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Guerrilla Senior Producer Steven Ter Heide does not want to show you a fancy CG trailer for Killzone 3. He does wants to see you in a nice pair of 3D specs, though, to go with your new Sony 3D TV.
After playing 25 minutes or so of a frosty oilrig level, trying out the new weapons and jet pack, I had a chance to talk with Ter Heide about how Uncharted 2 influenced Killzone 3's story, how 3D will improve your aim (sort of), and the pressure of living up to a CG target trailer….
BITMOB: So the Helghast are supposed to be tougher this time around?
STEVEN TER HEIDE: The Helghast — at the end of Killzone 2 you kind of felt like you had the upper hand, the technological edge on the Helghast. You had the better equipment, the more impressive weapons. But at the end of Killzone 2, with the big ships coming in, that's really where the Helghast fleet has been hiding, and they take along all these new technological advancements that they've been developing.
Things like the jet pack, the Wasp gun — that's Helghast technology. They're evolving a lot faster. A lot of these big weapons that you get…because the I.S.A. fleet is now decimated, basically you have to scrounge for weapons and pick up anything that the Helghast have brought along. So there are a lot of different things that they're developing, things like the jet pack, that's completely new, and it changes your gameplay experience.
At the same time, the Wasp gun, the really big guns, the minigun that we start with [in the demo], that's also a Helghast weapon. These big gyro-mounted weapons as well as the jet pack, they go back to what we did with Killzone 1 and Killzone: Liberation. In Killzone 1 you also had these big weapons, and we really wanted to reintroduce that to the Killzone universe. We always take inspiration from our previous games — because Liberation had the jet pack, we said, "That's a really cool feature, let's transport that in." Some of the things we take from our earlier games, but there's a lot more coming in the other levels that I can't talk about just yet.
BITMOB: Were you upset when you saw that Halo: Reach was going to have a jet pack?
STH: I'm never upset about what other games do. If you have to get upset about those kind of things, then you have no life — there's so many other things out there. People have to realize that developing these kinds of games and the features for them, it's not a matter of weeks, it's a matter of months. At the beginning, you start looking at your crystal ball and thinking of ideas, things that you want to generate, and then you start generating them. And at some point you'll find out that somebody else has done the exact same thing, and had the exact same idea. It's going to happen.
We just want to make sure that it's ingrained in the Killzone experience, and it's adding something to what we're doing. And I think the way that we're actually approaching the jet pack is something that is very akin to what we did in Liberation, that's actually where it came from, and it's a completely different experience.
BITMOB: In that same spirit, are there things you've seen in other games and thought, "That could work really well in the Killzone universe as well, if we put our own spin on it."
STH: Absolutely. We play a lot of different games. Recently, the big hitters that were out there with Uncharted 2 and God of War 3, those are really [inspiring] games. Uncharted really pushed the boundaries in terms of storytelling, so I think, well, what really worked about their storytelling and what kind of elements can we take from that and introduce into a first-person action game?
What things could we do, because story, traditionally, is one of the things that we haven't been very good at. A lot of people have flagged the Killzone story as [something] that can be improved; there are some weaknesses there. So let's look at the leader in the genre and see what they do storytelling-wise.
Same time, God of War — bosses on top of bosses on top of bosses — it's awesome in terms of scale and the stuff that they're doing. What can we do in terms of those kinds of elements? So it's more concept or inspirational things rather than one-to-one mechanics. We look at the general concepts of a game and see, OK, can we translate that into something that would mesh with all the other things that we have.
BITMOB: So how did you adapt Uncharted 2's approach to storytelling…does the protagonist have a lot of one-liners like Nathan Drake?
STH: It's not so much one-liners — I think what they did really well is take sort of a more lighthearted approach and not take themselves too seriously. And that's something that people commented on Killzone 2 as well, that the game's very serious, very dark. It's not supposed to be a lighthearted war, but to be so dark and grim about it, it's not going to help either. So we're going to take a more lighthearted approach, and steer away from kind of the grim overtones that are so present in Killzone 2.
It's those kind of things that we take — and of course we're looking at the cut-scenes, and how they did the facial animation, and what kind of things really worked for them — and try and translate that into what does that mean for a first-person game? Obviously we have a lot of different rules to work with, but at the same time that gives us our own twist on their ideas as well.
BITMOB: Are you changing anything about your development process in order to do that, like getting writers involved earlier?
