Thegaminggamer
03-15-2004, 08:09 PM
INTERVIEW: CLIMAX ON XBOX STUNNER SUDEKI
Climax's lead designer speaks exclusively to us about the formidable new action RPG
17:31 Anime visuals, slo-mo action combat and a proliferation of wicked beings all queuing up for a good smiting; British developer Climax's Sudeki, an Xbox exclusive, would appear to have it all.
Lead Designer Tuomas Pirinen dropped by to give us an update on what to expect from the ambitious title, due out in the Autumn.
It's been a while since we spoke to you about Sudeki; what key additions have you made to the game over the last six months?
Pirinen: The most important thing from my point of view is that we have put the entire content of the game in. We have basically the entire game now in our hands for balancing, bug fixing and optimising.
Feature-wise we've added the first-person shooting to the missile guys, and there's lots of little things that have gone in like the AI being tweaked, all the technology like the rendering engine and the animation system. From a designer's point of view, the biggest hurdle is getting the entire game in the build has been the biggest achievement in the past six months.
And what's the extra development time given you the chance to do?
Pirinen: The most important thing is that we didn't have to cut back drastically on the scope of the game. We didn't really want to lose an entire world from the game, or any of the important story elements or the movies that tell the story.
It also obviously allows us to spend the very last weeks of the development purely on the bug fixing and optimisation and balancing.
With quite a few games, developers work on the technology and the content right until the release. What we've done is managed to get everything else done, so the next eight weeks is just going to be completely focused on getting the frame rate as high as possible, getting rid of all the bugs, and most importantly playing and playing and playing, so we've got the right balance to give as enjoyable an experience as we can for the player.
Balance can never be perfect, I don't think there's such a thing, but the challenge is really the playtesting, trying the maddest combination of skills and items to see if you can break the game and make yourself too powerful.
We have huge arguments with designers about balancing, everyone has their own idea, but Microsoft is providing us with playtesters who give us valuable, accurate feedback on how difficult the game is.
Is the game you have now markedly different from your original vision?
Pirinen: Yes and no. I think the original vision would have actually made for a game that was too long and rambling. However, the systems that we set out to make, the blend of real time combat and the RPG menu system, the ability to play as the entire party at once, the non-player-characters that talk to you, all those things that we really wanted to do from the very beginning, are in. it's more focused, that's the relevant change.
Do you regret not putting any Xbox Live features in the game?
Pirinen: Not really. I'd rather release a good single-player game than a pretty poor game that has lots of bells and whistles. It's easy for a developer to fall into the trap of saying "we're going to do everything, we're going to be multiplayer on Live, massive multiplayer online, it's going to recognize your speech" - but it often leads you to corner yourself.
You've got into a position where you've promised the world and can't deliver anything. I'd much rather concentrate on one thing and do it as well as we possibly can.
Are there any plans for Xbox Live downloads?
Pirinen: Nope, we're not planning to do any.
How would you say Sudeki differs in terms of gameplay from titles like Zelda: The Wind Waker and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance?
Pirinen: Well obviously the biggest difference is that here you've got a party under your control the whole time, while in the games you mentioned feature just one single character. You've actually got four characters you're controlling simultaneously here.
The other important aspect is the use of slowing down time, where when using skills and spells you move at full speed while all the enemies are slowed down to five percent speed, which allows us to do all these over the top animations and special effects without the monsters killing you or moving away while you're doing these complex moves.
I think that's the feature that's really going to stand out that the other games don't have.
Zelda and Baldur's Gate, I don't think they have the same strong story; story is really the backbone in Sudeki, it's the main reward the player gets in the game by progressing.
Secret of Mana would be closer, but obviously they are very different games, with the 3D graphics, the real-time combat and the menu system. But the Secret of Mana had a lot of things that I really admired and wanted to capture in some sense - not copying, but to get the feel of when you're controlling the entire party.
How long's it taken you in total from the start of the concept to the finish?
Pirinen: I'd say it's something like three and a half years, with three years of just hardcore development. You have to remember that we did all the technology ground-up from Xbox; we are using our own engine that's been specifically designed for Xbox, our own toolset, lip-synching, voice system, dynamic sound system, everything has been hand crafted for the Xbox.
So now that you've got this great engine, we'd imagine you're planning on using it for something else...
Pirinen: Well, obviously that's for somebody else to say; I would be very sad if it was never used for anything else. I think we've developed some wonderful technology, which should be used in more ways, but that's for somebody else to decide.
Are we able to hop between the different worlds in the game when we choose, or is this a more linear experience?
