedi Knight Collection

This is a rather shocking turn of events after a wildly successful reintroduction of the classic LucasArts back catalogue to audiences old and new, and indeed strikingly qualitatively different from the previous batch of releases, especially so when taking into account that fixes to some of the aforementioned issues are in fact readily available! For instance, players who already own the games on CD can simply extract the original wave audio for their background music to work (thanks Richard!).

It is only natural, however, to find the company trying to think up ways to maintain the newfound revenue flow and subsequently benefit from the excitement caused by these re-releases. Therefore, it’s also all the more disappointing that oversights such as the aforementioned might considerably affect the public perception of the company’s current endeavours.

Macintosh version of Dark Forces

There may also be a specific, underlying reason as to why such a difference in-between the apparent quality of the re-release treatment exists: Earlier this year, the wonderful industry veteran and MAME developer Aaron Giles revealed that he had been commissioned to work on a few titles from the company’s back catalogue. Perhaps LucasArts have Giles, the self-described “completist”, to thank for laying out the conversion groundwork? Perhaps the digital launch for the SCUMM titles was as successful as it was because of heartfelt attention that Giles offered?

Speculation aside, I would like us to sequence into the concept of goodwill. The OED defines the term broadly into two distinct forms of usage: Commercial, or “the possession of a ready-formed ‘connexion’ of customers, considered as an element in the saleable value of a business, additional to the value of the plant, stock-in-trade, book-debts, etc” and attributive, or “favourable or kindly regard; favour, benevolence”.

In terms of the current model for gaming business, these two descriptions obviously go hand-in-hand – the question is, how, exactly? Beyond developing and shipping quality products, can a company accumulate goodwill via a string of genre-defining releases? Can goodwill be lost via the cancellation of announced titles, overall poor effort, rehashing or even selling out?  And finally, can goodwill be potentially regained via rehabilitation? Do temporal and/or intentional factors count?

Rogue Leaders - The Story of LucasArts

After all, LucasArts – or rather, LucasFilm Games and LucasArts Entertainment Company – were originally, as illustrated in Rob Smith’s book, “Rogue Leaders”, a trailblazer and an industry leader, both technically and artistically. The company pioneered the use of fractal graphics with Rescue on Fractalus! and Ballblazer, also both originating and popularizing the point-and-click adventure gameplay with Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken. They even created the forefather of the online community, Habitat.

Sadly, the book also encapsulates the LucasArts days of Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer, Hal Barwood, David Grossman, Steve Purcell, Aric Wilmunder, Noah Falstein, Larry Ahern, Michael Z. Land, Peter Chan, Peter McConnell, Clint Bajakian, Sean Clark and Bill Tiller. In a tragicomic display, the entire second half of “Rogue Leaders” is almost entirely dedicated to Star Wars, effectively drawing down the curtains on LucasArts as we knew it, both metaphorically and physically.

Reaching the end of the book can be a disappointing experience; after all, since the release of Tim Schafer’s gloriously creative Grim Fandango eleven years ago, the company’s output has bordered on the disenchanted. Previous LucasArts CEO Jim Ward’s tenure from 2004 to 2008 was especially formative in terms of our current understanding of the company: After all, Ward’s focus was always, first and foremost, on fiscal responsibility, performance and profit. No matter how much the public perception of adventure games as commercially unviable was the result of spin doctoring, stereotyping and the constant propagation of a self-fulfilling prophecy, they simply did not seem to fit in the equation.

In a leaked internal memo from July 2004, for instance, Ward dismisses, in illustrative fashion, the company’s yearly bonuses after a mere eight weeks on the job:

Our performance, qualitatively, strategically and financially, just isn’t there. One of the primary consequences of this lack of performance is that we have to make some tough decisions, like this one, to get back on track.

In a June 2006 interview with MCV, Ward chose to focus on the importance of competitive strategy:

“We’ve adopted new philosophies at LucasArts which, frankly, the whole industry should adopt. We make kick-ass games, but on time and on budget. Failure on any one of those three points is failure for the project.” “We are very serious about that strategy and we’re able to deliver on it. As a result we’re successful on a revenue and a bottom line basis.”

Even in leaving his post, Ward underlined performative factors:

“Together we’ve rebooted the company and set LucasArts on a path to even greater success. This is a fantastic team and they are positioned for their best year ever.”

Monkey Island Special Edition

After an ill-fated string of attempts to revive old franchises (Full Throttle: Payback, Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels, Sam & Max: Freelance Police and Indiana Jones & The Staff of Kings, respectively) resulted in a devastating PR fallout during Ward’s reign, antagonistic reactions to the company’s apparent misdirection reached an all-time high. A 2004 SCUMM Bar “Open Letter to LucasArts” rather candidly encapsulates the fears and worries that many adventure enthusiasts wore on their sleeves. With LucasArts’ reservoir of goodwill trickling thin in the form of lawsuits and cease & desist letters against innocuous fangames, even a website solely dedicated to LucasArts bashing appeared.