STH: Absolutely. We're always looking at the development process, because, well, the team changes, there's new people coming in, some other people are leaving, there's new pressures, new ambitions that we set for ourselves. We want to make sure that we get the right talent in for those kinds of things, so in terms of storytelling we've gotten in a writer specifically to write the story rather than have some of the guys on the team do it. Let's get somebody fresh in, take a look at the previous games, see what can be fixed, and see where we want to take the story.
And at the same time we know that a lot of the strength of the story lies in your delivery, that's something that obviously came from Uncharted as well. If you've got some proper actors in there and the chemistry between the actors is good, they'll start to kind of improvise on the lines and make the story a lot better, because it feels more natural that way. So we're also looking to bring in a lot of Hollywood talent this time around to make sure that the chemistry is there, and the level of acting elevates the storytelling as well.
BITMOB: Do you worry that you might be ahead of the curve in terms of 3D?
STH: I don't worry about it. It's a great addition to an already great game. First and foremost, the game's got to be good, because 3D is not going to make a bad game any better. But it is going to make a good game even better. I think once people play it — there's a lot of skepticism around there, but what we've picked up so far in terms of the response, from the press as well, is that once you start playing it you do notice that it has an added benefit. It's really awesome to be in the middle of that war. The sense of immersion is greatly increased. Something with Killzone that we always want to achieve is to really put you in the middle of that action
BITMOB: Relative to all the time that goes into making a triple-A title, is it all that much work to make a game 3D?
STH: The work for 3D is relatively small. Obviously, you have to render everything twice, so that's a hit on our tech team, who had to already push the engine to the next level just to create the game that we want to make.
And at the same time there's a couple of design choices, or design problems, that you need to solve. Most of the game works in 3D initially, out of the box, because the game is made in 3D. The 3D world is there, so rendering that is easy. But the things that don't belong in a game world, things like the HUD elements, those you have to work on. What layer of depth do they need? What do we want to do with the crosshair, because the crosshair is one game element that you can't really get rid of? That's something that involves additional work on top of what we're already doing for the normal game. But it's not that much — most of the content, it's just one-to-one.
BITMOB: Guerrilla Managing Director Hermen Hurst just stood up on the stage and claimed that 3D makes the game "easier to aim, easier to navigate." How does that work? Easier to aim, really?
STH: It's something that you have to experience for yourself. As soon as you start playing in 3D, because you're able to read the environment a lot better — and that's just my personal opinion on it — I'm now able to see where things are a lot better.
Obviously, if you played a regular game, it's always kind of a directional trick…we have to make the player understand what the path is, which things are behind which things, so you can understand the level of depth in there. 3D does that for you, so you're able, with these oilrigs that we've got, you're able to see all the platforms that you can reach a lot better than you were in the normal game.
And we have to fix that for the normal game as well, to make that as readable, but 3D adds that additional layer where all of a sudden you can see that that guy is slightly exposed there, he's going to run around there, it makes it easier to predict what's going to happen. I think that helps your aiming — if the predictability is a bit better, it helps your aiming.
BITMOB: Hurst was recently quoted about the enormous pressure the team was under after the Killzone 2 trailer — have you ever commiserated with the Evolution guys, considering that they, similarly, had to make a game that lived up to the original Motorstorm trailer?
STH: Yep, that's always the case if you come out with a CG trailer of what your vision for the title is, you're going to have to live up to that vision. That's a daunting task, because the expectations are sky high. People will [say], well it's just CG, it's not going to happen, the machine's not going to be capable of that. It builds the pressure. But at the same time, when we made that trailer, we made it because we said, this is what we think Killzone 2 will look like.
So it was our own ambition that kind of was our downfall in that respect. The fact that it's in the public domain, and there's actually a fanbase out there that then starts knocking on your door, saying, where's the game, I want to see, and it's got to be one-to-one as good as that. That's obviously something that's a little bit more daunting.
It takes a long time to develop these kind of games, so if you have to remain quiet for the first two years and not be able to respond to all the forum comments where people are going, "Oh, they're not going to be able to pull it off." And you're looking at your screen thinking, "Yes we are! It's almost there!" But you can't say that yet. You can't go out there until it's ready.
And I think this time around, with Killzone 3, we're not showing you CG this time, we're showing you actual gameplay. Kind of a departure for us, but I think this is the right way to do it. To get the game into your hands and have you form an honest opinion about what it's like to play the game, rather than look at a pretty movie.