Forza 4 interview: ‘We throw away all the manufacturer data’
Keith Stuart speaks to Forza Motorsport 4 creative director Dan Greenawalt
For the past six years, the Forza Motorsport series has been jostling its way to the front of the densely congested driving game starting grid.
Mixing stunning visuals with wonderfully accessible handling, it has managed to forge itself a niche between the stark authenticity of Gran Turismo and the loose urban thrills of Need for Speed and Burnout.
Heading towards its fourth instalment, Forza promises to push the Xbox 360 to its limits, while providing intriguing support for the Kinect peripheral.
To find out more about developer Turn 10 Studios' approach to driving sim design, I spoke to creative director Dan Greenawalt. Here are some of the key concerns behind the leading racer series.
The Forza titles have been seen as graphical benchmarks for Xbox 360 hardware. In what way is the fourth title pushing the machine? Is there anything left for the old architecture to give?
Frankly, I think there's a big misunderstanding about how developers do what we do. Think about it like this, when you move apartments, you've got to pack up your van then unpack it all; and every time you move, you have to re-pack it and unpack it again. Over time you begin to find more space because you're better at packing it up – you optimise it better. Well, every time we ship a game and start on the next one, we re-optimise our code and we find more headroom.
The other side to it is how you approach the problem. For this version, we hired a guy from Pixar, and we brought in some contract staff from Hollywood to work out how we should do the lighting, so even with the same amount of horsepower, depending on how you approach development, you can get wildly different results.
The biggest thing is, we share stuff between different development teams. We talk with Epic, we talk with Lionhead, we talk with Rare, and when ever any of us learns a new optimisation, a new way of packing those boxes, it spreads throughout the industry. So we've benefited from the last two years of development since Forza 3 – even titles such as Gears [of War] 3 have helped.
Forza seems to have carved a niche for itself between the simulation purity of Gran Turismo and the more forgiving handling of arcade racers such as Need For Speed. Was that always the intention or has it evolved through the development process?
The vision behind the games is all about the passion for cars. It's not just about racing or simulation, it's about getting people excited about cars. It's a much broader vision than just making a racing simulator. That forces us to look outside of what other games are doing, and toward where we want to go.
But also, innovation is a big deal to us. So, looking at user-generated content, the auction house, the store front, features that we brought to previous Forza titles – the green line, drivatar AI– there's been innovation throughout the series. And then when we see great ideas that other teams do, we borrow those too! Codemasters' rewind feature, for example. It's not always about innovating everywhere, but it is about having the best designed overall package.
Kinect was a huge boon to us as a creative team – to start exploring that vision. So we came up with the Autovista mode where you can move around the car, open the doors with your hands, accompanied by some of Jeremy Clarkson's trademark wit … that's a big part of the game. As well as Kinect head-tracking, we have Kinect Voice to navigate the UI and, of course, you can sit on the coach and play with your kids using Kinect driving. So innovation across the entire product has formed the personality of the game.
In terms of handling, what's been your aim here throughout the series? How do you deal with the dichotomy between realism and playability? I do find Forza more fun to drive than Gran Turismo.
The design philosophy of our team is to not compromise when it comes to physics – we always keep that as accurate as possible. And we're always pushing, pushing, pushing. So for this version we worked with Pirelli, we threw away all of our old tyre data to make the most up-to-date tyre simulation possible. There's a reason they invest so much money into tyre R&D; tyres are not a completely known science yet. So if you base your in-game tyre model on five-year-old data it's simply wrong.
It's like weather forecasting – if you look at some of the models meteorologists used 10 years ago, they're not nearly as accurate as they are today, but even if you watch the weather report tonight you don't necessarily believe it – the truth is, the science is still evolving. The maths models for forecasting will be much more accurate in 10 years.
Driving simulation is the same. People may say, well, our physics is perfect, but simulation simply can't be. We're not at that point – we're not in the Matrix yet!
So simulation is important to us and it's something we're continually updating. But in terms of fun – I'm very proud of that. It's not only how it drives and how it handles, it's also about having a game. There has to be XP, there have to be reward systems, there have to be gift cars – this is all just decent game design; it's what we've seen in games all the way through, from Mario to Oblivion to Halo.
So we don't sacrifice the physics to make the cars easier to drive or more approachable. We add layer, upon layer, upon layer. This whole sim/fun divide … it's silly, it's like saying that a painting can't be real art if it looks nice in my living room. Real art must be ugly! It doesn't make any sense to me.
The other thing I should mention is the power of assists in general. Take a car from the 1960s such as a GT40 – say I asked you to go and hot lap in one of those at the Hockenheimring, if you pushed it, you would die. But today's cars, such as the BMW M5, that's a 500 HP, it's extremely torque-y, the reason that car can be pushed so much by people like you and me is because of the traction control, TCS, ABS, advanced mapping on the throttle, the way the speed-sensitive steering works.
A lot of technology went into that, and it's actually the same thing we're doing to make our simulation more driveable. People seem to think that a simulation has to be hard, but I tell you what, I drive a BMW M3, I take these cars to the track and they're NOT incredibly hard to drive.
Talking about the cars themselves, how do you decide on your roster for each game? Do you go with team favourites, or fan requests, or what's hot at the moment?
Yes, yes and yes. But it's really important that we pull ourselves away from the manufacturer lists and think well, who are we trying to reach now? We apply different ways of prioritising our lists . So yes, we have a list of more than 1,500 cars and that's compiled from people's passion – if people tell us they love a car, we throw it in.
