After over three years of development, developer Saber Interactive finally released the PC and Xbox 360 versions of their long awaited first person shooter Timeshift in late October (the PS3 version is due to ship to stores this week). FiringSquad got a chance to chat with Saber Interactive head Matthew Karch to get his views on the game now that it has been released, a look back at the game's development process and hints about Saber's next game:

FiringSquad: First, are you happy with the response that TimeShift has received so far?

Matthew Karch: Great question. The answer is yes and no. The public’s response to the game has been outstanding. The game is selling well and more and more people are picking it up and playing online. I am really pleased with the response that we have gotten from the gaming community and the reaction to what many people feel is the best multiplayer surprise of the year. It’s a real testament to the hard work that we have done on what we think is a great game. On the press side, the reaction has been favorable for some and not as favorable for others. Obviously you can’t please all the critics but I have found that some have really missed the entire point of the TimeShift experience and what makes the game unique. For some reason I feel that certain members of the press are consumed with the idea that games need to be elevated to an art form that parallels film. They forget the fact that games are, first and foremost about fun and entertainment. TimeShift is a really fun game that is incredibly well executed in certain key areas. Our visuals range from good to great, our technology is as good as any in the industry and I would put our AI up against any FPS that has come out in the past 5 years and say confidently that it compares favorably (especially when you consider that every time you shift time you are messing with AI states and they react appropriately).

It seems that with new IP’s critics are less forgiving than they are with the more hyped titles – games like TimeShift are really put under the microscope. Even if the key elements that make a shooter great are in place – AI, animations, weapons, movement, sfx, hit-reaction, hit-detection, and even if the combat experience is great, any element that detracts from that experience is magnified in the eyes of a reviewer for new games and it impacts the game’s score for those reviewers in a way that would be forgiven in more hyped titles. Having said that certain thorough reviewers have given TimeShift a lot of attention in spite of the huge number of titles that have come out at the same time. Bob Mandel of Adrenaline Vault, for example did a great job on his review. He was very thorough and had a really solid grasp of the elements that make TimeShift a great title. He, of course is not the only one, but it is a good feeling when a reviewer appreciates the elements of your game that make it a great title. In TimeShift’s case its about combat, solid AI, a new and innovative gameplay mechanic that is well integrated and fun and a solid multiplayer game that we hope will win over a lot of fans.

Overall we are pleased with the launch and the reaction. Ultimately its about the gamers and getting the game in their hands. If they find that the experience is fun then we have done our jobs and so far, so good.

FiringSquad: TimeShift has had a very ..interesting..development history. Can you go back in time for us and tell us how Saber Interactive came up with the idea for the game?

Matthew Karch: After finishing development on our previous title Will Rock – a title that you and I discussed over the phone nearly 6 years ago (can you believe it has been that long??), we brainstormed a ton of ideas for our next project. And as we went over our ideas, the one that kept sticking out was the concept of true time control in a first-person shooter. Not just giving the player bullet time, but control over the speed and direction of the timestream itself. We let this idea bake for a while, and soon enough members of the team were coming up with innovative ways you could design it and ways to conceivably get it done. Once everyone saw the potential of the concept, we officially moved ahead and began pre-production.

FiringSquad:How much refinement of the game's design, especially the time effects, did the team go through in the development?

Matthew Karch: The design and execution of the time powers went through numerous revisions all throughout development. Because we’re basically asking players to use time as a weapon in a thoughtful way during chaotic battles, it took a lot of fine-tuning and focus tests to zero in on the best way to structure the controls. The solution we arrived at – having your suit’s A.I. auto-select the best power for any situation while giving you a manual override – combined our desire to make the time powers easy to learn and use while still allowing players to experiment freely.

FiringSquad:The game was close to being released by another publisher before Sierra took over. Were there any issues with the transition?

Matthew Karch: The transfer to Sierra was actually much smoother than most of these transitions in the industry. When Sierra bought the rights to the game, we were fortunate enough to have our producer at Atari come over to Sierra at around the same time, so we were able to keep the project running with little interruption. That kind of consistency is rare to find in the industry, and the game definitely benefited from not having to start over with a completely new production team.

FiringSquad:At one point you had Dennis Quaid as the voice of the main character. How did that happen and how hard was it to have to lose all that work with him with the last overall with the game.

Matthew Karch: After Sierra signed the game, we collaboratively took a pass on the game’s story and script, resulting in a darker narrative. To bring this story to life we brought Dennis Quaid, Michael Ironside and Nick Chinlund in to voice the characters. All of the actors involved did a terrific job – but when Sierra decided to grant us another year of development to bring the game to the next level, the story was also reworked from the ground-up, so we had to start fresh with the script, characters, and voice-over performances. We actually have Greg Grunberg - star of Heroes, doing the voice of Mason Cooke in the game now. This has not been widely advertised, but he did a fantastic job for us.

