General_Guy
Power Member
Gladiator A.D.
Entrevista IGN
Next week the Electronic Entertainment Expo kicks off in Los Angeles, where hundreds of new games will be unveiled or shown in updated form. Development studio High Voltage Software, best known to Wii owners for its first-person shooter The Conduit, has not one, but two new games in the works for Nintendo's console. The first, revealed exclusively on IGN today, is called Gladiator A.D. and it's a brutal fighter that takes players back to ancient Rome to do bloody battle. (The other title will be revealed on IGN tomorrow, so stay tuned.) We caught up with High Voltage's CEO and founder Kerry Ganofsky, chief creative officer Eric Nofsinger and design director David Pellas to learn more about Gladiator A.D. We've also posted the first screenshots and concept art for the game below.
IGN: You're just wrapping up work on The Conduit. Tell us about the concept behind Gladiator A.D.
Kerry J. Ganofsky: Gladiator A.D. is our next step in filling the holes in the Wii's library. Players choose a Gladiator, each with unique attacks, behaviors, moves, and weapons. They then battle through a series of competitions, some one-on-one and some much more complex.
David Pellas: The concept for Gladiator A.D. is to recreate the brutal fighting and high tension of the gladiatorial arenas of ancient Rome. We are developing a game that is both fast-paced and tactical in nature. A lot of work into the art style as well as the AI systems to make a game that is not only beautiful to look at, but challenging and well-balanced for all skill levels.
Eric Nofsinger: Gladiator A.D. takes strategic combat mechanics and steps it up a notch with an RPG-light twist and more player options. Players take their gladiator into one of history's most brutal blood sports; the Roman Gladiatorial Circuit. After winning enough favor from the crowd, players can challenge the champions for fame, wealth, and in some cases, freedom stand waiting to the victor.
IGN: Who do you play as?
Eric: Players have the option of playing as one of many gladiators, ranging from the Dark Druids of Amesbury, to the daughter of an Egyptian priest. Special achievements will unlock new gladiators, such as the current arena champion and even the emperor himself. Each character has an intricate story, abilities, and motivations to encourage playing through the game with all the different gladiators.
David: We are going to great lengths to make sure that every fighter not only looks unique, but plays uniquely.
Kerry: We are offering many playable characters with different backgrounds and fighting styles. Each character has a unique storyline and interacts with the other characters in different ways.
IGN: What's the storyline and how are you telling story in the game?
Kerry: The story for each character revolves around the gladiatorial circuit culminating in the Coliseum to determine the grand champion. The characters all have unique motivations to rise to the top. The player can choose to be ruthless or forgiving, affecting the storyline of the character.
David: And the story line is different for each fighter. Some fight for honor, some for revenge, and still others fight for the pleasure of ending an opponent's life. We have a very deep story mode which includes many elements of traditional RPG games, but we are being careful not to bog the player down with endless menus.
Eric: Each of the selectable gladiators has his/her unique story, rival, and plot twists. These stories are earned by unlocking events based on player decision. Choosing to allow your rival to live, rather than putting him to the sword will cause later repercussions. These events are different between the gladiators.
IGN: The Conduit's Quantum3 engine pushes Wii tech. What about Gladiator? What's happening tech-wise with this project that you're proud of?
Kerry: We are using the Quantum3 engine for Gladiator as well. Improvements are continually being made to the engine and we are taking full advantage of each update. Being an arena-style game, we are able to push the graphics up a few notches. Our characters, environments and animations are simply amazing. The AI system is adjustable and flexible which will allow our designers to make each enemy feel unique and challenging.
Eric: Think of Gladiator A.D. as the distillation of everything that made Conduit what it was. With fewer characters in smaller environments we are able to get more detail. In addition, we are utilizing our imposter system to get the crowd reacting to the player's action. Watch them throw objects at the ill-favored gladiator, as well as stand and cheer with large hits, or boo and jeer when the player uses cheap tactics.
David: Gladiator A.D. features the latest version of the Quantum technology. Graphically, we have incorporated several very cool visual effects into the game that are beyond even The Conduit. All of the updates are not simply graphical though, as seen in our Imposter / Instancing technology. This technology allows us to feature a large number of characters on screen with no discernible framerate hit. This means that we can have hundreds or even thousands of models in the scene.
IGN: Is Gladiator a straight-up 3D fighter? What are the gameplay mechanics?
David: Gladiator A.D. is not a traditional 3D fighting game. It's more of a hybrid between 3D Fighting games like Bushido Blade and Boxing games like Fight Night. The action is intense, but the combat is strategic. You need to learn your opponent's weaknesses and think through your attack patterns to succeed. There is no button-mashing here.
Kerry: Our goal is to make the controls intuitive while providing depth to the game mechanics. Customizable weapons, armor and moves give the player a lot of choices of the arsenal to bring into battle. There are quicker, lighter moves that are difficult to block or dodge and slower, heavier moves that will do more damage. A well-timed parry will briefly stun your opponent. There are brutality moves that the player can earn by increasing crowd favor, which plays a big role in a player's victory or defeat.
Eric: Gladiator takes an over-the-should approach to bring the player right into the action. With the Wii-remotes representing the right and left hand, the player can accurately control his attacks, blocks, and dodges. The player has three directional attack; left slice, right slash, and overhead chop. As well as a slower, but devastating power attack for each direction. On the defense, the player can choose to dodge, parry, or block attacks. Holding block will soak a percentage of the incoming damage, but moving your shield or secondary weapon using the analog stick (while blocking) will allow the player to make perfect blocks, which soaks all damage, and causes his opponent to react, allowing for a retaliatory strike. We incorporate slow down of the larger power attacks, similar to the movie 300, to allow players a cinematic attempt to perfect block these attacks.
