I recently chatted to veteran coder Dave Doak (Goldeneye, Timesplitters) about Haze, his forthcoming FPS for the PS3. But we also managed to fit in Halo 3, Wii, "boring" Deus Ex, the state of the industry and the importance of gaming narrative. Hurrah for PR-free interviews.
What is Haze?
Haze is a first person shooter (FPS) based on a new technology that we started building 3 years ago in the transition to the next-gen platforms. It's a war game and we are telling a soldier's story. It's a story with proper character evolution. The game has a nice commentary about the world, basically showing that war is not simply black or white.
How do you keep the combat interesting through the game?
A number of things happen to the character over the fifteen hours or so the single player game lasts for. There is a real evolution for him. But other areas are interesting too, such as the vehicle combat. And we've had to get away from the trap many FPS games fall into by simply adding a new weapon. So we've introduced the concept of (in game energy booster) Nectar instead. Nectar is both visceral reward thing and also part of the story.
You've talked a lot about the importance of story in Haze but how important is a story to an FPS? Don't we just want to shoot stuff?
People are always going to want to shoot stuff and we don't let the story get in the way of that. But the story is critical and the thing that keeps you playing. Haze has a story with a lot of interesting exposition up to the end. It has proper resolution at the end. FPS is a popular genre but we want to make sure players actually give a toss about what they are doing. We put your character in situations that you may feel uncomfortable with. This offers a good commentary on the reality of combat. Soldiers aren't disassociated with what they are doing and it isn't always black and white. Haze remains faithful to the FPS genre but we are trying to add something extra.
Is Haze coming out on 360/PC? And why lead with PS3?
We will be doing 360 and PC versions but we are leading with PS3.Our past experiences (they developed TimeSplitters on PS2) as a company makes us favour PS3 first. Plus if you want to launch a new game and brand then the PS3 is a good place to do it. Obviously on 360 we would come up against the juggernaut that is Halo 3 and we don't want to stand in the way of that. There must be some nervousness in the Halo community though. Obviously it well sell very well but making a third game is tricky. There are people who liked the first game and not the second and vice versa. But both sets of players will want the third game to be for them.
What do you think of the Halo 3 beta?
I really like the high ground map, it feels like a good place to be. But my personal experience is that I suck at Halo 3. Whether that's because I am getting old or whether I am playing people with 200 hours experience of Halo 2 I don't know.
How important is co-op to Haze?
The story part of a game like Haze takes up an enormous amount of development time. Environments or set piece can costs literally thousands of pounds to develop, just for player to rush past them in thirty seconds. This is a real waste and co-op is an incentive to revisit the game. There's a way that people play games which sees them lock themselves in a room until they finish. They will then go and speak to friends who may not have finished the game and can't relate to the experience. We want players to be able to experience a story-based game together and get a shared experience. In Haze other players can join your game at any time and take on one of the four squad based positions. Obviously from a narrative point of view all the story sequences are from Shane's (the lead character) point of view.
How have you found the PS3 to develop for? What are its strengths and weaknesses?
Its strengths are that it has a lot of processing power. The weakness is the processing power is obscure. But everyone is going hit this wall across all platforms as people aren't going to continue making bigger and faster single processors. The technology is not scaleable. Multi-core processors are the future and that is a big challenge. It is hard to recruit people with the right skills as you can't just pick up these skills off the shelf. Our best coders are the people who have learnt the skills with us.
No-one would have guessed 3 years ago that the current situation would be happening with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. The order has gone topsy-turvy. Not many people predicted that Nintendo were moving in the right direction. The Wii is fun in a box. Even my mum wants one. But the games will come on PS3. It isn't going to fade away (check).
Can you talk more about how players will get emotional involvement with this game?
Throughout the game you will be put in a lot of uncomfortable situations that will make you question the motives of the characters and situation that is unfolding. Obviously there are issues with censorship if you take things too far. The act of putting something in a game seems to glorify it as far as censorship is concerned. Elsewhere there's a lot of NPC (non-player characters) reaction in Haze that is far beyond anything we have done before.
Why has the look of the game changed so much since it was shown last year?
The main change has been with Mantel (the dominant global corporation in the game) We realised that these guys were a brand and needed a stronger identity. Also we were scrabbling around for a way to make the weapons better and came up with the concept of Nectar. We also dropped squad orders too. We felt managing your Nectar state was more interesting then managing what your three squad members were doing.
We've had Goldeneye in 1997 and Haze in 2007. Where will FPS be in 2017?
There is something about FPS games that appeals to a fundamental biological part of people. Your whole body is wired in a way for the reflexes needed in FPS games. As for the future you can imagine helmets with eye look controls becoming important. You already get something similar for hardcore driving sims. For consoles the Wii is interesting. It does the job but you can see this is the first outing for it. No-one is going to develop an FPS using the Wii controls that sets everyone's world on fire. But as that technology changes things could get very interesting. It all depends on budgets and how far people are allowed to go. I was always a fan of the Thief games which put RPG story elements on the FPS template. Also Deus Ex. It bored me playing it but I could see what they were trying to do. FPS games tend to be highly technical with a real emphasis on the graphics so you tend to get less innovation. If everyone stopped their graphic whoring for a bit maybe developers could all try and look at something different.
Will there ever be a new Timesplitters game? Maybe as a downloadable game?
If you look at Xbox Live it looks a bit like an invite-only club. It isn't a collection of the best downloadable games around. There is some good stuff there but there are some really dodgy ports as well. But away from downloadable games, will there be a new Timesplitters game? I think so.
Haze is due out on PS3 towards the end of 2007. 360 and PC versions to follow in 2008.
