“Well, we’re going to be giving him a little pet turtle the whole time you’re playing the game,” executive producer Steve Papoutsis told X360 when asked who Dead Space 2′s protagonist Isaac Clarke would be talking to, “He’ll be saying funny things to the turtle, cracking jokes and just kinda having fun. That’s what we’re doing. Yeah – it’s your perfect companion in space.”

He’s joking of course, but there’s sentiment in his sarcasm – Isaac won’t be idly yapping his way through the Necromorph-infested Sprawl:

“Giving Isaac a voice was one of the big things we had to consider from the get-go,” Steve explained, “People enjoyed him being the silent protagonist which was really effective for the first game, but one of the drop-offs was that Isaac has seen hundreds of horrific things and never commenting. So right after that we thought it would make more sense if Isaac had a comment on what happened to him.

“This time around we really focused on Isaac’s story, so it was necessary for us to give him a voice. In terms of how much he’s going to be speaking – and I was kinda being silly with the turtle thing – he’s not going to be walking around the corridors talking to himself. That kinda detracts from the tension that we want to get. He’s going to speak when he needs to: if you think of a scale of 1 -10 of talking level, Dead Space 1 would be a zero because he doesn’t talk at all. Dead Space 2 would be a 2/2.5.

“He’s not a chatty chappy. He’s a stoic guy with some things to say but he’s not going to be popping off one-liners to his imaginary space turtle.”

X360: Did you consciously consider the balance between immediate fun and long-term incentive, so far as multiplayer action goes?
KK: Yeah, you could say that. My goal was that people could explain the game after just one session. When you look at the play testers we brought in to test the game, they tend to understand all the core things within the game. Then, they have another go and find out it’s not a deathmatch area, where you have to know exactly where each gun is and exactly where the sniper is and exactly where to sit with it. It’s more about reacting to a situation as it occurs in front of you, and how individuals play the game. Every round is different, based upon who I am, how I played the game and how everyone else played the game. Of course, I hope people keep playing it for a long time, but immediate fun was the goal.

X360: Was there a temptation to include a medic character class, or some other mechanism to ensure elongated matches?
KK: No, it was there and I took it out. In the first game you could buy armour between rounds, but I wanted the game to be fast and intense. I wanted to work with the here and now, rather than stuff you could bring into the game to prolong it or make it different. I was more concerned with how you play the game, what you do right now. That’s also the idea behind the campaign. Lynch constantly improvises – that’s his mindset, and our features are created to support that idea. You’ll sit in cover, pinned down, thinking “how the f**k am I going to get out of this situation?” You’ll have to deal with events right there and then. All of our features are created according to this mindset, and I definitely wanted this to carry over into multiplayer play.

X360: Are you almost going for the ‘entry level’ shooter market, then?
KK: Yeah. I would definitely love to see more people blend in. I’d definitely love to see more causal players, as we normally call them, pick up on multiplayer. You see a lot of people who are really good at shooters never go online, because they’re ruled straightaway. Everyone online is so good at it, they never get a chance. That was one thing I really, really wanted to at least try to change with this game – to bring new players in and say to them “hey, without firing a single shot you can win this game, in theory”.

X360: Should more developers seek to use Xbox Live more creatively to improve gameplay experiences, rather than providing players with endless ranks and trinkets?
KK: Yeah I would love to see that, because it’s one thing I personally think is a bit outdated. Having just a ranking, that’s a little bit old-school – ‘keep on playing and we’ll reward you for it”. Today, games are more about experiences. The more we can do to tell the players who they are, and how they play the game, there’s definitely room for improvement, there.

X360: Games such as Brink may follow this template. Did you consider prescribing different roles to players in the multiplayer section of Kane & Lynch 2?
KK: Definitely, yes. I think this is something we’ll see more of, especially because we see more and more games working with social features. This is all about showing off, and one way to do this is to tell everyone you know who you are in this game. So, there’s definitely a necessity to work with this, and it’s something you’ll see more coming into different games.