In light of these past years, then, should we perchance be alarmed by this recent misfire with the Jedi Knight collection? Let’s admit it: Lending out Guybrush over to Telltale Games makes complete sense now, but who in their right mind would have expected LucasArts to part with him just a year ago? No way, Jose. No way. I wouldn’t oppose in the least if we all were to agree that LucasArts, as a corporate entity, simply painted itself in the corner, and ultimately had no other possibility but to change – or wither away.

Nevertheless, I would not be opposed to perceiving the recent changes in management as a natural culmination of the company’s know-how, perseverance and heritage, either. After so many years, who’s to say? Either way, the company seems focused, perhaps more so than in over a decade, on attempting to carve out an all-new new identity after being creatively lost for so long in a galaxy far far away. Certainly, the SCUMM re-releases, the Monkey Island Special Edition, and their latest title, Lucidity, all seem to point towards the latter. The new LucasArts CEO, Darrell Rodriguez, certainly echoes this sentiment in an interview with Develop:

“We’ve also been able to put an IP pipeline in the works with a team dedicated to creating new IP and new ways to reinvigorate some of our favorite heritage products such as the recently announced Monkey Island franchise.”

Revision Comparison

Some players might have missed the debacle altogether. Me? In response to the news, I envisioned a future scenario wherein Beyoncé models for a revised Alyx in Half-Life 2 EP3. I was desperate to commentate on the topic right there and then, but ultimately decided against it. Phew. Now, despite the fact that Left 4 Dead 2’s characters have barely been cast out to light, however, I am bold enough to suggest that an intriguing pattern has emerged, that a trajectory of design can be seen in the way Valve and Turtle Rock Studios have designed the various characters of the Left 4 Dead series.

In this text – which is just as much a history of the games’ development cycle as it is an analysis of the concept of “character” in the gaming medium – I will first navigate us through a series of dates, occurrences and currents that ultimately affected the make-up of the casts of both games. I will also attempt to explain and pinpoint decisions related to the series’ art direction. Since we’re broadly three months removed from Left 4 Dead 2 release date of November 17th, you’ll have just about enough time to read through my admittedly thorough assessment. Thanks for reading!

GameSetWatch’s Thomas Cross in fact previously touched upon the characterization of the Left 4 Dead cast last January, albeit from a slightly different vantage point: In his article, “Making Storytelling Look Natural”, he concludes that “Each [Left 4 Dead] character has a recognizable personality, if you take the time to learn them”, adding, “And yet these are still horror movie archetypes, it’s just that they’ve been given a slightly different stage this time round.” While I do wholly agree with his assessments, the focal point of Cross’ article is decidedly on the “hows” than the “whys” and the “whats”, which I rather choose to focus on in this article instead.

Since there exists a bidirectional relationship between characters and the narrative (or “stage”, as Cross calls it) encompassing them, if these characters are not instantaneously classifiable, positionable and relatable (as per our pre-existing societal knowledge), players can have difficulty in properly perceiving the story as a whole. This is especially true of the gaming medium, where avatar readability has been a chief priority for designers and artists – and justly so. For obvious reasons, it is preferred and encouraged that players reflect and transport their own personalities onto avatars as successfully as possible. Rather than fleshing out our avatars, though, there is a common, shared tendency to either aim for instant audiovisual accessibility and/or customizability. If developers chose to, of course, they could also attempt to round out characters in games’ narratives.

This, however, was not originally meant to happen in Left 4 Dead.

Old Characters

Valve employees have let out that Turtle Rock Studios, the original developer of the series, were not “…thinking in the same story-based way that Valve thinks”. Though Turtle Rock Studios ended up being fully assimilated into Valve in January 2008, it’s nevertheless more than probable that the creative intention to include a narrative as well as more storytelling sprang up relatively early in development, definitely before the actual acquisition took place. After all, as early as May of 2007, Michael Booth described Turtle Rock Studios’ relationship with Valve as going “far beyond being an engine licensee or distribution partner. … Valve would say the same thing.” On August 4, 2008, Doug Lombardi characterized the acquisition as “a piece of paper that makes things official.”

Old Louis

Nevertheless, even later in the production, it also became apparent that dialogue-oriented cutbacks would have to be made. There has been mention of considerable omissions – after all, it has been confirmed that a full storyline for the game exists (and can be found hypothesized in the Steam Forums), including a “…dictionary with different terms for areas and infected that describe how the Director will handle things in [a particular] area.” In an interview with Eurogamer, Doug Lombardi further clarified the reasons for these cuts, stating that “[Valve] saw a number of reasons to pull back with the first game, primarily because the replayability suffers with a scripted sequence” and that they had “much more dialogue amongst the characters originally, and that was really getting in the way of people understanding the co-op nature”.