But then we put different lenses on – what are the current trends in automotive design? What's happening in the US and UK automotive scene? What's happening on Top Gear? And what's happening in pop culture? Which hot car was featured in which new movie? What cars are getting really good reviews and what cars are different manufacturers promoting?
We use all that to reprioritise. And that all sounds very dry, but the goal is to divorce ourselves form the process – we need to make sure our passion doesn't blind us! What that's led to in this version is a heavier investment in American muscle cars, because of the global resurgence in this kind of hooliganism around gas-guzzling V8s.
These cars have been around for a long time, we could have added them at any point, but the reason they've risen to the top in this version is that worldwide automotive car culture psyche these big V8s are a rebellion against the Prius! There's nothing wrong with the Prius, it's a great car…
What's your relationship like with manufacturers? I mean, I understand the marketing opportunities that Forza must represent to them, but do they appreciate the design?
For the first time, I would say yes – and it's because of Autovista. Honestly, that's the first time they've said "this is crazy!". They want to show it to their board of directors. The idea of seeing the car on a giant projector and being able to walk around it via Kinect, that has definitely got different departments within these companies interested.
If you think about it, these are multinational companies and so generally most of us in the video game space deal with the licensing organisation. They have marketing organisations, they have design and racing organisations – and those groups don't necessarily talk to each other all the time, just like in any corporation. So for the first time, with Autovista, we reached the higher levels – the boards, the chief executives – we've got them thinking, "this has huge potential".
All of a sudden, we're getting calls from manufacturers saying "hey, we want to talk to you about this" and we'll say, "well, you know, we've already spoken – we talked to your licensing guys. They're in the same building as you!"
But for the most part dealing with the manufacturers has been fairly easy for us in that we're not making choices about gameplay, trying to make it arcade-y or silly. We can hide behind that we're a simulation. If they don't like something about their car in the game, we can say, well, you can not like it all day but that's what it does!
If you don't like it, go fix it. If you fix it in the real world, guess what, we'll fix it in the game.
So are all the in-game performance attributes genuinely based on physics? You don't just tap in the manufacturer's quoted top speed and the car model performs to that – you honestly program in the physics then hit the accelerator to check that your car can actually simulate those figures?
Well first up, all the manufacturer data we get, we mostly throw away! This is because we're either getting it from a licensing agent or a marketing agent, we're not getting it from the engineer who knows the real data. So we research cars – we actually go find out what it really does. We look at magazines such as Road and Track and Car and Driver, and we see what their test results are.
And we often notice that their test results are different. A manufacturer may say, this car does 0-60 in 4.3 seconds, but Car and Driver says 4.6, Top Gear may say 4.5, so you can't really trust any of that. We look at the simulation output and ask if we're getting the same range as those figures. And we have actually found issues in cars, we've called up the original manufacturer of the suspension, rather than calling up, say, BMW about the suspension. We might call KAW or H&R depending on who actually provided the springs, especially with older cars. We'll actually find out the real gear rations from the maker. We put all that stuff in and the car might understeer, it might oversteer, we've found some cars that just don't drive very well in the simulation. We don't fix it because that's how it really is.
And how important is it to manage how players discover the cars? Driving sims are always structured to give you the little hot hatches first. Is that still really necessary?
Well, in Forza – especially in Forza 4 – we give you multiple gift cars to choose from, not just at the beginning, but at every level. In the past we'd give you one gift car, now you get an option. We've selected those cars based on telling different automotive stories to people. So when you start off the game, you might have a Ford Ka or a small Citroen or a Chevy Spark, and those are great starter cars, because they're not fast enough to get you in to a lot of trouble. You need to work your way up to a Subaru STI or a BMW M3. I don't mean to be insulting, but novice drivers tend to over-estimate their driving abilities. They'll say, "I've played a lot of these games, I'm an expert!", and they'll select simulation steering, no ABS, manual gears, they spin out they hit a wall and then they go "That's not real". Well, yeah actually that happened because it's real. It's just like, if I took you to the track, I wouldn't want to turn off the traction control on a Ferrari 599 GTO – none of us should. Jeremy Clarkson did and said that the car was undriveable!
Call of Duty: Elite – pricing and content details announced
The social networking and content service for Call of Duty will feature lots of free content and Facebook support, with premium elements coming in at $49.99 a year
Activision has announced the US pricing details of its Call of Duty: Elite service, a social networking and content distribution system for the Call of Duty titles. Subscribers to the premium version will pay $49.99 a year – this will provide access to over 20 pieces of downloadable content a year, including maps, new game features and missions for the Spec Ops mode. Although much of the DLC will still be available to buy without subscribing to the service, Elite subscribers will get that content first. Purchasers of the special 'Hardened' edition of MW3 will get a year's Premium Elite subscription as part of that package.
As for other benefits, paying users will also be able to enter daily competitions for both in-game and real-world prizes including cars and gadgets. Expert online analysis of every map and weapon in the game is also included, along with the ability to plan Clan schedules. "Elite members will get to level up their clans by competing together in tournaments and competitions," explained Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing. Everything you love about levelling up as an individual player, Premium Elite members can do as a clan. It's like your own fantasy football team inside Call of Duty: Elite except the players you're counting on are your own friends."
Subscribers are set to get access to Elite TV, an online channel of Call of Duty episodic content produced by well-known film and TV names. Activision announced two weekly shows set to air later this year, produced by Arrested Development stars (and CoD fans) Jason Bateman and Will Arnett, and Ridley and Tony Scott. One show named Friday Night Fights will feature online bouts between real-life sets of rivals – Hirshberg mentions examples such as firemen vs cops, fans of different sports teams and democrats vs republicans. It's filming this autumn. Another show named Noobtube will feature smack talk videos sent in by players and compared by Jason Bateman and Will Arnott.