X360: Have you ignored the whole rankings/rewards system?
KK: We do have a criminal rank system that unlocks weapons, but you can unlock all weapons in Arcade mode without ever being online. It was a way of accessing later weapons, some of which are quite effective, while needing to grasp the idea of the game first. The ranking system is more to let people know how long you’ve played the game, really.

X360: Kane & Lynch’s multiplayer is quite a fast-paced affair. Where you ever tempted to alter this?
KK: I definitely wanted it to be very fast-paced. At points, the level designers especially asked me to tone it down – they felt it was really, really fast. So, we did bring the pace down to a point at which it’s suited for this game. Fast paced, and very intense.

What were the team’s largest challenges in creating Saw II? Did you learn anything from the initial title’s production?
We wanted to keep what worked well and replace what didn’t work as well as we had hoped.  The biggest changes were to combat.  We made combat more responsive and more visceral.  Some enemies must be taken out with logic by using the environment and the tools Jigsaw has given you.
Fans and critics felt we nailed the creepy environments from Jigsaw’s twisted imagination, so we expanded on those, added new locations and rolled in the new LIghtmass Technology in the latest version of the Unreal 3 engine.
Next up, we wanted all new mini games, the ones in SAW 1 were well received, but we wanted to be sure and have new ones for the sequel.  I also wanted them to be more dynamic, have higher graphical quality and increase in difficulty without simply making the puzzle grids bigger, and have some that were more reflex based and not all logic based.  I am happy to announce that we succeed in all these aims.
Finally, we wanted to add more replayability.  So we have 2 different endings that can only be seen by playing the game through twice, as well as collectible tapes, case files, puzzle pieces which give additional insight (and trophies and achievements).  Finally we have a Billy Puppet hidden in each level.  But to get at these Billy Puppets the player must solve some very hard, but easy to process puzzles  We want each of the puzzles to be not unlike a riddle, where you are stumped, but when you figure it out you get that “AHA!” feeling that you are so smart.  Naturally Jigsaw provides some hints.

How do you come up with such gruesome horror ideas? Is it difficult to keep them fresh?
That is the most fun part of working on these games and one that every member of the team gets to participate in.  When we get stuck, we have our concept artist sketch out some very quick sketches of poses, and then take the poses that are most striking and add some machinery behind them.  A good trap must have a striking silhouette and be disturbing just to look at.  With just an outline, you must be able to understand that a person is in great peril.  Next up, we have to have a mini game for the player to solve to free that person, as well as motivation and the appropriate “ironic” twist on the trap from Jigsaw.
Finally we write the Jigsaw script to set it all up, and then our cinematic team, lead by David Kimber, have a reveal of the trap.  One that mimics that SAW spinning camera, off color, rapid cut look and feel, usually 3 stages of fail so the player can make a few mistakes.  A trap fail where the victim dies a horrible death, and a trap success where the player frees the victim and they explain their link to the player character and Jigsaw.

How does Saw II: The Game’s stroy fit in alongside the movie series’ canon? Did you collaborate with the movie studio, to a large degree?

Lots of research and cooperation goes into the SAW game stories.  We watch and watch again, all the SAW movies.  We spent a lot of time with James Wan and Leigh Whannell, the writer/actor and director from the first SAW movies.  We had them up in Seattle and we spent time with them down in LA and we covered what makes SAW  in great detail.   Lionsgate and Twisted pictures go over our stories as well and you can see the results of the collaboration in references made in the movies and the games to each other.  We are very fortunate in that we are allowed to take on the SAW universe and not have to follow the plot of a single movie.  That allows us to emphasize the best parts of the universe for a game and leave the parts that are best suited for  a more linear, non interactive medium.

Will there be more variety in the title’s settings, this time around?

As the SAW movies explain, John Kramer (AKA Jigsaw) owns a great deal of property.  In SAW 2 the game, we take advantage of this fact, our growing skill with the Unreal 3 engine and we expand on the settings in the game.  We have 3 very distinct environments this time around, warehouses/factories, hotel/downtown and sewer/subway.

Yesterday we checked in with Zombie Stuidos’ lead game designer Jared Gerritzen on Blacklight Tango Down. We were enlightened, so here’s the concluding part of that interview.