Pirinen: You can hop between the worlds provided you open up the portals and you are in possession of the navigation stone, which allows you to use the portal system.
But yes, for most of the time you are free to go in any place you've already visited relatively quickly using the portals. Our game worlds are huge, and you don't always want to go trekking for half an hour across the desert finding monsters; the portal will allow you to get to another place in fifteen seconds.
A lot of RPGs have a system, like an airship or whatever, where portals allow you to go into the hotspots of the world very quickly. And it's really there to aid gamers more than anything else.
The portal system is an integral part of the storyline as well, but its main function from a designers point of view is to convenience the gameplay.
Is this strictly for the Xbox or are you contemplating a PC port at some stage?
Pirinen: The initial release is on Xbox. Anything else, even if I knew, I couldn't tell you.
How many people have been involved with putting Sudeki together?
Pirinen: The core development team got as high as seventy people. Then we had the testers at Microsoft's end, which is 14 people I think, plus the management structure, so I think it adds up into something insane like 100 people all told, though obviously they're not all developers.
We have codes, designers, artists, animators all working on the title. For a Western game it was a very big team.
Quite an expensive project, by the sounds of it.
Pirinen: Yes, but you're talking to the wrong person if you want to talk about finances. I'm a designer, my job is to push the creative side of the game as much as I can. We've got accountants who can worry about expenditure. Fortunately I need not worry about it.
Has it turned out to be a much more ambitious project than you intended?
Pirinen: No. I think the one thing that did catch us out was just that it's unknown territory. There's a lot of stuff that we've learned that developers like Square-Enix have obviously gone through several times.
It's been a learning experience, but we knew when we started that it wasn't going to be quick and easy, something you could do with your left hand. It was always going to be a big project.
Can you tell us about the patron spirit of future and its role in the gameplay?
Pirinen: Right. Each one of the four heroes will receive protection from one of the four spirits that were the heroes in the original storyline of Sudeki.
These bring you the most powerful attacks in the game, one that you can only perform by pulling off combos, killing enemies, they're not things you can buy in a shop. These are things that good gamers earn by playing the game.
Each one of them has their own unique power, each has an attack power, and a defensive power. The thing is that your spirit strike bar is divided between all of your characters, so you have to consider which spirit you're going to have to summon when your bar is full. So it's again going to be down to the gamer who is controlling the game.
The spirits are also important from the story point of view, because they are the proof that you have a divine blessing and that you are following the right path.
Can you see this title being a success in Japan?
Pirinen: Japan doesn't really feature in our plans. What Microsoft saw was a gap in the software library for Xbox in North America and Europe. If it does well in Japan I'll be delighted, but we're not counting on it, Microsoft isn't counting on it.
If they like it great, but that's not our plan, that's not our target audience, that's not the aim to woo the Japanese.
Some of the images do look recognizably Japanese though.
Pirinen: One of our concept artists is Nick Broughton, who is an award-winning anime artist. Also we hired Japanese games developers from Squaresoft who worked on the title and brought their own influence, so parts of the game may have a distinctive Japanese look.
But on the other hand the majority of the artists on the game are western artists, and I'd say there is a lot of nods towards stuff like Disney animation as well. The only thing we didn't want to do was to try to be realistic.
That was not what we aimed to do, we didn't want to make it appear as in real life, we wanted it to have its own strong, unique graphical style.
We also wanted to capture an organic feeling in the look of the game's levels, games landscapes sometimes suffer from looking like they were made from Lego.
I wanted the player to experience a lot of things, snow covered peaks, deserts, grasslands, the volcanic ranges. If the differences are quite stark, I have no problem with that. It's a magical fantasy land, and artists and designers should be allowed to let their imagination run wild.
How do you acquire items in the game?
Pirinen: Most of the items you can buy from the shops; there are universal stores that can be found throughout the game, but the best weapons you can only find by solving puzzles and searching every nook and cranny. The armour is granted as a reward as you progress through the story.
Obviously the movies that you see, we want to make sure that it matches what your character's wearing in the main game. The runes are a very important part of the game because they allow you to customize your weapons and armour, and give them different qualities.
It's a very important part of the game to acquire lots of the gemstones from the monsters and sell them to the merchants who pay the best price. That's the best way to make money; we didn't want to have monster dropping lots of money, it seemed unlikely.
Anything else we should know?
Pirinen:I just hope you'll really enjoy the game. We've poured incredible amounts of effort into the game. It's very difficult in the development to see the big picture because we're very close to the game, but it seems to me to be the kind of game I'd love to have played when I was a kid - now that I'm in the industry obviously I don't have any time to play anything!