The forthcoming Left 4 Dead 2, on the other hand, is to delve deeper into establishing visible narrative progression, unlike the first game, where most storytelling is relayed by the spray-filled walls of the game’s safe houses. Though an ingenious way of sending information transparently to players, the downside to these sprays is their inherent disconnection from the members of the cast as well as their personalities, rendering the sprays largely unsuited for character growth. In relation to this, Lombardi has promised that Valve will “bring more story to [Left 4 Dead 2] in terms of the players’ dialogue” instead.

“Not only are we telling the story of these characters, but we’re telling the story of this world, we’re seeing how things fall apart, and a new way of interacting with the infection” – Chet Faliszek

Old Zoey & Francis

This admittedly long-winded history lesson serves to clarify to us three major points present in the Left 4 Dead development timeline: First, the original Turtle Rock design of Left 4 Dead did not contain as much story as it does now. Second, relatively early on, Valve’s influence on the game nevertheless resulted in a proper storyline being implemented. Third, late in the development, playtests indicated that players reacted disappointingly to a more fully fleshed narrative, and some upgrades to these elements were thus once again scaled back. A fourth point, if we were to discuss the future now and not later on in the article, would be the return of the deeper storyline in the forthcoming sequel.

All these stages ended up influencing the characters’ make-up, and in this light, it’s perhaps easier for us to see the motivations that drove Valve to brusquely revise important player models so late. Above all, the changes can be seen to be a direct response to the needs and requirements of the arising situation: When storytelling was to be omitted, the team sought to find a way to keep the cast accessible and understandable to players of the game. With less story to round and flesh out the characters, something else had to be done to maintain this relationship. As a result, the revised survivors could be seen to be intentionally designed to be more easily identifiable and recognizable out of the box.

Old Francis

In this sense, the revision is closely connected to the characters’ primary function as players’ avatars: The now erased, first cast of characters was, for the lack of better description, damaged goods (Take a look at how adorable Francis looks on the left); Without the cut storyline elements functioning as padding, this type of character conceptualization ultimately made the less iconic cast harder for players to quickly define, classify and relate to. After all, storytelling in games still primarily relies upon a foundation laid down by other media: Literature, theatre, the movies.

In the classic arts, “actors” are used to play “roles” that in turn represent “characters”, by displaying personality through movement and action, and by emphasizing traits: Outwardly looks, responses, use of language (both bodily and verbal). The concept of the (Jungian) archetype, especially in the extended meaning found in literary criticism as referring to recurring generic motifs, is very useful here. In the realm of literature and theatre, the role of the archetype principally as a narrative method is relatively clear-cut, but in the gaming medium, the archetype-as-avatar relationship causes additional factors to consider: In designing avatars, developers have to take into account functions beyond the aforementioned types of characterization.

This is because characters in video games have functions in the programmatic rules of the game, especially so if we perceive games to be “limited formal systems”. In this case, the characters’ role as agents for narrative exposition of the overarching storyline is secondary to their primary function as player avatar, as vessels for player interaction inside the “game world”. Valve, in turn, have displayed a very deep commitment to primarily function-based avatar art direction that takes into account shape, form and lighting – right down to codified principles. They are effecting visual design that is philosophically oriented toward maximum functionalism: Portal, for instance, had a distinct, stylized aesthetic informed by playtesting and feedback; To quote Lombardi again, “the first iteration [of Portal] was much more lush in terms of graphics…and people were having trouble identifying the pathways… We had to make it this sparse environment to get to the gameplay.”

Valve designer Jason Mitchell’s paper, “Illustrative Rendering in Team Fortress 2”, was an astonishing explanation of the multitudinous rendering processes that went into the graphical design of Team Fortress 2. (For a concise explanation of “illustrative rendering”, a video was released). Similarly, it is no accident that Valve are planning on publishing a comic book adaptation of Team Fortress 2: The primary source of inspiration for the graphical look of TF2 was early 20th century commercial illustrators – Cornwell, Leyendecker, Rockwell. Advertisements are, at least in theory (so diluted, the postmodern TV spot!), designed to convey as much information as possible in the least amount of space and time. This idea, of maximum potential identification, heavily factored into the art design of Team Fortress 2. Elaborate techniques were applied “so that players are able to easily identify other players in the game, and assess the possible threat”; Characters were designed to possess “…distinct silhouettes that can be easily identified”.