The social connectivity features of the service look set to be free to all purchasers of Modern Warfare 3 (and will have limited functionality with last year's Call of Duty: Black Ops). Players will be able to use Elite to locate friends who are playing the game, as well as compare achievements and leaderboard standings, and organise game sessions. Activision has added Facebook support so gamers will be able to see when their Facebook friends are playing the game, making it easier to arrange online get-togethers.
The system also features a searchable grouping system, allowing people with similar interests to choose to play together. So if you only want to play against, say, football fans, the menu will find some for you. You can also locate players who went to the same school as you, and people of a similar political persuasion. It's also possible to limit online games to players in your geographic vicinity. The aim is, to make public multiplayer matches more friendly and approachable.
Interestingly, Elite developer Beachhead is also creating mobile apps for iOS and Android devices which will allow players to access Elite on the move. Users will be able to view the stats and 'heat maps' of any recent online bouts they've played, as well as tweak their custom classes and load-outs – these will all be saved online and recalled when you get home and switch your console on.
Modern Warfare 3: new perks and modes revealed. Everything you need to know
Activision reveals Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's multiplayer modes and updates, including new perks and a replacement for the controversial Killstreak system
Activision certainly knows how to work a room – or in this case, an aircraft hangar. The company chose its CoD XP fan event in Los Angeles to reveal key details of Modern Warfare 3's multiplayer mode to 300 members of the world's press. Housed within the mammoth complex at LA's Hercules Campus, built by Howard Hughes to facilitate his Spruce Goose project, it was a noisy and confident briefing with tantalising glimpses at the future of the franchise's vital online component.
It seems the key concern with multiplayer this time round is balance. Over-powered elements such as One Man Army, game-ending nukes, shotguns as secondary weapons and the Commando and Last Stand perks have all been removed. Killstreaks, too, have been replaced. "When we examined objective modes like Capture the Flag, Domination and Search and Destroy the best players were focusing on their team objectives instead of just racking up kills," said Infinity Ward's creative strategist, Robert Bowling. "But it became clear that Killstreaks were optimised for one game type and that was Team Deathmatch."
Now, there are 'pointstreaks' in which players rack up rewards, not just for kills, but for assists and for meeting objectives – capturing flags, for example. The system is divided into three selectable 'strike packages', each optimised for different play styles. With the Assault strike package, players earn in a familiar way, through kills and destroying equipment and vehicles. They then get to select from a range of streak rewards including access to a 'strafe run' feature at nine kills and a heavily armoured Juggernaut suit at 15 kills, as well as attack drones. Players opting for the Support strike package earn points through meeting objectives and crucially these points rack up even after deaths. These can then be blown on rewards like ballistic vests, airdrop traps, recon drones, counter-UAVs and the ability to call in a recon juggernaut.
Finally, the Specialist package is aimed at elite players and opens up additional perks with every new kill threshold. Users will be able to gain up to three extra perks alongside the standard three options – although for balance, players are unable to call in air strikes or gain tactical support from their team. "We think this is the greatest test of individual skill ever included in a Modern Warfare game," concluded Bowling. Apparently, there are 28 different pointstreak rewards in total.
And of course, the Perk list has been updated and added to. With 'Recon', explosive damage paints the target on the player's mini map, while 'Blind Eye' makes you undetectable by air support or sentries, and 'Assassin' renders you invisible to UAVs and portable radars. 'Quickdraw' provides faster aiming, 'Stalker' lets you move faster while aiming, and 'Marksman' identified targets at longer range.
Explaining these alterations, Bowling declared, "We think this is the deepest experience we've ever created. We've made more profound additions and changes to the core multiplayer experience in MW3 than we have in any other chapter. We're supporting a larger variety of play styles than ever before. This is the most balanced multiplayer experience than we've ever done."
Another new addition in MW3 is the weapon progression system – in essence, a replacement for the currency system in Black Ops. As you build experience with a particular gun, it gains its own XP, which can then be spent on upgrades such as attachments, reticules and camo designs. However, you can also unlock and select different 'weapons proficiencies' which act like gun-specific perks. For example, 'Kick' provides reduced recoil when firing, 'Attachments' lets you add two attachments on your primary weapon, 'Focus' reduces the flinch reflex when hit by enemy fire and 'Stability' reduces the sway of the weapon when you're shooting on the move.
Attachments, meanwhile, include holographic sights and a dual scopes providing both close and long-range optics. According to Infinity Ward producer Mark Rubin, there are different versions of the dual scope for different classes: the assault version has a holographic sight and a magnifier, while an LMG and SMG version has a hammer sight – an ACOG-style magnifier and a red dot on top, which you can switch between.
In terms of classes, we now have five options. Judging by the Team Deathmatch session I played, the grenadier is the standard assault option, with a Heckler & Koch G36c assault rifle as primary. Then there's 'First Recon' with a Heckler & Koch UMP SMG and an MP-412 revolver. The burly Overwatch class has an MK46 LMG and Mark 153 SMAW rocket launcher, while the Scout Sniper gets a .50 cal Barrett sniper rifle. Lastly, there's the interesting Riot Control option, wielding the nightmarish Armsel Striker, a shotgun with a 12-round rotary cylinder. In real-life, it's apparently slow to reload, but the in-game animation has you whizzing cartridges in at impressive speed.