PICTURES:http://www.computerandvideogames.com/openpic.php?pid=120257&article_id=102455
Climax's lead designer speaks exclusively to us about the formidable new action RPG
17:31 Anime visuals, slo-mo action combat and a proliferation of wicked beings all queuing up for a good smiting; British developer Climax's Sudeki, an Xbox exclusive, would appear to have it all.
Lead Designer Tuomas Pirinen dropped by to give us an update on what to expect from the ambitious title, due out in the Autumn.
It's been a while since we spoke to you about Sudeki; what key additions have you made to the game over the last six months?
Pirinen: The most important thing from my point of view is that we have put the entire content of the game in. We have basically the entire game now in our hands for balancing, bug fixing and optimising.
Feature-wise we've added the first-person shooting to the missile guys, and there's lots of little things that have gone in like the AI being tweaked, all the technology like the rendering engine and the animation system. From a designer's point of view, the biggest hurdle is getting the entire game in the build has been the biggest achievement in the past six months.
And what's the extra development time given you the chance to do?
Pirinen: The most important thing is that we didn't have to cut back drastically on the scope of the game. We didn't really want to lose an entire world from the game, or any of the important story elements or the movies that tell the story.
It also obviously allows us to spend the very last weeks of the development purely on the bug fixing and optimisation and balancing.
With quite a few games, developers work on the technology and the content right until the release. What we've done is managed to get everything else done, so the next eight weeks is just going to be completely focused on getting the frame rate as high as possible, getting rid of all the bugs, and most importantly playing and playing and playing, so we've got the right balance to give as enjoyable an experience as we can for the player.
Balance can never be perfect, I don't think there's such a thing, but the challenge is really the playtesting, trying the maddest combination of skills and items to see if you can break the game and make yourself too powerful.
We have huge arguments with designers about balancing, everyone has their own idea, but Microsoft is providing us with playtesters who give us valuable, accurate feedback on how difficult the game is.
Is the game you have now markedly different from your original vision?
Pirinen: Yes and no. I think the original vision would have actually made for a game that was too long and rambling. However, the systems that we set out to make, the blend of real time combat and the RPG menu system, the ability to play as the entire party at once, the non-player-characters that talk to you, all those things that we really wanted to do from the very beginning, are in. it's more focused, that's the relevant change.
Do you regret not putting any Xbox Live features in the game?
Pirinen: Not really. I'd rather release a good single-player game than a pretty poor game that has lots of bells and whistles. It's easy for a developer to fall into the trap of saying "we're going to do everything, we're going to be multiplayer on Live, massive multiplayer online, it's going to recognize your speech" - but it often leads you to corner yourself.
You've got into a position where you've promised the world and can't deliver anything. I'd much rather concentrate on one thing and do it as well as we possibly can.
Are there any plans for Xbox Live downloads?
Pirinen: Nope, we're not planning to do any.
How would you say Sudeki differs in terms of gameplay from titles like Zelda: The Wind Waker and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance?
Pirinen: Well obviously the biggest difference is that here you've got a party under your control the whole time, while in the games you mentioned feature just one single character. You've actually got four characters you're controlling simultaneously here.
The other important aspect is the use of slowing down time, where when using skills and spells you move at full speed while all the enemies are slowed down to five percent speed, which allows us to do all these over the top animations and special effects without the monsters killing you or moving away while you're doing these complex moves.
I think that's the feature that's really going to stand out that the other games don't have.
Zelda and Baldur's Gate, I don't think they have the same strong story; story is really the backbone in Sudeki, it's the main reward the player gets in the game by progressing.
Secret of Mana would be closer, but obviously they are very different games, with the 3D graphics, the real-time combat and the menu system. But the Secret of Mana had a lot of things that I really admired and wanted to capture in some sense - not copying, but to get the feel of when you're controlling the entire party.
How long's it taken you in total from the start of the concept to the finish?
Pirinen: I'd say it's something like three and a half years, with three years of just hardcore development. You have to remember that we did all the technology ground-up from Xbox; we are using our own engine that's been specifically designed for Xbox, our own toolset, lip-synching, voice system, dynamic sound system, everything has been hand crafted for the Xbox.
So now that you've got this great engine, we'd imagine you're planning on using it for something else...
Pirinen: Well, obviously that's for somebody else to say; I would be very sad if it was never used for anything else. I think we've developed some wonderful technology, which should be used in more ways, but that's for somebody else to decide.
Are we able to hop between the different worlds in the game when we choose, or is this a more linear experience?
Pirinen: You can hop between the worlds provided you open up the portals and you are in possession of the navigation stone, which allows you to use the portal system.