New Concepts

During the aforementioned 2008 E3 reveal of the new survivors, Gabe Newell’s presentation briefly read: “Taking the lessons learned from Team Fortress 2 about read hierarchy and providing useful and immediate information via character design.” This is where the team’s specific focus on readability, identification and distinction bled into the final stages of Left 4 Dead development, and had as much effect on the characters as did the process of cutting down the storyline. This is not at all surprising considering Valve’s “cabal” development model that puts great weight on spreading, sharing and mobilizing innovations as well as individuals. When this particular methodology of design, of visual distinction and identification, was applied to the Left 4 Dead cast in the form of the revision, a distinct collision of the role and function of “character” arose, causing the upheaval I referenced at the very beginning of this article.

From an avatar-, character-oriented point of view, after all, there are obvious differences in-between the two games: Firstly, each character in Team Fortress 2 is a distinct base-level representation of abstract class (or “role”, rather, should we get into a semantic discussion); It’s acceptable and even desired for these avatars to be visually generic, exaggerated and archetypal because the very meaning of the word “class” is the same as the word “genus”. Left 4 Dead’s characters, however, are derived from a less programmatic register, from everyday society: Instead of being absolute base-level manifestations, the four survivors are slightly higher-level: We have Bill, a Vietnam veteran; Louis, an assistant manager at a retail electronics store; Zoey, the teenage daughter of a wealthy family, and Francis, a tattooed biker. Intriguingly, as stereotypical as the characters are, it is nevertheless possible to further compress, if you will, the characters into lower-level archetypes.

I would personally affix the characters the following tags: The Wise Man (in Jungian terms, again…), the white-collar everyman, the newbie and the lonely ranger. (Feel free to correct me in the comments!)

As We Know Them

Now, as a distinct look and feel had already been established for the characters, some players had already identified (with) the characters. Semantically speaking, the revised cast of characters no longer represented the exact same “person”. Yes, one could potentially argue that all Francis did was lose a few pounds and shave, and that Louis got a hot TV makeover, but what about Zoey? Herein lies a perfect collision of the two aforementioned types of character function, of character-as-narrative-vehicle and character-as-avatar-as-game-mechanic.

All in all, we can conclude that the revised cast of Left 4 Dead 1 fulfilled two separate design-related needs: On the one hand, the developers had to find a way to narrow the narrative gap now present between players and the characters due to cutbacks being exacted on the game. On the other hand, Valve’s general, company-wide art direction had been simultaneously moving towards a more functional implementation. These two sides melded, blending appeal with function, ultimately creating a slightly more iconic set.

Teaser Cast

Finally, to steamroll the entire article into Left 4 Dead 2. Beyond promises of more dialogue and narrative exposition, we can already see for ourselves how the cast, this time, is decidedly less archetypal and consists of higher-level stereotypes; The mere existence of Coach’s religious leanings and Rochelle’s taste in music tell us this much! There also exist early indications of interpersonal schism (not in small part due to the inclusion of Nick), which obviously means that the characters’ position and function as avatars is no longer as strictly dictated by player identification alone. To briefly reiterate, the reasons for this are the following: Firstly, Left 4 Dead is now an established brand. Secondly, players are aware of the gameplay mechanisms and no longer need to be introduced to it. Thirdly, Valve have artistic ambitions to produce more storytelling.

L4D2 Posters

As briefly illustrated in my earlier post on the topic, the posters of the sequel’s campaigns already exhibit a larger degree of interpersonal relationships and personality. It is also evident that the roles affixed to Coach, Rochelle, Ellis and Nick are higher-level than those assigned to Zoey et al: A high-school football coach, a news reporter, a mechanic and a conman. As we did with the first game, here too we can assign a compressed, lower-level set of stereo-/archetypes to match the four. They might be, for instance, the teacher, the heroine, the kid and the cynic. The very fact that I am struggling to distil the characters into lower-level stereotypes tells us that Left 4 Dead 2’s characters are going to be more fully rounded than those of Left 4 Dead.

What you’ve just read is an interpretation of the overarching processes and phenomena – the whats and the whys – that had an effect on how each these three casts ultimately turned out visually, narratively and functionally. At this juncture, I do want to emphasise how great a share of things outlined here are nothing new in itself, as it is only natural for us to expect many of the aforementioned upgrades and improvements from a video game sequel – these are the very things that we expect sequels to be and to do. Despite these facts, it remains nevertheless both intriguing and therapeutic to attempt to map out the various processes and mechanisms that go into game development in order to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the functions and features of the characters we play as.

In closing, I offer a thought: I always play as Francis, for deep down he loves life, the hating just a façade; how else could he smile so, in the face of a zombie apocalypse?

Edwards, fresh off releasing a custom survival map, Dead Meat (his portfolio additionally includes a contest-winning level for the Steamworked Zombie Panic: Source) is no stranger to gaming horror, and while we explicitly wanted to hear his feelings on the more technical intricacies and design-related dilemmas present in developing Left 4 Dead content, Edwards also touches on broader conceptual decisions, issues and themes that are present in the horror genre, relating his vision to titles such as Silent Hill and Siren: Blood Curse.