X360: In your press release, the art style and architecture is described as a combination of futuristic and antique, which sounds a bit like a Bladerunner scenario to us – would that be an accurate comparison?

JG: Bladerunner was a huge influence. We also looked closely at alleys in big cities for reference in the Blacklight world. A realistic world was our goal – taking real-world settings and buildings and transforming them into what we thought they’d look like 60 year into the future. It’s been an extremely fun and creative process and it has turned out better than I could have imagined.

X360: Any particular reason why you’ve chosen XBLA for Blacklight? It’s an Unreal Engine 3 game, we’d imagine it’s a commercially viable retail box product too.

JG: Agreed, Unreal 3 makes you instantly think this should be a big title: Blacklight: Tango Down is a big title. We believe Downloadable Content (DLC) is set to become the standard game distribution model. Think about the last time you went to a music store to buy a CD… DLC on the consoles was originally used only for small games because of the limitation of the hard drive, and the platform holders felt that players would want to play old and nostalgic games.  However, that has rapidly changed, and as players get more and more used to downloading things, be it a patch, map pack or arcade game, they will also begin to demand that as a primary means of game distribution.  We’re confident you’ll be seeing more and more high quality titles in console marketplaces.  We want to be a part of it. We decided to make a game that could be sold over DLC in an effort to try and beat some of the “big” companies to the punch, who will inevitably follow and start to take it over. It’s a viable outlet for great games that don’t have millions of dollars of development and marketing behind them.

X360: Have you started on the film and comic yet?

JG: Yes, the comic and movie are both in production right now. I have worked quite closely with the movie writer and also personally co-wrote the comic to keep them both focused, consistent and technically sound. I’ve also set up future projects. More to come on those…

Thanks Jared, and check out the official BLTD website here.

We’ll give you a clue: it doesn’t stand for Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato with Dressing. Fortunately, Zombie Studios’ Jared Gerritzen lead game designer is on hand to tell us about this forthcoming XBLA game:

X360: BLTD is set in the near future – can you elaborate a bit more on the plot and the setting? What is the world of Blacklight?

JG: Blacklight is a Special Forces team sent to find a missing high level military group, and they end up finding themselves in the middle of a warzone. A virus has been released on the population, turning them violent and at the same time a shadow group has assassinated the country’s president and as that group vies to place themselves in power. We have focused the most on the world of Blacklight to give it its own life, including a thorough back-story.  We’ve really broken apart why franchises work and what they need in their “secret formula”. For example the game story is just one of a few stories written for Blacklight. It’s an extremely robust world with lots of potential for new stories and plotlines.

X360: It boasts deep character and weapon customization, tell us about this and give a few examples.

JG: Blacklight: Tango Down’s weapon systems are fully customizable. The weapons will have more than a thousand different combinations for the player to make to their weapon. The systems range from the muzzle, grip, barrel, scope, magazine, butt stock, color, and camouflage. We’ve added Weapon Tags as well. Once a Weapon Tag is attached to a weapon, it will give the player and/or weapon special perks and abilities. Players’ will move up the ranks will unlock new character models, player colors and camouflages. Additionally, the player load out will be customizable with different items to select from.

X360: Who is the character you play? Will there be co-op/team-based play in the main campaign or multiplayer?

JG: We did not focus on one single person in Blacklight: Tango Down.  Instead, we really focused on telling the origination of the Blacklight world and what is currently happening there.

You can catch the second part of this interview on X360magazine tomorrow – check out the official BLTD website here.

Not all movie games suck, right?

Find out how Development Director Micheal McHale, at Sega San Fransisco, is puhsing Iron Man 2 in the right direction…

Movie games have a bad wrap, do you think gamer’s perceptions have been tarnished by a run of bad movie translations?

Building a game based on a license or movie shouldn’t necessarily mean that the game will be bad.  However, I think it is understandable if some gamers have a bad perception of movie games in general, if they have purchased games in the past that have not lived up to their expectations.  However, I think each game should be fairly judged on its own merits.
Iron Man 2 has a lot going for it, including great controls, weapons development and suit customization, the ability to play as War Machine (he’s badass!), expansive environments that you can fly through, lots of destruction and great storytelling.