But yes, for most of the time you are free to go in any place you've already visited relatively quickly using the portals. Our game worlds are huge, and you don't always want to go trekking for half an hour across the desert finding monsters; the portal will allow you to get to another place in fifteen seconds.
A lot of RPGs have a system, like an airship or whatever, where portals allow you to go into the hotspots of the world very quickly. And it's really there to aid gamers more than anything else.
The portal system is an integral part of the storyline as well, but its main function from a designers point of view is to convenience the gameplay.
Is this strictly for the Xbox or are you contemplating a PC port at some stage?
Pirinen: The initial release is on Xbox. Anything else, even if I knew, I couldn't tell you.
How many people have been involved with putting Sudeki together?
Pirinen: The core development team got as high as seventy people. Then we had the testers at Microsoft's end, which is 14 people I think, plus the management structure, so I think it adds up into something insane like 100 people all told, though obviously they're not all developers.
We have codes, designers, artists, animators all working on the title. For a Western game it was a very big team.
Quite an expensive project, by the sounds of it.
Pirinen: Yes, but you're talking to the wrong person if you want to talk about finances. I'm a designer, my job is to push the creative side of the game as much as I can. We've got accountants who can worry about expenditure. Fortunately I need not worry about it.
Has it turned out to be a much more ambitious project than you intended?
Pirinen: No. I think the one thing that did catch us out was just that it's unknown territory. There's a lot of stuff that we've learned that developers like Square-Enix have obviously gone through several times.
It's been a learning experience, but we knew when we started that it wasn't going to be quick and easy, something you could do with your left hand. It was always going to be a big project.
Can you tell us about the patron spirit of future and its role in the gameplay?
Pirinen: Right. Each one of the four heroes will receive protection from one of the four spirits that were the heroes in the original storyline of Sudeki.
These bring you the most powerful attacks in the game, one that you can only perform by pulling off combos, killing enemies, they're not things you can buy in a shop. These are things that good gamers earn by playing the game.
Each one of them has their own unique power, each has an attack power, and a defensive power. The thing is that your spirit strike bar is divided between all of your characters, so you have to consider which spirit you're going to have to summon when your bar is full. So it's again going to be down to the gamer who is controlling the game.
The spirits are also important from the story point of view, because they are the proof that you have a divine blessing and that you are following the right path.
Can you see this title being a success in Japan?
Pirinen: Japan doesn't really feature in our plans. What Microsoft saw was a gap in the software library for Xbox in North America and Europe. If it does well in Japan I'll be delighted, but we're not counting on it, Microsoft isn't counting on it.
If they like it great, but that's not our plan, that's not our target audience, that's not the aim to woo the Japanese.
Some of the images do look recognizably Japanese though.
Pirinen: One of our concept artists is Nick Broughton, who is an award-winning anime artist. Also we hired Japanese games developers from Squaresoft who worked on the title and brought their own influence, so parts of the game may have a distinctive Japanese look.
But on the other hand the majority of the artists on the game are western artists, and I'd say there is a lot of nods towards stuff like Disney animation as well. The only thing we didn't want to do was to try to be realistic.
That was not what we aimed to do, we didn't want to make it appear as in real life, we wanted it to have its own strong, unique graphical style.
We also wanted to capture an organic feeling in the look of the game's levels, games landscapes sometimes suffer from looking like they were made from Lego.
I wanted the player to experience a lot of things, snow covered peaks, deserts, grasslands, the volcanic ranges. If the differences are quite stark, I have no problem with that. It's a magical fantasy land, and artists and designers should be allowed to let their imagination run wild.
How do you acquire items in the game?
Pirinen: Most of the items you can buy from the shops; there are universal stores that can be found throughout the game, but the best weapons you can only find by solving puzzles and searching every nook and cranny. The armour is granted as a reward as you progress through the story.
Obviously the movies that you see, we want to make sure that it matches what your character's wearing in the main game. The runes are a very important part of the game because they allow you to customize your weapons and armour, and give them different qualities.
It's a very important part of the game to acquire lots of the gemstones from the monsters and sell them to the merchants who pay the best price. That's the best way to make money; we didn't want to have monster dropping lots of money, it seemed unlikely.
Anything else we should know?
Pirinen:I just hope you'll really enjoy the game. We've poured incredible amounts of effort into the game. It's very difficult in the development to see the big picture because we're very close to the game, but it seems to me to be the kind of game I'd love to have played when I was a kid - now that I'm in the industry obviously I don't have any time to play anything!
PICTURES:http://www.computerandvideogames.com/openpic.php?pid=120257&article_id=102455