We would like to thank Edwards for answering our questions, and for those with a keen eye, there are Yama and Dead Meat screenshots sprinkled amidst the answers after the jump! Dead Meat can be acquired from http://www.scorchingcraniums.com/portfolio/abattoir.html.

How different would you consider the requirements, design-wise, for working on a L4D level compared to your earlier projects for, say, Zombie Panic: Source?

Design-wise it’s not that different, you block out the map, test with a small group of people and keep going until the gameplay works. The obvious difference is that L4D relies on AI, so you need to design the map with that in mind, and also remember that replayability is probably the most important thing in this game, so you need to give the player enough options to keep them interested time after time, or let them try a different tactic if they die and have to keep playing the same part over and over. It might need a bit more thought than a map for a game like CSS, but with enough beta testing you can solve all those problems.

There is, in my own experience, considerable variation with the difficulty level of Valve’s own survival maps. How importantly did playtesting figure for Dead Meat?

I’m registered on a couple of forums full of other talented mappers so I never have a problem getting feedback. With Dead Meat, I released a couple of beta versions on those forums to get feedback on how it played out before releasing a public version. I’ve also got a few friends who play the game so I test with them.

The good thing about Left 4 Dead is that it is very AI-centric: Although it doesn’t tell you everything about the map, I can just create a nav mesh and run through it with bots on my own. So usually I get to test the map in all the different ways it can be played. Once the level is public, and everyone has a chance to play, you’re bound to find the last few bugs that were missed.

Different people told me it was either too easy or too hard, but playing and testing I think I found a good balance. While some locations might be easy to defend, the layout usually forces you to move and whenever I play it I end up moving from room to room so the difficulty changes in a single playthrough.

Dead Meat is a professional entry to mapping for Left 4 Dead. What was your primary motivation for approaching the admittedly arduous and intimidating task of developing a full campaign in the form of Yama, instead of, say, another survival-based level?

I actually started Yama in 2006 when Turtle Rock announced the game. They ended up delaying it until 2008 but I worked on it over that time, mostly just making prefabs, textures, models etc, and getting more and more references. The setting and map order has actually changed since then, and I don’t think I knew as much back then how much work a 5-map campaign would actually be.

Dead Meat started out from some photos in my Yama references folder of an abandoned abattoir which I knew wouldn’t make the campaign, and that map was more or less a test to get used to working with the L4D content and the director, I think it only took about 6 weeks from start to finish. One of the problems with making a campaign is coming up with a consistent, realistic theme that can span 5 maps and anything up to 90 minutes of gameplay.

I don’t have any concrete ideas for another campaign mostly because of that. I do have another survival map planned, and even though a lot of people don’t like survival, the maps are far easier and quicker to make. Since I enjoy mapping even if no one plays them, that’s what I’ll be doing next.

The choice of utilizing Japan as a setting seems enviably obvious in retrospect, with a thriving tradition of survival horror in Japanese popular cinema and gaming. Would you say such geography is underutilized in game design overall?

I’m not sure if the setting itself is that important; Silent Hill is one of my favourite games series but that was more for the style of horror they used. There were a lot of unique things in that game but as it was set in the United States, I think that’s an unique trait of Japanese developers.

I prefer horror in games like in Siren or in movies like Audition but I think that’s more to do with the creators than the setting. When it comes to films I think that’s down to studio pressure and appealing to the lowest denominator in Hollywood, so I don’t think it’s the setting really, it’s just that the developers that tend to set their games in Japan are Japanese, and they happen to be better at creating horror.

The attention to minute detail, already visible in screenshots of Yama, is terrific. How much of your actual “mapping time” goes into researching textures and props?

Far more time than I should spend. When I get references I usually go overboard and find too many things I want to include. The first map in the campaign was going to be the same mountain setting as the others, but somehow I ended up switching it to Tokyo itself which means I now need dozens more textures and models. I’ve got photos of places I want to include and I sometimes change the map to work them in, but having so many photos means I get a good idea of the setting and as you mentioned, the kind of textures or models I could use elsewhere in the map.

Originally I had some photos of a cable car station, and looking for more photos of that place led me to other places that became maps in the campaign, like a hotel in the 5th level of the campaign. Even if I don’t end up using all my references, they give me a good idea of the look of a particular place and its architecture.

For me, the photographic hues together with the decay do vividly recall Japanese war photography from before and after World War II. Is this a source of inspiration for you?

That wasn’t a direct inspiration. I do think that like in a lot of other horror games, taking a recognisable environment and twisting it is a really good way of making a player feel uneasy. This is something that will work on every playthrough unlike, say, a tank bursting through a wall.

Siren: Blood Curse was a big inspiration for the village level and maybe Japan Studio (SCEJ) were inspired by war photography, but I thought the sepia tint works well for this map because after playing through the more colourful Tokyo and temple levels and then riding the cable car into a brown, desaturated, almost silent village, it gives that feeling of something not being right.