A lot of films have started to take their games much more seriously; James Camerons Avatar for one, had a lot of ambition behind it, do you think this is a trend that will ultimately help games based on films?

I do think that film teams have continued to look at games differently.  The audience they are trying to reach are also playing videogames and they care about how their film property is experienced beyond the movie itself.  We have found that many people working in the film industry are also big gamers.  In fact, the people we are working with at Marvel Studios (Marvel’s film division) are gamers and really care about the games that are associated with their films.

Why do think developers have found it so hard to make successful games based on films? After all they should present the perfect template for exciting gameplay?

I’m not so sure that films really are the “perfect template” for gameplay.  I mean, film is a linear art form and the person watching the film is not interacting with the characters in any way and does not have any choice over the characters’ actions.  In gamer terms, a movie is a 2 hour non-interactive cutscene.  What makes for a great movie doesn’t necessarily make for a great game, and vice-versa.  This is why we have taken a different approach with our movie games, starting with Iron Man 2.

Rather than take scenes from the film, and force interactive gameplay into a scene that may or may not really work, we are crafting a new story that best serves gameplay.  In this way, you get to experience a brand new story, you explore more of the film’s universe, and the gameplay itself is fun and engaging.  This allows us to build game mechanics that work for the game without being completely tied to scenes from the film.

Nobody sets out to make a bad game, and I imagine every team would have their own reasons why their movie game wasn’t as high quality as it could have been.  Having to schedule development around a movie release date can certainly be challenging and offers little flexibility if you run late, so it is important to manage the project very carefully.

In your experience how much does working with a movie studio hinder or help a game? Are there many approval processes or restrictions that have to be abided by or are you left to explore the films universe freely?

The experience working with a licensor will vary based on the licensor’s level of interest, creativity and knowledge of games, but there is always some sort of approval process.  This is put in place to ensure that the property is being treated properly and the quality level is there.  Ideally, the people you interface with understand games, allow you to take liberties with their property to support great gameplay, and the feedback you get helps strengthen the product.

Marvel has been a great partner to work with and they have given us lots of space within their film universe to do some very cool things.  We make frequent trips to their film studio to review early versions of our games, and production work on their films.  We find that their film teams are often working on solutions to some of the same problems that we are, such as combat sequences, character movement and animation, and are very interested in our game animations, combat, enemy and set designs.

Marvel have some very creative people on their film production staff who are deeply involved with their comic book properties, and they have helped us fine tune our story and characters in our games.  They understand their characters better than anyone.

Marvel has also hooked us up with some great talent from their comic book business, such as Matt Fraction, who made contributions to our story and dialog in Iron Man 2.

Some movie games now focus on events that surround a films storyline instead of replicating its events, is this a better way of approaching a movie license or is there space for both? Other games have even taken to creating entire spin-offs such as the Star Wars games, would this approach work for the average movie tie-in?

If you have just walked out of the theater and you enjoyed a movie, it is great to have the opportunity to continue to explore that world further, within a videogame.  However, I’m not sure playing through the same storyline is really the way to go.  You basically know everything that is going to happen next!

Regarding spin-offs (games that are completely separate from a movie), there are a few film worlds that would be on the top of my list as being expansive enough and strong enough to warrant their own games.  Star Wars is certainly one of them, and the Marvel Universe is another.

How have you approached building a game around a film, how do you choose the genre, setting and style?

Super Hero films are all about the main character and their abilities, so we start there.  We look at their personality, the types of situations they find themselves in, what types of enemies they face, how their abilities would translate into great game mechanics, and we start building around that.  We expect that the player wants to directly control and experience what it feels like to have the powers of that character at their command.  Flight is something very unique to Iron Man and I’m very happy with the flight in Iron Man 2.

Have developers learnt to be slightly wary of movie game tie-ins, is there an understanding in the industry that they are difficult projects to work on?

I wouldn’t say that developing movie games is easy, but every game project has its own set of unique challenges.  If there is an opportunity to work on a great property, developers are actually very eager to work on something that they are fans of themselves, that has a lot of built-in public awareness.  Almost all of our developers are big fans of Marvel Comics and their movies.