Of the 40 weapons in the game, there are some other intriguing new additions. Rubin spoke about the XM25 20mm grenade launcher which lets you use the left stick to mark your distance via a laser sight; then you can shoot a grenade through a window. The projectile will air burst a metre into the room. "It's a smaller grenade than the 203 but it's a fun tool to use to get people out of cover," said Rubin.
16 maps will be included with Modern Warfare 3 on release. At the demo event last night, I played through a tense, claustrophobic map based in the winding back alleys of Paris. I also tried Village, set throughout a ragtag collection of huts on an African savannah, and the visually arresting Underground, set in and around a blast-damaged tube station, complete with burned out trains, and – outside on ground level – police cars with their lights flashing, and iconic red buses abandoned on empty, eerie streets. More on those later.
Two interesting new play modes were announced. In Kill Confirmed you have to collect the dogtags that appear above downed enemies in order to gain the points from a kill. However, if a teammate of your foe gets to the tags first, the kill is cancelled. I played this mode in the Village setting and it's already spawned an intriguing gang tactic where groups of players roam the map together, often lobbing concussion grenades and flash bangs ahead of them. The other newcomer is Team Defender in which two sides fight to gain possession of a single flag and then gain points for keeping hold of it.
Elsewhere, private matches will allow participants to mix and match different elements, settings and features to create user-generated game modes. Elite subscribers will be able to submit their creations to online votes and the best will be made available to the public. There are also several Private game mode templates including 'Drop Zone' where you must hold the zone for team points and care packages; 'Infection' in which the infected team kills opposing team members to bring them across to the sick side; and 'Juggernaut' in which players must kill the Juggernaut and then take on the role themselves. Infinity Ward has also brought over the fun 'One in the Chamber' and 'Gun Game' options from the Black Ops wager matches.
Activision also clarified details of the co-op Spec Ops mode. There will be two options: the Survival mode, seen at E3, in which two players face increasingly tough waves of enemies, earning cash to spend on weapons, equipment and airstrikes. Then there's the return of the Mission mode giving players16 new time-trial and objective-based missions to play through with a friend. The Spec Ops modes will also come with a separate ranking and progression system.
Other reveals included a Universal Player Card, which apparently collates and rewards all your achievements from every Call of Duty game you've played on your machine, with attendant loyalty rewards. There is also a special Prestige Shop which provides a range of in-game rewards every time a player prestiges – this looks to include things like double weapon XP, but it flashed past rather quickly on the screen so I'll be checking that out again later. And of course there will be support for dedicated servers on PC, with players able to browse, filter, favourite and join any server they like as well as setting up their own servers and admins with controls over rules, setup and ban lists.
It was a comprehensive unveiling, then, of a multiplayer system that's been subtly re-worked and re-engineered to be more inviting to a wider range of players, as well as rewarding those who have reached higher levels of competency. The releasing of the streak reward system from kills may well prove the most important upgrade in terms of the online playing field, though the social networking and group definition elements brought in by Elite could well bring about a shining new era in which players on public servers never again need face the barrage of slurs and insults from let's say 'over-enthusiastic' teenagers. That in itself could be the revolution that more reserved and thoughtful Call of Duty fanatics have been waiting for.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is released on 8 November for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360
Games review roundup: Xenoblade Chronicles, Inazuma Eleven and more
Here's our weekly roundup of some of the games that may have slipped under your radar – such as Xenoblade Chronicles, Inazuma Eleven and White Knight Chronicles 2
Xenoblade Chronicles ...
Wii; £39.99; cert 12+; Nintendo
Xenoblade Chronicles looks at first glance like a traditional Japanese RPG – cutscenes and all – but this complex, rich game manages to transcend the genre conventions and tell its story in surprising, engaging ways. Gifted orphan Shulk must lead his fellow colonists on an epic battle against evil robots that have invaded their world – but this is not all standard fantasy fare (the first grisly death comes about three hours in). Confusing camera angles and busy screens can sometimes make for complicated battles, but the combat system is unusual and compelling, revolving around use of special attacks, team tactics and manoeuvring to find the best position. The legendary weapon Monado, which lets Shulk see the future, provides both the main thread of a poignant and engaging story and some beautiful and innovative combat effects. The Wii's graphical limitations sadly make the game look old before its time, but Xenoblade Chronicles more than makes up for it with believable characters, a surprisingly open, non-linear world, intertwining side quests and collection and crafting systems that complement the main game without overpowering it. All that over more than 50 hours of gameplay – and very few random encounters. A genuine epic.
Mary Hamilton
Inazuma Eleven ...
DS; £29.99; cert 7+; Nintendo
Inazuma Eleven is a football-meets-RPG mash-up aimed at anime-mad 10 year olds. The game follows the adventures of young Mark Evans as he attempts to lead his school team to unlikely glory. With an unfolding soap opera storyline which hooks you in despite (or perhaps because of) its clichés, the main action is a series of stylus-controlled football challenges. There is some skill to moving the players around the pitch, like a real-time tactical general, but once you're in position for a tackle or a shot, a Pokemon style micro-battle kicks in, with accompanying animation. Whether your player's action is successful is down to a series of stats and elements, and getting together a team capable of preposterous, Shaolin Soccer-aping moves is the only way to achieve victory. Between these matches, much time is spent traipsing around the school and town tracking down the players suggested to you by the bubbly talent scout and potential love interest Celia. The plot – with its characters with dark secrets, opposing teams with evil cloaks and depth-perception-limiting eyepatches, and time spent praying to the shrine of the central character's dead grandfather – is typically outré for an anime, and the cut scenes are nicely rendered and break up the game well. Quibbles: the time spent searching for new players does drag, and the dubbing into CBBC English is a touch grating at times. Inazuma Eleven has been out since 2008 in Japan, and is showing its age slightly – but it's better late than never.