In relation to my previous question, I do feel that we are all accustomed (and even programmed) to seeing something inherently fearful and horrific about the destruction of Japan, with Hiroshima and Nagasaki still in recent memory. I’m definitely chilled by the screenshots, and the location seems ideal for survival horror. Dead Meat, however, does contain overtones of macabre humour as well. Do you think humour is essential for survival horror?

Going back to Silent Hill, I think Silent Hill 3 did this well with some of its characters and dialogue. I don’t think it’s essential but done in the right way it can be effective. Like how the horror itself is often subtle in those games, then subtle humour can work in the same way.

The interview additionally contains never before seen side-to-side comparisons of development sketches and exclusive versions of backgrounds – including unfinished art that never made it to the game – to allow readers more insight into Michalski’s development cycle.

Here at the Slowdown, we also noticed how some players have been on the fence with the amount of gore in the game, so we wanted Remy to clarify the true nature of the horror present in Downfall. In turn, we also learned how some of the game and its locations are really reality-based.

Finally, we intend to publish our complementary review of the game, with more in-game screenshots to go, in a matter of a few days; If you’re interested in the game, the easiest way to read the forthcoming review is to subscribe to us on Twitter or to our RSS feed. Downfall is currently available on Direct2Drive, and our thank you goes to Mr. Michalski for taking the time to answer our questions.

Your game, Downfall, is very much a one-man multimedia project. Was it a conscious decision to develop it by yourself?

Well, it’s not like I had much choice: None of my friends are into games. The game started as an experiment that turned better and better, and eventually the pieces started to fit together. It would be unfair to call it a one-man project though, as my brother Michal did a great job with recording the soundtrack, which – despite of being very different from what I initially imagined – fits the atmosphere of the game rather well.

Additionally, there was the AGS forum community, which occasionally lent me a hand with technical issues.  Having worked alone for most of the time, though, I had the freedom to develop the story and character design exactly the way I wanted, without other people telling me what to do.

I had to trust my instincts, and in the end, I do feel I made the right decisions.

Did the psychological nature of the game’s subject matter constrain the the potentiality (or potential need for) of collaboration, or do you simply enjoy working alone?

I definitely enjoy working alone. I suspect it wouldn’t be possible to create such a deep and personal story if there were more people involved in its conception. That may very well be the best thing about indie games: In some way, they do reflect their makers’ personalities.

That is not something you get with big-budget blockbuster titles developed by teams of a hundred or more people. They have to make sure their games are politically correct and inoffensive. If Downfall does end up offending someone, I couldn’t care less! At least I am being honest, and you can either love or hate Downfall for it.

I understand you worked on Downfall on the side of – even at – your day job. Did this inspire you, or was it ultimately a hindrance?

Large parts of the game were done during long night shifts in a nursing home I worked at. It was one of those places where mentally ill elderly come to spend their last years. I did my best to look after them,  but I also saw a lot of them perish. After a while you get used to it – try to help them make the most of the time they’ve got left; but the very fact of human death isn’t so much of a shock any more.

It gave me a great insight into what mental illness does to you and how it makes you behave… of course I was inspired by it! Some of the things Joe’s wife says in the game are based on real conversations I had with patients. Many locations in the game have been initially drawn in that building and basically some of the backgrounds are based on rooms that I’d known for years.

I found that with many litres of coffee and a packet of cigarettes you don’t need to sleep at all. The quiet gave me the opportunity to concentrate, which isn’t always the case during the day.

That begs the question, how did you actually come to settle on the format of an adventure game in telling this particular narrative – instead of, say, a novel, a comic book or a film?

It was going to be an adventure game from the start, there was no question about it.

I bumped into the AGS website a long time ago and I made my first little project for – and about – my friends only. They loved it. It was a damn funny game, but with rubbish quickly drawn graphics. I realized that I loved the platform though, and through all the years that followed I kept thinking about the ideas for a proper game that could attract a broader audience.

Comic books and films were never my thing, but games, of which I’m a real enthusiast, seemed like a perfect medium for me. I could finally fulfil my childhood dream of becoming a writer and combine it with some artistic skills which I possessed but never really used much. That way, I guess, I made the most of all my skills.

Would you consider Downfall a ‘return’ to tradition? Could you have imagined Downfall in some other format than low-resolution point & click?

Downfall is definitely a return to tradition, in regards to the puzzles, dialogues and the inventory. The phrase I used somewhere to describe it, “back to the roots of adventure games”, was not taken very well by some people though, who probably imagine that every game in the genre must tell a story of a wannabe pirate searching for a long lost treasure.

I also dislike how most adventure games these days are too easy and consist of strings of mini-games rather than making the players figure out how to achieve proper objectives in their surroundings.