When there’s no more room in space, aliens will be bloody everywhere!

If you’re excited about Visceral Games’ sequel to the sleeper hit Dead Space, then be sure to read our exclusive Q&A with Wright Bagwell – Creative Director,  Ian Milham – Art Director and  Steve Papoutsis – Executive Producer.

X360: Getting the horror right in the original Dead Space was clearly something that took a lot of thought and effort. At the time there were stories about the artists and designers looking at footage of dead bodies for authenticity, has this dedication to realism been repeated for the sequel?

Steve: We take authenticity and terror very seriously on the Dead Space team.  We want to make sure what we are creating will resonate with players and not feel cheesy or overly gamey, so it’s important that we look at real world examples when possible.  At times we also have team meetings, where we all watch horror movies together  to help provide inspiration as well as have some fun.

X360: Are there any other examples of developers and artists looking at or taking inspiration from unusual/disgusting sources in order to make Dead Space 2 a unique and terrifying experience?

Ian: We try to look at everything, from other art that is trying to be scary (Lovecraft Books, Japanese Horror Films), to real life things that aren’t intentionally scary but end up that way (dentist’s lights, broken bones, too-low ceilings, etc.). We think about what makes us uncomfortable, like the unknown, lack of personal space, losing someone we love; and try to put the essence of that into the Dead Space experience. At the same time, we can’t be a constant grind of scare tactics, or it’ll get stale.  So we plan moments of release and triumph before plunging the player back down into the pit.

X360: Sci-fi and gothic horror have strong roots in film (with the Alien franchise) that are clear inspirations for Dead Space, where do you start designing a world and an enemy that embodies fear but is also original?

Ian:  Although we look at successful films to see what they’ve done, we really try to study the real world.  For a horror story to work, the player really has to believe the world, so he or she can believe what happens there and not think it’s a fantasy.  So we study what makes a world real believable and have a solid grounding.  What makes an airport feel like an airport and not some other setting?  What makes a room feel like a real room and not a bunch of polygons?  Those are the questions we’re asking ourselves all the time.  We find that settings that are trying too hard to be scary frequently feel amateurish and heavy handed. Real terror comes in the perversion of everyday spaces.

X360: The Necromorphs were a particularly disgusting enemy with some innovative creatures based on the human form; as a general rule for sequels we assume we’ll be seeing new designs, but where have you looked for inspiration?

Ian:  We thought the most successful Necros from Dead Space were the ones that were little stories unto themselves.  Where you could take one look and say “Holy crap!  Look what happened to that guy!”.  So the new Necros for Dead Space 2 will continue that tradition.  On top of their looks, several new varieties will appear with new abilities and quirks.  All pretty much based on what you’d least like someone to do to you.

X360: Have there been any moments during design where you perhaps took the creatures too far? Is that even possible in a horror title like Dead Space?

Wright:  It’s pretty hard to go too far in Dead Space when it comes to being creepy, gory, or unsettling. We never really hold back there.  But when not done in a particular style, elements of our creatures can go so far as to become comical or too alien-like.  All of the Necromorphs in Dead Space originated as humans, so we can’t start making giant alien crocodiles.  Everything has to have some element of humanity left in it.

It happens fairly often that when we first start sketching or animating a character, certain parts of the creature can just turn out to be comical or are interpreted differently than we had hoped.  There’s a fine line between horror and camp, and we have to constantly make sure we’re staying away from camp.

X360: The Ishimura was an excellent homage to the haunted house, or derelict space craft motif; how do you top such a uniquely terrifying location in the sequel?

Ian:  The feedback we got on Dead Space’s setting was overwhelmingly positive. Players really believed the Ishimura as a setting. But they also said that it was kind of the same looking all over. So we’re topping it for Dead Space 2 by keeping that same level of quality and believability, but offering much more diversity.  In Dead Space 2 Isaac will go to locations that are built for many purposes by many different people. That lets us go much further with the cultural detail, variety of spaces,  and different moods than we did last time. The player will get to go much deeper into the worlds of forces that were only hinted at in the first game.

X360: Nailing the atmosphere is as important as providing visceral scares, where do you start building the atmosphere? The right location? Art direction? Sound design?