James Walsh
White Knight Chronicles 2 ...
PS3; £49.99; cert 16+; Sony
Load up White Knight Chronicles 2 (WKC2) and it's not long before you get the feeling something's amiss. Putting the generic, overlong JRPG cutscenes to one side for a minute, in terms of gameplay you're not so much thrown in the deep end as you are thrown off a cliff in to the Mariana trench. There is, you see, no tutorial, and for a game that looked at FF13's Paradigm Shift system, snorted derisively and said "I can make something even more complicated than that," it really should something of a prerequisite. For a newcomer, it's impenetrable, and this is the point at which many reviewers and purchasers probably gave up. There is method to this madness, however. WKC2 is not a sequel in the typical way we expect of a game nowadays. Buy Fifa 12 and you don't expect to have to play Fifa 11 to understand it. WKC2 on the other hand sees itself as the second half of whole (think Kill Bill) and the original game is bundled with it. The tutorials – and a great deal of narrative context – are only acquired through playing through its predecessor. Buy WKC2 then and, assuming you haven't played the original (which has been slightly updated for this release) and you've got two, 25-hour plus JRPGS in one package – great value. The games themselves are standard JRPG fare – terrible dialogue, tedious cutscenes but rewarding and challenging gameplay in between. The White Knight aspect of the title comes from your "summons"-like ability to transform into a huge Japanese knight during battle and kick the snot out of your opponents, which is always good fun. Rewarding and challenging as it might be, WKC2 is nevertheless unremarkable in all other aspects and of little interest to all but the most dedicated JRPG fans. Bury 50 hours of your life into these two games, by all means, but not before you've played the 27 better role-playing-games that exist across this generation of consoles.
Jack Arnott
Batman Arkham City interview: superhero development
Nick Cowen talks to Dax Ginn, marketing game manager at Rocksteady Games, about the Dark Knight's return
When we were playing through Batman: Arkham Asylum for the second time, picking up all the achievements, we found the blueprints for Arkham City …
You found that? That was you guys?
Er, no, if we're being honest; someone else found it first, posted it on Gamefaqs.com and then we found it using their walkthrough.
(Laughs) Aha! So you can't take credit for that! Well, that's honest of you.
Thanks. So the existence of those blueprints means you were planning a sequel before Arkham City was even out the gate, right?
It does.
So how did you stay focused on the game you were making at the time? And how much of what you planned in those blueprints – and what you were planning for Arkham City at the time – has ended up in the new game?
Let me answer the second question first. Those blueprints … when we look at them now and we look back at Arkham City, they're really accurate. We managed to stay focused on that broad footprint of the layout of Arkham City almost to a fault.
It was always going to be driven by technical considerations because when you're making an open-world game you don't know how big it can be until you start building it. But we knew we really wanted to inject it with the same level of detail and attention and love that we put into Arkham Asylum. We also wanted to layer it with Batman DNA; we wanted to make sure that it contained legendary locations that made the place meaningful for Batman and that it wasn't just a collection of generic streets.
So when we hatched the idea of taking the game out of Arkham Asylum and on to the streets of Gotham, and then the concept of Arkham City, that was the point where we created the secret room with the blueprints for Arkham City – almost in the hope that we would be allowed to make it. But by that stage, to answer your first question, we were so close to finishing Arkham Asylum, there was no chance Arkham City could be a distraction that would threaten the polish of the game we were working on.
When you started thinking about Arkham City, was it a case that you wanted to take what you were doing in widescreen? Or did the idea for the city environment come from features you couldn't put into the first game – like Batman's new gliding ability, or his new combos? Which of those aspects came first?
It actually came for the desire we had to give the player an immense sense of navigational freedom. We want to be true to the character of Batman, to all the things that make him a person and make him a hero. For example, the Dark Knight, the defender of Gotham – that's just one aspect of his personality. Being the world's greatest detective is another aspect, and it's just as important. That's why there's a lot of crime scene investigation and puzzle solving in the game.
Then you have the Caped Crusader moniker for Batman and so, being able to deploy his cape and glide through buildings is something we have in the game – I think the recent Batman films did that aspect particularly well. We knew that was something we wanted in the game; it felt very Batman, it felt great for the gameplay and overall it was the next logical place for us to go with this Arkham-verse that we're building here.
Speaking of the Arkham-verse, you've got a lot more characters in this game than there was in Arkham Asylum. We've already seen the Riddler, the Joker, Harley Quinn, Catwoman and Two-Face. Are there anymore characters that will make an appearance in Arkham City?
Yes.
Can you tell us which ones?
(laughs) No. We've got more character announcements to make but I can't tell you what they are yet. I can tell you, though, that the Riddler will appear physically in the game. In Arkham Asylum he was just a voice on the radio, but here, you'll come face to face with him.
Catwoman's in the game both as an adversary and as a playable character. Calendar Man, Zsasz and Hugo Strange – as the warden of Arkham City – are in the game too. So there's a lot of fan service with very well-known characters as well as some obscure ones in the game. This is a big game as well, you're looking at around 40 hours plus to get 100% in there, and then you've got challenge maps on top of that.
We've got a lot of time and space to fill out the development of all of the different super villains. Arkham Asylum was a lot more focused and claustrophobic experience – the focus in that game was mainly on the tension between Batman and the Joker.