The low resolution was dictated by the simple fact that I was working alone and it was easier for me to make it this way. It’s all very retro, but then again, once in a while there are scenes in the game that you would have never seen in games of the past: Full-screen animated sprites, camera zooms, multi-layered rain effects with each and every frame hand-drawn individually.

The game is currently a Direct2Drive exclusive. Are you planning on extending its availability to other channels of distribution like Steam?

I am thinking about it. Direct2Drive have been very helpful, as they guided me through the publishing process – which I had no idea about – and I am most grateful for that – so I’m going to keep the game exclusive to D2D for a little longer still, and then expand to other portals.

I doubt Steam will be one of them though. They turned me down in the past without even having a look at the product. They said their audience would not like this sort of game… I am getting lots of offers from other portals now, though, and eventually I will start thinking about it.

The marketing discourse for Downfall has firmly established the game as graphic and ultra-violent; Would you agree with me, though, that the real ‘horror’ aspect of Downfall isn’t all about the gore?

Downfall is a very scary game, but not because of the gore. It’s the combination of all its elements that makes it a one-of-a-kind experience about someone trying to help, but unwillingly causing more damage instead. The violence isn’t there necessarily to scare anyone; we are all used to seeing blood and monsters in games, after all.

It’s the little things in Downfall that you might find more disturbing: The sound of a crying woman in one of the rooms, the fact that you can kill someone, by mistake, and they will stay dead until the end of the game. The dreams. Strange figures in the cellar, hidden under dirty sheets… they don’t always have to mean or do something. They’re just there to make you think, to create images in your head that can be more frightening than any monster in the history of games.

As we mentioned before, Downfall is a very personal, invested work. Keeping this in mind, does the game scare you in some (any) way?

It only scares me when I think how very personal it is! Seriously speaking, no, it does not. There was just that one time… I had my headphones on, and there’s a part of the game where a lamp gets smashed and the whole room goes dark…

The sound of broken glass, very loud in my ears, made me jump out of my seat as I completely forgot it was supposed to happen! Ultimately, I spent too much time working on the game to be scared of it any more. It’s a shame. I know one player had a really bad nightmare after playing Downfall, though. It was something to do with the cellar I mentioned earlier.

The game does contain themes – eating disorder, child abuse, the loss of love – often absent in computer games. Was Downfall’s conception motivated by a desire to discuss these topics in the interactive realm?

Yes, these topics have been often exploited by the films, but rarely (never?) used in games. In this case, I tried to talk about the things I have some knowledge of. I believe this is what makes Downfall unique. There’s way too much repetition in games.

There should be more games for adult players, and Downfall is definitely a mature title they will enjoy on an intellectual level. I didn’t want to discuss problems I’ve never experienced or witnessed because they’d feel fake. And the horror setting is pretty much just a metaphor used to emphasize situations that can and do happen in real life.

Joe, the primary protagonist, seems motivated by the need to keep his life fixed “as is”, in a stasis. Would you say this tendency is fuelled on by his closest relationships in the game?

Of course. All Joe wants is to get his old life back. In the same time he’s fooling himself thinking that it was ever good. This tendency is very typical to him. At the same time everyone he meets on his way tries to drag him away from it…

It’s quite enthralling how the aforementioned facet of Joe – the need to fix, mend and repair – makes him, really, the ideal character for an adventure game. Was Joe always the focus of the game?

Joe is obviously a very important character, but I think it’s his wife, Ivy, who’s even more important to the story. She provides the reasoning behind his every action and she is his ultimate downfall. To some players it might seem that she goes missing early in the game, but really, if you look closely, there’s a little bit of her in every person you meet as you explore the hotel…

A protagonist in an adventure game needs something to drive him or her forward, to explain the constant search for clues, and in a way that’s how Joe is; His goals are very clear. I was afraid that compared to other, more complex characters, Joe would appear to lack his own opinions and originality in general, because it’s the player who chooses for him and his behaviour might change according to player’s decisions.

But in the end, that’s what makes him seem more human. He’s not perfect, he makes wrong decisions, he hesitates, gets angry or tired. By the time the credits roll, you will have your own picture of Joe, and it might be quite different from what other players have seen.

How important do you think it is to have multiple playable characters in Downfall? How early did you settle on the idea that Joe’s perspective is not all there is to the story?

I think it’s quite important. Without it Downfall would be just too heavy and depressing. When the perspective changes to Agnes when you least expect it, the game suddenly takes on a more relaxed approach, a moment to breathe and unload the tension.

Not for long, mind you, because you soon realize that it’s too late to go back and change what you’ve done as Joe, and the consequences of your actions can be rather horrible. Another, more obvious, reason for including this feature is of course to explain the story a bit more. There are quite a few twists in Downfall, after all.

Did the design for the game change during the development process? Do you have any examples of changes that occurred since its inception?