Steve:  It’s a combination of all of those elements.  We need to start with a believable concept because that is a big part of getting the player to buy into the world.  From there we consider the pacing of the game, where the combat happens, story elements, puzzles, and upgrade moments.  We then bring all of the disciplines together and define what we are trying to accomplish in a specific location or scare.  Creating the horror moments is a true team effort as it touches all of the various disciplines on the team.

X360: Much of the tension in the original Dead Space was a result of the player having to monitor his ammo and supplies, if you’re looking to provide a more action orientated sequel where do go for that tension?

Wright:  We’re not abandoning what made Dead Space great.  Players will still have to monitor ammo, health, and stasis, and spend credits wisely in order to stay alive in Dead Space 2.  What we are doing is giving the player more variety, more of a roller-coaster ride.  There are stretches of the game where resources will need to be carefully monitored and places where resources can be found fairly easily.  By placing pickups in the levels strategically, we can make sure that the player is stocked up in places where we want him to feel like he has the upper hand for a brief amount of time.  Some levels will be constructed to give you a sense of claustrophobic fear, and some will be constructed to give you tactical high ground.

Our goal is to make Dead Space 2 every bit as scary as Dead Space; but instead of constant fear and tension, there will be more emotional peaks and troughs.

X360: Dead Space made some genuine leaps forward with its gameplay integration of the menu’s and HUD to maintain atmosphere and tension. Will you be pushing this aspect further and what benefits does this have to producing great horror?

Steve:  The biggest benefit our minimal approach to HUD and menus is that it keeps the player focused on what is happening around them.  They are not distracted by some HUD element that reminds them they are playing a video game.  We wanted players to feel like they are in the middle of a horrific experience and nothing says “game” like a big obtrusive HUD element .  As far as pushing the design further we are continuing to push for innovation with our menus and hope that Dead Space 2 evolves what we did on Dead Space.

At the unveiling of Codemaster’s F1 2010 we bumped into a name. He’d made himself conspicuous among the crowd wearing a loud Firetrap shirt, being head and shoulders above all the runty games journalists and sporting an equally tall and glamourous blonde draped over one shoulder. We’re not racing aficionados, but we had a hunch he was someone: it turned out he was Formula 2′s 21 year-old Will Bratt, a name destined for future F1 limelight. As an F1 underdog, he’d been furnishing Codies on F1 2010 with his insight into the off-track life, and he was keen to let us know the format of his input.

“I’m helping in the lifestyle side of the game – what is it like actually being a racing driver finding their way into F1.” Bratt told X360, “I think the game has picked up on some of the crucial relationships that are strong influences on your life as a racing driver and that we’ll see during the 2010 season. For me the most important ones are your relationships with your team mate and race engineer. Right through a driver’s career, before F1, during F1 and even anything you do after F1, the number one person you have to beat is your team mate.”

“I can see Massa and Alonso coming to blows pretty soon into the season,” Bratt muses, “And how you get on with your engineer is another crucial aspect to being a real driver. A good relationship can produce success on track – I’m expecting Schumacher and Ross Brawn build on their good history of working together and be successful again in 2010 because of this.”

Get the lowdown on Will Bratt and his racing achievements on the Will Bratt website, and you can check our F1 2010 preview in issue 58 of X360 magazine, on sale 21 April.

Watch out for the Splash Damage!

Richard Ham, creative director at Splash Damage talks us through some of Brink’s finer points…

Multiplayer has for many people become the reason why they invest in a game, is Brink’s ambition to marry single and multiplayer a reaction to this?
Actually, our fusion of single and multiplayer gaming came about for the opposite reason.  We think there are still too many players out there who love solo shooter gameplay, but never go online once they’ve finished their single player campaign, and therefore are missing out on some of the best action videogames have to offer.

With Brink, it’s really important to us that there are no barriers to entry that would prevent players from going online.  So while they’re playing through the campaign, we’ll actively encourage them to make the jump and play the story online, with their friends in co-op (up to 8 players), or taking that next step and trying to play online competitively.  But no matter how they play, they’ll still experience the same story, they’ll still earn XP and unlockables for their characters, and they’ll have a fantastic time.