Speaking of fan service, Robin is a character that divides fans. Yet we have seen concept art for the young lad in Arkham City. Was there an internal argument at Rocksteady before the decision was reached to put him in the game?
(laughs) You're right, he does divide people. The inclusion of Robin is always going to be met with resistance, whether within Rocksteady or outside with the fans or the community. It's actually incredible how divisive a character he is, but I think done well and done right, he's got the potential to be an awesome character.
We haven't shown anything of Robin in action yet, but I can tell you he has his own navigational system, he has his own moves, his own combat combos and he's got an explosives augmentation. I think gamers are going to find that he feels very different to playing as Batman – the same way that Catwoman feels different to playing as Batman. We definitely wanted to make players feel the three different playable characters offer three different experiences.
Are you a fan of Robin?
Absolutely! Always have been! I've always thought he's a brilliant character. I know why some fans don't like him, but I've always been on Team Robin!
Bah! Next question. You might be sick of hearing this one, but let's talk about the Batmobile. After all you've given Batman an open city, so why can't we drive his car?
It ain't a driving game, is the short answer. You've seen the work we've put into the gliding system and that works just fine for moving the character around the city. Also, lots of the streets in Arkham City are filled with rubble an craters so the Batmobile wouldn't be the best mode of transport. It wouldn't make for very fun driving even if we put the Batmobile in the game.
In all seriousness, though, the moment you put Batman in a car, it becomes an entirely different kind of game. So there are no vehicles in the game whatsoever.
Would you say, that in a way, Batman is the ultimate vehicle in the game?
Well, he certainly controls with the same level of responsiveness. We wanted to build in a lot of navigational options for players – you can see that even in the way the player can use the Batarang, where you can completely control their path once you throw them.
Speaking of the Batarang, lots of games featuring superheroes make you unlock their powers – even in the sequels. Will we have to spend a lot of time unlocking all of Batman's gadgets from the first game?
No, you have them right from the start of Arkham City. We wanted players to really feel like Batman has been preparing for the inevitable day when Gotham would experience a crisis like it does in Arkham City, so all of his gadgets are ready.
Mark Hamill says this is the last time he's playing the Joker. It seems that every time a Batman series hits a peak, something untoward happens with that character.
How do you mean?
Well, Tim Burton made a good Batman film and then killed off the Joker at the end of it. Christopher Nolan made a great Batman film and then Heath Ledger tragically passed away. Now, after Rocksteady made an outstanding Batman game – you're losing your Joker as well.
I hadn't thought of it that way. Well, Mark said that he thought that Arkham Asylum would be very difficult to top and I absolutely agree – when I play Arkham Asylum, the performance he turns in is amazing.
But his performance on Arkham City has been just phenomenal. When it comes to the Joker, Mark's a genius. He gets this character so perfectly. All we need to do is just write the dialogue and then he brings it vividly to life. When we add his performance to the game, the quality our game just doubles.
To be honest, I don't know what's going to happen in the future. So long as we remain focused on making an amazing game, opportunities will come for the studio, I'm sure and creative solutions will present themselves.
• Batman: Arkham City is out on 21 October for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360
Gamescom 2011: Dishonored preview
Echoes of Deus Ex and BioShock generate an air of anticipation around Bethesda's retro-futuristic action-RPG
A major element of Gamescom's appeal lies in its scheduling, a couple of months after E3. That allows publishers to demo games that weren't quite ready for public presentation at E3, and this year, the show's biggest debutant was Dishonored, developed by Arkane Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. With games such as The Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3 in its canon, any new action-RPG from Bethesda is bound to attract a considerable buzz. Especially so with Dishonored, which combines technological innovation and a distinctive look and feel in a bid to provide the original gameplay that we all crave.
Initial impressions of Dishonored brought to mind Deus Ex and BioShock – a pretty tasty starting point for any new game. Like Deus Ex, it's an open-world mission-based game that bends over backwards to let you navigate it in your favoured play-style, supporting multiple paths, stealth and shooting. Its visuals, meanwhile (dare we utter the dreaded phrase "steampunk"?) and the supernatural abilities your character can use, bring to mind BioShock.
Retro-futuristic plot and environment
In Dishonored, you play Corvo, once the Empress' bodyguard, but falsely imprisoned for her murder after a coup by the corrupt Lord Regent. Corvo is an assassin, bent on revenge for what happened to him, and armed with a raft of supernatural powers and a collection of gadgets. The setting is a fascinating city which, although it exists on a planet other than Earth, is designed to be reminiscent of 19th-century London. So rats, cobbles, sewers and run-down areas juxtapose with heavily protected posh bits.
Emergent gameplay
Arkane Studios explained that as little of its gameplay as possible has been scripted – instead, gameplay systems have been put in place for you to exploit as imaginatively as possible. Bravely, Arkane sets out to create "Mechanics that can be combined in ways we didn't predict," the overall intention being to let you: "feel like you authored the gameplay experience". A lofty ideal, undoubtedly, but one that will excite any gamer of a more cerebral bent.
So what's it like?
Arkane took us through a mission in which Corvo set out to assassinate Arnold Tinch, a barrister accused of falsely claiming people have the plague (which is rife in the city) in order to make a land grab on their homes. We started off in a suitably grimy, run-down neighbourhood, sneaking up and assassinating a security guard, and hiding the body in a dumpster. The entrance to the lawyers' district in which Tinch resided, we soon discovered, was protected by a Wall of Light – a crude electrical force-field. Arkane explained that the game world has just undergone an industrial revolution, leading to the development of crude, Tesla-like technology. If you find blueprints for such technologies, you can make it work on your behalf.
