Pimp your weapon
Courtesy of a in-depth Q&A session, Metropolis Software has spilled the beans on its upcoming first person shooter, which features a next generation 3D engine, unique weapon system, diversified enemies and a mysterious science fiction background story.Here's the lowdown.
THEY claims to be a “mystery first-person shooter” for PC, Xbox 360 & PlayStation 3. How do you create this feeling and what sort of techniques are used to provoke this sense of mystery?
The story-telling in THEY doesn’t influence the fast paced action of a FPS game – it has dynamic battles, a living environment and those bad creatures you have to kill. But the story has some issues common with plots of mystery movies! After some analyses we figured out that one key element, which transports mystery is the so-called dualism and this is what we will show in THEY. On the one hand you have a real environment, which everybody knows (London) – on the other hand some mysterious phantoms and you don’t know what they are.
Another way is to build up characters’ credibility during the storyline, you feel positive with them, you trust them – and suddenly something happens, which topples your big picture! This is what the essence of mystery is and it’ll take some time to get an overall picture. For players this means, they have been aware of several surprises and nothing seems to be like it is in the beginning…
Furthermore you label THEY as a “Next Gen Title”, can you give examples what special technologies you refer to when speaking of next generation?
Next Gen Title is something more than just visuals. It's about the whole feeling, atmosphere, gameplay – it's a new level of immersion of the player into the game. It takes many technologies combined together to achieve such effect. From pure rendering techniques, through impressive physics, believable AI to comprehensive animation subsystems: They all make a game world more real than even before, and this is what we call “Next Gen” feeling.
You unveiled an interesting new FPS feature, which is called Pimp my weapon or Weapon tuning system, what does that mean in detail?
What's so cool about FPS games? Weapons! In the history of games the numbers of weapons have raised from a few smaller weapons in the beginning and more in the past, up to a minor opportunity to edit weapons with an alternative firemodes or so. Now we just put another step forward, as we give players the possibility to create their own unique weapons for example at the beginning of each level. First of all it's NOT just about one gun you have.
You can save - based on your weapons memory and the central generator your weapon owns - different setups of a gun where you have access to at any time. Never change what the player is expecting! Each configuration has two different barrels, the already introduced generator and what we call a gadget slot (for scopes and stuff). One barrel can be used as an Ak47, MP5, shotgun etc. while the second barrel is a launcher, plasma beam and so on just to give an example. So players can customize different weapon setups based on their choice or skill, while they collect the upgrade items for their weapon as they progress into the game!
The real important thing is that players have never been given so much freedom in creation before. They can build their own weapons and their imagination is the only limit, because the variety of customization is huge! You're even able to paint it in a way you like by using even external brushes like your picture or whatever you like. In THEY players are not only the audience of the game, they are also co-creators. By creating weapons a player becomes one of the game creators.
It's a real game 2.0 feeling. Additional if someone doesn’t like to have fun with the customization ability, he/she will be given a typical set of guns by using auto-tuning. In this case the game does the customization itself in predefined directions like power or shooting speed. Being an FPS games fan, ask yourself a question: how cool would it be to create your own unique weapons? In THEY you can do this. And the interface is very simple and intuitive – everyone who sees it, gets the idea immediately.
Click for larger image
Click for larger imageHow did you get this idea of your weapon tuning system?
Well the FPS genre didn’t change so much in the past, and as we didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, we just wanted to enhance it a bit with some fresh ideas. Why not adding a feature, which is common in racing games and pure fun for almost every player? So the idea developed from players desire to be able to have the weapon of their dreams, and not just another weapon a developer is offering them grateful and that is not so much different from other games. So it is fresh, it is unique and it is fun! It is some way of Game 2.0 feature with user generated content.
THEY is set in England. Why did you choose the UK?
It is in the London area, because this is the landscape, which is known to most people in the world. No other city has so many landmarks and known buildings. Everybody in each part of the world knows Big Ben, London Eye, Tower Bridge, Subway system and many other things, while Berlin, Paris or New York have not so many different known landmarks to offer. Beside that everybody, who visited London really likes the city – so why not play and act there in the future as a real hero?