To be honest, the only thing I had to go back to and change was Joe. About halfway through the development, I decided I didn’t like how he looked… it effectively meant I had to draw this character again and change most of his animations too. Because I based “New Joe” on the “Old Joe”, you can occasionally see few frames left from the old design in some of the animations.

In regards to the location (Devon, UK), how did the setting come about?

This is where I live! [Ed: GASP!] It doesn’t really matter much. All that’s said in the game is that Joe and his wife come from London and Devon is where they wanted to take some time off and relax. The empty rainy town where they decide to stay for the night is completely fictional.

Your treatment of the topos of the haunted house greatly differs from the usual; how important is the Quiet Haven Hotel for the actual narrative?

Quiet Haven is more than a building. I can only tell that it is a metaphor, and definitely NOT one of those haunted houses “built on ancient Indian burial ground”. It’s a mental trap and a journey to the Joe’s past.

Apparently, some people think the hotel’s name is a tribute to Silent Hill’s “Silent Heaven” hotel. I do love Silent Hill, but never really thought about that this way. The name has a deeper meaning. The first words Joe says in the game are: “Great… The storm is coming”.

But it’s more than rain and thunder that are coming. It’s a storm that takes place inside Joe’s mind more than anywhere else. He seeks a shelter and there it is, a hotel, a safe haven. He tries to run away from his problems, lying to himself, because he already knows something very bad is about to happen…

Earlier, I asked about the choice of utilizing ‘game’ as the vessel for the story. We’ve established, over the course of this interview, that Downfall does contain themes atypical to games. What do you think of the games-as-art discourse? Do you consider Downfall an ‘art’ game?

Yeah, it’s definitely an art game, even though the gamers’ first impression after watching the trailer was that it’s a game that uses violence as a selling point. The truth is many artists used violence and that’s okay as long as there is a good reason for it and it means something more than just blood and guts.

It would really surprise me if someone who finished Downfall didn’t get that message! I think art is the right direction, we just have to make sure we don’t label every new game as “art” because the producer said so, and I’m afraid that was the case with quite a few titles.

I understand you’re preparing an updated version of the game. What would you like to tell new potential players about the forthcoming version?

A new version, 1.4, is done and soon available on Direct2Drive – if you see version number “1.4″ at the bottom of the page it means it’s available. The patched version includes spelling corrections, some major bug fixes, a new font and is generally more polished. Those who have bought the previous version can email me for an update.

Finally, what are your immediate plans for either Downfall or for future projects?

I’m still focusing on Downfall at the moment, but there will be a subsequent project, of course. It’s still in the planning stages though, and I can’t tell you much about it, apart from it being another horror story.

Though my insistence on tailoring ourselves a custom theme instead of opting for an existing one (or trying to find a suitable designer to do our bidding, for that matter) somewhat hampered the overall pace of development and the general produce of new content, we should be getting back into full swing sooner than later!

For those of you that are more technically-minded, we did eventually come to place some great emphasis on browser interoperability: We should in fact display just about correctly whether your web weapon of choice is Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome or IE7/8. Even IE6 will work (though using that monstrosity would hardly be recommended – Nabeel was none too pleased with my willingness to bend over for users of Internet Explorer). If you so desire, you could also take a look at how the website fares with more obscure browsers at Browsershots!

I hope you enjoy the new website as much as we do! If you do bump into anything resembling an annoyance, do let ‘er rip in the comment section. Finally, I’ve also included the latest Wordle-generated word cloud for the website. Quite strange a balance with some words there, huh?

Mother 3 is without a doubt the most talked one of the releases and rightly so; it was a mystery to me why Nintendo decided not to release this game outside of Japan. But here it is after two years of fans’ hard work!

While Persona 2: Innocent Sin‘s twin game Eternal Punishment did get (horribly mis-) localized , the first part of the duology never left the shelves of Japan. But now it is here for all the Atlus fans to enjoy. How could a game with the resurrection of Hitler go wrong? At least when the content is viewed as too controversial.

Asmik’s Lennus II never got localized outside of Japan although its prequel Paladin’s Quest did get picked up by Enix. The game looks stunning and suitable for anyone looking for a 16-bit RPG-fix. A surprising fact is that the game got originally released a full month after the release of the Nintendo 64!

Now here’s a little less known game. Exile II for the MSX, while already available for the Mega Drive and the PC Engine Super CD-ROM² and translated by none other than Working Designs, has not suffered from the cencorship the other versions have gone trough, including drug references and religious themes. As such it should be in it’s true form. The RPG is set during the Christian crusades, and features an Islamic assassin attempting to unite the world and bring world peace.

Last but not the least is a project still underway, Namco’s Tales of Innocence for the DS. While the other games in the series have been quite succesfull outside of Japan Namco for whatever reason decided not to localize this one.