The first behavioural system we encountered was a swarm of rats – which are attracted to bodies but repelled by light and therefore can be used to your advantage. As one of Corvo's supernatural abilities is possession, you can use rats to sneak through tiny openings into inaccessible areas or, for example, to make a stealthy getaway after performing an assassination.
Eschewing this approach, Corvo climbed into a nearby building and worked his way into the lawyers' district, looking through keyholes to see whether rooms were occupied and finding the Wall of Light blueprint. He reversed its polarity using a junction box, so that it would stop pursuers when he was making his getaway. Arkane explained that even when you make a getaway, the manner in which you do so is important: the game tracks the chaos you cause, and adjusts the world and the attitude of the characters you meet accordingly.
Supernatural powers, attacks and adrenalin
As Corvo made his way towards his prey, we saw the game's hand-to-hand combat engine – combining blocks, dodges and punches with the ability to perform jump-down kills – and glimpsed some weaponry, including a crossbow and a revolver. Arkane explained that successful actions filled up an adrenalin meter which, when full, can be cashed in to pull off a single-shot instant kill. And a very small proportion of Corvo's massive inventory of supernatural powers was revealed. Among those powers were a supernatural jump followed by a teleport, adding crucial extra length to a rooftop jump, possession (which can be applied to animals and humans) and, when we reached our quarry, a combination of a sort of energy-blast and slowing of time, which enabled the dispatch of our quarry and his surrounding security guards.
Arkane explained that much of the emergent gameplay comes from being able to chain Corvo's supernatural abilities, which could either be used for puzzle solving (such as getting to apparently inaccessible areas) or prevailing when outnumbered or outgunned (when escaping, we encountered two mini-bosses, which were characters operating pleasingly Heath Robinson Victorian-style mechs).
What do we think?
Dishonored looks very promising indeed. It has bags of personality and a distinctive look (over which Viktor Antonov, something of a legend who worked on Half-Life 2, presides). And it doesn't lack ambition, with what, as far as we can tell at this early stage, a clever new take on the play-how-you-want paradigm (that part of the game is the territory of Harvey Smith, who worked on the original Deus Ex). At the moment, all Bethesda will say is it will be released in 2012, and we would imagine that it will be one of the company's marquee Christmas releases. Once again, Bethesda Softworks looks like it has a game that could map out new boundaries for its trademark action-RPG genre.
• Dishonored is set for release on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2012
The 15 biggest games of winter 2011
Winter is always the busiest time for video game releases, but this year is more packed than most with a vast range of triple-A titles competing for space on overloaded Christmas lists. From the defining conflict between first-person shooter giants Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 to the continuing adventures of Batman, Nathan Drake and Marcus Fenix, hardly a week will go by for the next few months without giant queues outside the world's game retailers. To get you ready, here are 15 of the biggest titles, complete with release dates. Your piggy bank is in for some serious damage.
Keith Stuart
Driver San Francisco – review
PS3/Xbox 360/Wii/PC; £39.99; cert 12+; Ubisoft Reflections
Poor old John Tanner, the cop with the unparalleled wheelman skills, has been through an awful lot over the years. After an attention-grabbing PlayStation debut in 1999's Driver, he saw subsequent iterations of the franchise in which fronts decline in quality, mirroring the disintegration of then-publisher Infogrames/Atari.
By the time Driver: Parallel Lines arrived in 2006, Tanner had been dropped from his own starring vehicle. And now, his big comeback and first appearance on next-gen consoles, Driver San Francisco, begins with his old nemesis Charles Jericho hijacking his own prison transport van and driving it into the side of Tanner's classic Dodge Challenger R/T, leaving Tanner comatose in hospital.
Except, despite the evidence (police radio chatter, Tanner driving his own body to hospital in an ambulance), Tanner wakes up in his miraculously undamaged car, trusty sidekick Tobias Jones in the passenger seat. And he has developed the ability to drive any car in the city, essentially by possessing the drivers (who look the same but utter Tanner's wisecracks).
If you think that sounds like the sort of preposterous premise that would set up some movie almost entirely constructed from car chases, you're on the right track. Driver San Francisco is an homage to movie car chases. And it's an object-lesson in how to resurrect a franchise.
Ubisoft picked it up after Driver: Parallel Lines, along with Newcastle developer Reflections Interactive, and gave the latter creative free rein. The result is that tortuously explained car-hopping mechanic, which brings a fresh new aspect to the well-worn driving game blueprint.
Early missions include raising a driving instructor's heart-rate beyond 180bpm and terrifying a supercilious car salesman by racing the Ford GT he hopes to sell down San Francisco's famously twisty Lombard Street. Later on, you find missions like ensuring two drivers come first and second in a cross-city race, by flipping between the two cars.
The ability to car-hop has spawned countless unusual multiplayer modes, such as vying with others to slipstream an AI-controlled car. Its control-system works beautifully, pulling you out to a birds-eye view with two levels of zoom to allow swift sweeps across the city.
A (mostly) realistic San Francisco has been meticulously recreated in the game, providing the ideal surroundings – it's surely the iconic city for any car chase aficionado. Its steep, jump-enabling roads have been augmented with toys such as car transporters that form mobile ramps.
Driver San Francisco's cars also seem designed to bring out your most hooliganistic tendencies – American muscle cars, original and modern remakes, predominate, along with supercars – although the game's overall level of realism does extend to a variety of awful modern American family cars and endearing oddities such as the Alfa Mito and Fiat 500 Abarth.