IGN: How do you control the game? Please be specific? Are you using Wii MotionPlus for anything?
Kerry: The controls use Wii motions with the Wii remote and nunchuck to initiate an attack. There are six basic attacks: Left, right or overhead, both light and heavy. The player can also block or dodge in any direction.
David: We are taking full advantage of the Wii Remote's motion-sensing capabilities for combat. We are very proud of what we have been able to accomplish using just the Wii Remote. That said though, we are currently incorporating the latest version of the Wii MotionPlus firmware and will support it.
Eric: The Wii MotionPlus will be used to add variance to the attacks to break up what could possibly be seen as mechanical attacks. For example, depending on the orientation of the player's wrist when a left slice is initiated, the gladiator will attack his opponents right side from one of three angles, making it slightly more difficult to perfect block player's using the Wii MotionPlus. We are also looking into other applications for optional game-play with this peripheral
IGN: Can you play the game using different control methods?
Kerry: We are all about customization and player choice. Of course!
David: We are evaluating every method of play, but right now we have been strictly focused on providing the best gameplay with the Wii remote and nunchuk.
Eric: Please understand that this does not mean we will not have alternate modes of control, it simply means that we are still evaluating the use of them.
IGN: Gladiators endured a lot of violence. Just how violent is this Wii game?
David: This game is brutally violent, but is not Mortal Kombat. There is no over-the-top spine ripping. Its authentic, not ridiculous. We do have finishers, which can get pretty nasty to watch though.
Kerry: We have execution, humiliation, and brutality moves on top of the devastating attacks. One humiliation has certain tender body parts being stomped on…repeatedly. The life of a gladiator is not always pretty.
David: The camera work is fantastic and really drives home the humiliation that is being inflicted, not to mention the pain.
Eric: While in development, if we don't get a wince out of team mates during the creation of some of the more brutal animations and attacks we take another pass. The player can use the environment as well to throw his opponent into spiked columns, fire basins, and in front of ravenous lions. Each gladiator uses a different set of weapons, some more exotic depending on the character's background and origin.
IGN: What kinds of weapons can you use? Will the environments play a part? And what about outside forces, like tigers? Hey – we saw Gladiator.
David: Did someone slip you an early release?The game has a ton of unique weapons.
Kerry: Each character specializes in a certain weapon style. We have the standard gladius and shield as well as a variety of more exotic weapons such as dual scimitars. The environments will contain hazards that will play into the brutality system.
David: Yes, the environments do play a large role into the combat and yes there will be outside forces that can affect the outcome of the fight. Lions are just the start...
IGN: The movie 300 presented its action very cinematically. Will Gladiator A.D. strive for the same kind of presentation? How so?
David: We love the movie 300 and it is safe to say that we were inspired by the movie. As to the exact presentation, we are looking to provide a very cinematic style of game but to maintain our own vision as to how that is going to be represented.
Kerry: Each arena will present a slightly different take on the overall coloring and lighting of the scene. The details in the characters and environments lend themselves very well to the art style.
Eric: The presentation is extremely important. In the development of this project, each fight needs to have a moment that causes the player to look around and ask, "Did you just see that?!" Whether it is a gladiator barely dodging under a horizontal power attack as the slow-mo kicks in, or when a gladiator is grappled, beaten and thrown into environmental hazards, the intent is to create something that spectators would cheer about, in-game and out-of-game.
IGN: We're included a few soundtrack samples in today's article. Tell us about the music for the game.
David: We want to engulf players in the atmosphere and music is one of the biggest ways to drive a players emotion. The game soundtrack is filled with epic orchestral tracks that are designed to be as much of an integral part of the game experience as the fighting mechanics themselves. We are taking music very seriously in this game. So much so, that we hired Emmy winning composer Jeff Beal to create our music. Jeff is the musical genius behind the music of the HBO epic drama series Rome.
Eric: Jeff's authentic take on Rome and his use of exotic instruments brings the blood and sweat to life in the sands of the grand coliseum.
Kerry: I find the music exotic and captivating. Noah Jurcin, one of our sound designers, is working diligently to put the action together with the music to make it dynamic and adaptive.
IGN: We figure a multiplayer mode has to be in for a Gladiator game. How's it going to work?
Eric: We are implementing a split-screen mode for multiplayer. We currently have it running in either horizontal or vertical configuration for player customization.
David: We do have a full two-player mode like traditional fighting games. Each player chooses a combatant and the fight ensues. We have a ton of unique ways to beef up the experience, but unfortunately we cannot talk about those yet.
IGN: Is there online play mode? If so, how's that work?
Kerry: That certainly would be cool. [Smiles] Seriously though, we are still solidifying our Wii network solution.
IGN: Will you have online leaderboards, etc.? Any other Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection support? What about WiiSpeak support?
David: Now I am not confirming online play, but if we were to offer it we would certainly have some great ground work in place that was generated during the development of The Conduit.
IGN: How far along is the game in development and when do you hope to release it for Wii?
David: We are seven months into full production. We have nearly every environment complete and many of our fighters have been modeled, rigged, and animated. As to the specific release date, we are not announcing anything yet but we are very excited and eager to get the games into the hands of the gamers.
Kerry: The game is a lot of fun to play and our current timetable places us at a Q1 2010 release.
IGN: Any final words for Wii owners seeing the title for the first time?
Kerry: The team has been working very hard on making Gladiator A.D. a fun, brutal and beautiful game.
David: Gladiator A.D. is going to redefine the fighting game genre on the Wii. The game features an unmatched graphic fidelity, enthralling musical score, and strategic combat. This coupled with the familiar setting and intuitive controls are what sets it apart from anything ever released.
Eric: Just like with the Conduit, we want to hear what you have to say about Gladiator A.D. Feel free to drop us a note at [email protected].
Imagens
Concept Art
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