FiringSquad:It's well known that TimeShift was extremely close to being completed before Sierra asked you guys to start over again. Was it a feeling of relief or fear when that request came down to revamp the game?

Matthew Karch: There was a mix of emotions when we first heard the request – mainly confusion, since it’s unheard of to flat-out get another year of development. But after all the details were sorted out, we realized it was a massive vote of confidence from Sierra. They had seen the original version of the game, and after their internal discussions decided that we could bring the potential of the time-control mechanic to the forefront like never before. For a publisher to push their sales agenda and marketing plans and all their schedules out for the sake of quality, that’s a rare occurrence – and we took that decision to heart when making the revisions.

FiringSquad:The revamp of the game made it into a dark art style. What art inspiration did the team have to turn the game into that kind of direction?

Matthew Karch: The original game had a much brighter, more colorful steampunk style. In deciding to transition that to a more realistic, gritty atmosphere, the team was actually able to take lot of inspiration from their surroundings from the Russian office in St. Petersburg. By infusing the game’s architecture with elements drawn from the city, we managed to craft a very distinctive environment for the player to explore.

FiringSquad:How hard was it to design the levels to allow the use of specific time effects like the slow, stop and reverse?

Matthew Karch: Wow, your questions really show good insight into the design process. From the start of the project, each level of the game was built around utilizing the time powers, so from that angle we were able to continually refine the flow and unique areas where you could interact with time. There were certainly design challenges – if a door slams shut closing off an entrance not intended for the player, what do you do when he slows time and runs through anyway? Or if when an enemy squad spawns around the corner, what if you go and reverses time and sees them disappear into thin air? These elements were constantly on our minds as we built the levels. Can you imagine what implementing TimeShifting powers would do in a game like Call of Duty, for example, where enemies spawn as you navigate the environment? The whole approach to enemy placement and design had to be revamped to make sure the time powers didn’t break the game world. As far as creating paths, once our level designers understood how the time powers worked and what could be accomplished that would be otherwise impossible in your typical game, we began to see creations that fully exploited the unique abilities only seen in TimeShift.

FiringSquad:In multiplayer you have time grenades that handle the time effects. How hard was it to integrate those grenades into the gameplay?

Matthew Karch: Designing the multiplayer component presented a completely different set of challenges from the single player. Since we wanted multiplayer to stand on its own, we spent a lot of time refining the mechanics to present a fun implementation of time powers. Simply taking the powers as they were in single player and transferring them online wouldn’t have been the ideal situation, since you would have one person freezing time while everyone else would be stuck in place. Ultimately, we went through many prototypes and different ideas until we finally settled on the idea of time grenades which immediately made sense for what we had set out to do.

FiringSquad:Overall how happy are you about how the game turned out?

Matthew Karch: The game definitely delivered beyond our expectations. While we certainly had a polished product before the delay, the additional time and support from Sierra allowed us to delve deeper in to the potential of the design to come up with something truly special. Having said that there are always improvements that can be made. We would really like to do a better job fleshing out the story and in making some of the game’s puzzles (which we purposely kept more straightforward for this game) more involved and thought-provoking in future installments. That’s the beauty of game development, you can always build upon what you have done and respond to player feedback, which we anxiously await.

FiringSquad:What are Saber Interactive's plans for the future?

Matthew Karch: With TimeShift now released into the wild, there are many possibilities for Saber. While we’d of course like to continue the TimeShift franchise and make use of the many, many ideas we came up with during development that didn’t make it into the final game, we are still working out the details with Sierra regarding where we want to take the franchise. We are also working on a top-secret project that we think will take the concept of innovative gameplay mechanics to new heights. It is extremely tech-intensive and the ultimate experience will be awesome as we will be able to build upon all we have learned from TimeShift.

FiringSquad:Finally is there anything else you wish to say about the development of TimeShift?

Matthew Karch: Like many observant gamers have said, now is possibly the busiest season for videogames in recent memory, especially for shooters; and it’s especially hard for a game that doesn’t have a number appended to the end of the game’s title to get the proper attention. Yet you only have to spend a small amount of time with TimeShift to see the true passion that every member of the team put into it throughout its creation. TimeShift is fun, pure and simple. Many people who have played the game feel that it is “old-school” in its approach because its focus is first and foremost on the core element of a shooter – combat. We feel that we have executed really well on both the single player and multiplayer fronts and are very proud of our results. We will be releasing additional maps next month to support the burgeoning multiplayer community. We really hope that gamers give the game a try because we think that once they do they will be hooked. I have been playing the game for four years and still get a lot of enjoyment out of it

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