Handling, as ever, is of the rear-wheel-drive, tail-out variety, although there's enough steering precision to weave through oncoming traffic (a key skill in the game). Mastery of the handbrake is required, but the cars are much more forgiving than in real life.
Complex structure Single-player campaigns have shortened noticeably in recent years, but Driver San Francisco provides an unfashionably meaty experience, although the actual storyline is quite short and delivered in a rather bitty manner. But there are vast numbers of various missions – including Dares, Pursuits, Races and Stunts – dotted around the city, and every story chapter opens a new part of San Francisco.
Plus, you can buy garages, where you can buy cars and upgrades to Tanner's abilities (his supernatural powers extend to a nitrous-style boost, whose duration and recharge speed can be upgraded, and a ram for battering enemies off the road). You can collect movie tokens (many in places only accessible by boost-jumping) and cash them in for special missions that re-enact San Francisco movie car-chase sequences. And your garages will earn money for you to spend (the currency is technically Willpower, or WP, representing Tanner's attempts to wake from his coma), so you can play at being a garage mogul if that floats your boat.
Ubisoft Reflections, as the developer is now called, has especially gone to town with the car-hopping mechanic online, coming up with a bewildering variety of multiplayer modes that use it to varying degrees of success. There are classic checkpoint races, though – we played one that put us on a dirt-track near the Presidio at the wheel of a fearsomely twitchy Group B Audi Quattro – tag modes and cops and robbers, where one person tries to escape a bunch of pursuers.
You'll have to try them to work out which suit, but more casual users should be able to find some sort of enjoyable multiplayer mode which isn't dominated by the hardcore online racing fraternity. While the likes of those Group B cars and McLaren's MP4-12c should keep the petrol-heads interested.
When the oil runs out and the joy of motoring fades from memory, things like Driver San Francisco will become revered artefacts. If you liked Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit or Burnout Paradise, you should be pretty happy with Driver San Francisco – it's at least as classily constructed, and the car-swapping mechanic plus glorious San Francisco setting (which is sufficiently populated to feel pretty lifelike) add a couple of interesting new directions for the genre.
It's not perfect – the storyline is a bit perfunctory, its free-form style can be illusory when it forces you to perform certain missions and it gets a bit repetitious in the latter stages. But it's a joyous sandbox in which you can drive like a lunatic, in exotic machinery that you might never even clap your eyes on in real life, without hurting anyone. Only video games can provide that experience, unless you're a movie stuntman.
• Driver San Francisco was reviewed on PlayStation 3
EA and Gameloft try new ways to make money from Android games
EA takes Tetris free-to-play, while Gameloft tempts users with a 99p weekly subscription offer
Last week, Apps Blog looked at how mobile games firms Godzilab, Papaya and Gameview were making money from freemium Android games, with all three companies notably positive about the potential of Google's smartphone OS – in contrast to the gloominess of developers focusing on paid games.
Now there are two more examples of publishers trying new models beyond pure paid downloads. What's more, they are two of the bigger beasts in the mobile games world: Electronic Arts and Gameloft.
EA's strategy: it is giving away one of its premium brands for free. Tetris, to be specific. A new version of the classic falling-blocks game is free to download and play on Android Market, complete with a press release quote from Tetris licensor Henk Rogers claiming that going free for Android will ensure "fans can fall in love with the Tetris game all over again". Advertising appears to be the sole source of revenues for the new version.
Gameloft, meanwhile, is turning to a different money-making model: subscriptions. Its new Android HD+ Gameloft Club is hosted on its own mobile website rather than the Android Market store, and charges people £0.99 a week. For that, they get one new Gameloft game to download and keep every week, starting off with two when they first sign up. For now, this is a UK-only club.
The difference in approach is interesting for two companies that have been slugging it out for top-dog status in the mobile games industry since well before apps were a glint in Apple CEO Steve Jobs' eye.
EA's move is the more surprising of the two at first. In that pre App Store era, Tetris was the dominant mobile game worldwide. With tongue firmly in cheek, you might describe it as the Angry Birds of its day: a joke with teeth, since it hints at how the game developed by Finnish studio Rovio has supplanted Tetris as king of the mobile games landscape in the last couple of years.
There are likely to be two main motivations behind EA's decision to make the game free and ad-supported on Android. First, the difficulty of making a lucrative business out of paid games on Android, likely with a side-order of concern about potential piracy.
But second is the recognition that with 550,000 new Android devices activated every day, Google's platform has the scale to support ad-funded models, especially for apps and games that are likely to be used regularly for fairly long sessions. It's the same logic that led Rovio to make Angry Birds free and ad-supported on Android earlier this year, of course.
There are some gripes about the "intrusive" ads on Android Market from players posting reviews of Tetris' free version already, but time will tell if the model pays off – and of course, EA has the scope to offer an in-game payment option to remove the ads.
How does Gameloft's subscription model compare? Logistics made the decision to run the Gameloft Club from the company's own site an obvious one, but it will also give the publisher plenty of data on subscribers and their gaming habits: as well as a tailor-made mailing list for marketing new games that sit outside the subscription offer.
The 99p pricing means many games will be just a third of their regular price, which is a good deal for players as long as the available catalogue is good. Gameloft makes a lot of games every year, so at least there should be no problem with the flow of new titles for subscribers.
It is somewhat fashionable for games firms to grumble about Android's unfriendly climate for paid games. By experimenting beyond pure paid downloads, EA and Gameloft – as well as the numerous firms going down the freemium route – are arguably taking a more positive approach to establishing the real potential of Android as a gaming platform.