Stranglehold Interview (con't)

FiringSquad:Can you talk a bit about the kind of visual style you want to have in the game?

Alex Offerman: The first step was to come up with a look for the game. Environments, characters and objects are visual tools and can be used to enhance the story and convey many different emotions. It was very important to create visuals that would affect a viewer’s perceptions and feelings. The game had to feel very cinematic. The Unreal Engine was very promising and opened up some great possibilities. Tapping into some existing visual material from John Woo’s cult classic “Hard Boiled” it was decided to create a unique visual palette for each environment. One of the first challenges was to choose, create or re-create unusual and compelling environments in Hong Kong and Chicago. A player would walk in, stop and say, “Whoa! I had no idea such a place existed.” Another challenge was to give each place its own unique mood and color signature. It was felt that as the drama unfolded and built up, these distinctive artistic ingredients would help pace the story and enhance its emotional content. These places had to be fun and exciting for massive destruction and offer great game-play. Another key ingredient of the game was the characters. There was the concept of pushing realism to a stylistic edge. The process was pushed one step further by creating highly detailed concepts for each face by using and manipulating high resolution photos.

FiringSquad: Will there be any downloadable extra content available for the game after its release?

Alex Offerman: We have not solidified our plans for downloadable content after the game ships, but we definitely hope to.

FiringSquad:Finally is there anything else you wish to say about Stranglehold?

Alex Offerman: Given that we are next-gen, we have a lot more objects which in current-gen games would make it difficult for players to navigate smoothly through the world, Add on top of that the massive destruction of the environments that stays around and doesn’t fade away and you have a sea of objects and debris to navigate around. So, one of the core design goals was to make sure that Tequila could smoothly move through even the most crowded environments with ease without having his ability to use his weapons compromised. What we came up with is a system where Tequila can run through a room, even one filled with tables and chairs and tons of broken objects, without being slowed down or having his combat abilities be interfered with. In fact, his abilities are actually improved as some of the interactions are automatic. For instance, when a player runs Tequila up against a table, he automatically slides across it, which keeps Tequila from ever getting stuck and also allows for the player to concentrate on the fun of targeting and firing weapons while the interaction is happening. These automatic interactions, along with the bigger controlled interactions, are almost everywhere in the game. Another example is all the debri that accumulates on the floor during a big battle will get pushed aside as Tequila moves through the environment so he will never get hung up on a broken chair or cement pillar piece. This works because all the objects are dynamic and have physics properly applied. The really helps the game play stay smooth even though the world around you is getting trashed.