It’s interesting too that it goes the other way.  For players who traditionally only play online and ignore the single player game, they’ll find themselves experiencing stuff they don’t normally get to see when they jump from random match to random match:  an actual story that ties everything together, collectables that flesh out the background of the world and the conflict, and tons of great character customization.

It seems the designing of Brink centres around enticing players to work as a team by designating XP, why did you come to this decision?

Teamwork has been really important in Splash Damage’s previous Enemy Territory games, and Brink is taking it to the next level.  And while there are plenty of great games out there that encourage team play, most of the time, a player’s experience in those games will still be that of a bunch of individuals running around, pursuing their own agendas, ignoring their teammates; basically being lone wolves.  We feel there are very few players who ever really get to experience the incredible rush you get when you’re working as part of a well-organized squad, accomplishing objectives and defeating the enemy together.

So in Brink, we’ve added a lot of features that really enhance teamwork, and make it rewarding to accomplish.  One of the biggest features centers around communication, ensuring that everybody knows what’s going on everywhere on the map, so they can make smart decisions.

For instance, if you’re alone standing guard at a computer server that the enemy is trying to destroy and bad guys start to attack, your character will automatically tell the rest of the team, via radio, “We’re under attack in the server room”, and everyone else on the team will get new objectives to come and help you defend the room. They’ll also have their mini-maps updated immediately to show where those enemies that you’ve spotted are.

That sort of thing happens automatically, so as a player in this situation, you can really just focus on the task at hand:  defending the position.  But because that report has gone out, everyone else knows what they now need to do, and they have interface systems that make it really easy for them to get their jobs done.

This “auto-spotting enemies” example is just one of many different ways that we encourage team play.  I think when people really get into Brink, they’ll find it hard to go back to same old death match/capture the flag gameplay!
When designing the world of Brink did you keep in mind your multiplayer and single player ambitions? The structure of the world seems perfectly suited for the red vs blue set up but also has some darker connotations with players not understanding the motives of either side, what other elements of narrative are you fusing with multiplayer?

Probably the most unique and exciting element of our narrative is that we’re telling the story of a modern civil war from two different sides.  To me, this is really interesting as a storyteller, because we let players decide what they think is “the truth” in the world of Brink.

We fully support multiplayer in every element of the game (including story), meaning that every time you’re playing in an online match, fighting on the side of your chosen faction, pursuing objectives that help finish your storyline, you’re actually playing against other players who are on their own campaign, pursing their storyline, with wildly different goals and motivations.  And when you finish the storyline you’re on, you can start playing the game again and experience the civil war from the other side, and you’ll learn all kinds of new insights and points of view about the overall conflict.

It’s really fresh and exciting, and it’s the kind of thing we can only do because we’re a multiplayer shooter.  We have to make sure that both sides of the civil war are equally fun to play.  So players get twice the value out of every map!

Many multiplayer games now allow customisation on a huge level, not just of characters and their abilities but often what players can do within matches (call in air strikes etc) have you approached these ideas in Brink?

Definitely!  In fact, back in 2003, our title Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory introduced earning XP (experience points) to level up and earn new combat abilities.  So we’ve been doing this kid of gameplay for a long time, and Brink definitely takes it to the next level.  I think players are going to be really surprised by the sheer number of new items, abilities, weapons, weapon add-ons, and outfits they can earn as they play.

Since Brink is a class-based shooter, you can choose to be a Medic, a Soldier, an Operative, or an Engineer (and you can change from one class to another at any time).  But the type of Medic, Soldier, etc. that you are can change hugely depending on what abilities you buy for yourself as you level up.

For instance, will you be a Medic who focuses on improving “the basics” (healing people and keeping them alive)? Will you branch out and focus on other elements (like focusing on a wide variety of medicinal “buffs” you can give to others and yourself).  Or will you ignore all the neat potential Medic abilities, and focus instead on being a strongly varied Operative?

The amount of choices you can make is staggering, and what’s even better is that you’ll be playing online with tons of other people who also have this huge list of things to choose from.  So every match you play in will be a new adventure of fun and surprising combinations.

How have you balanced a single player narrative with matches that can be joined by multiple players?

Very carefully.  The way it basically works is that you have to think of every level of the story that you’ll play through as an 8 on 8 match, even if you’re playing by yourself.  Now, when you’ll start the level, there’ll be characters and cutscenes that establish why you’re doing what you’re doing, what’s at stake, and what the ramifications of your previous actions in other levels have been, and then you’ll start the action, with 7 teammates, trying to achieve your new mission.

Now the important thing to remember here is that you’re not the center of the universe.  The world won’t wait for you to make big things happen.  Each one of your teammates (whether you’re by playing by yourself, or co-operatively with others) is as capable as you of doing whatever needs to be done to win.  So maybe you’ll take the lead and always stay on the front lines, fighting against the enemy to complete big objectives, or maybe you’ll hold back and support the other guys, while they take all the big risks.  Or maybe you’ll search around on the battlefield to find other opportunities to ensure your team wins the day.  Eventually, your team will complete their objectives, and then move on to the next mission in the campaign storyline.

Meanwhile, a completely different group of people out there will be playing through their own storyline, on the other side of the civil war.  They’ll have their own opening cutscene that explains why they’re fighting, what their goals are, and why they’ve got to win.  They’ll start the same match as you, and do everything they can to stop your team from succeeding.  And if they do, then they win and get to move forward in their storyline.

This is what makes Brink so unique.  But it’s a lot of extra work for us to pull it all together so it always makes sense for players, and they always have a great time and feel like the heroes of their own story.

There have been very few games that have focused on just providing a multiplayer experience, Brink is a step in a new direction and is crossing the divide, with consoles now constantly online is Brink the sort of experience we can expect to see in the future?

I hope so.  I think we’re starting to see this a little bit in other titles.  Left 4 Dead is easily one of the best examples to date of a radically new approach to multiplayer structure. We hope Brink inspires other developers in the same way!

Would you consider Brink to be the console equivalent of a PC MMO? Or at the very least as far as an MMO would realistically work on a console; drop in drop out play, fast gameplay and less time consuming.

It’s an interesting analogy, but I don’t quite think so.  Brink is something that’s really different to everything else out there, taking the best of single player shooter gameplay, the best of multiplayer shooter gameplay, and meshing them into something completely new.  It’s kind of hard to even describe to players who haven’t tried it, because it breaks so many rules.

How exactly will the squad single player work with drop in drop out co-op, will the enemies for example be controlled by the AI or real players, will there be a lobby system or will the inner workings be invisible to the player?

Yeah, it’s all invisible.  There’s only one place where the player has to get involved with the inner-workings of the system:  when they accept a mission, they’re asked “Do you want to play this publically, or privately?”  If it’s private, that means they can play on their own, solo, and have their friends seamlessly join in the action mid-mission (no lobby screens or any of the traditional stuff) for co-op, if they like.  If it’s public, it means that anyone can join in the game, either as teammates or enemies, again, completely seamlessly.  Either way, the player will be able to continue working through the storyline campaign, continue to level up his character, and continue to have a great time shooting bad guys.

How have you structured mission objectives around the storyline and the fact that there may be multiple players of differing skills playing all at once?

The most important element that makes this work is gameplay variety.  At any given time in any mission, there’s up to six different objectives the player can give himself.  There’s always so much to do in any level, that if you find you’re having a hard time completing one objective, you can switch and try a different one.   For example, in the middle of a match, you might be a medic with the following choices:

a)    Stand guard at an important objective that must be protected
b)    Change class from medic to soldier to blow up an obstacle that’s impeding your team
c)    Revive a couple of teammates who have been injured by the enemy
d)    Search for hidden intelligence somewhere on the battlefield that would give your entire squad the upper hand

No matter what, one of those things (usually more than one) should be doable by you, regardless of the skill level of the enemy you’re up against.  And all these tasks are hugely important to the overall success of your squad.  So you can’t make a wrong choice, but it is up to you to make the smart choice.  And that’s where the fun comes in.

Are you looking forward to the multiplayer specific Brink? Come on, let us know below…