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发表于 2007-5-19 10:18 · 江苏
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三大页的SPONG网对天剑开发人的独家采访：
Heavenly Sword Maker: Tameem Antonaides
http://spong.com/detail/editoria ... mp;plid=&page=1
Interviews// Heavenly Sword Maker: Tameem Antonaides
Link to this: http://spong.com/feature/1010957518 May 2007 16:03
by Svend Joscelyne
You get to relive the days leading up to your death
Tameem AntonaidesNinja Theory is currently working on what could very well be the PlayStation 3’s first killer app in Heavenly Sword, a vast adventure game with the style of a martial arts movie. It features a heroine called Nariko who, cursed with only a few days to live, braves an invading army in a last act of redemption for the killing of her friends and fellow warriors.
With an interesting story and various features that make the experience as cinematic as possible (with even Andy Serkis of Lord of the Rings fame lending a hand to direct motion capture for the game), action fans are sure to lap up Heavenly Sword. SPOnG caught up with the co-founder of Ninja Theory, Tameem Antonaides, to find out more about the developer's latest project.
SPOnG: For those who don’t know, what is the premise of Heavenly Sword?
Tameem Antonaides: *** Redhead. Huge Sword. Next-gen!
SPOnG: How many levels can we expect to play through, and what kinds of locations might we see?
Tameem Antonaides: Snow, desert, forest and lava. Joking aside, it’s actually snow, desert, forest and water. OK, so it may be better if we just show you some screenshots.
SPOnG: Nariko’s ability to obtain different types of weapon using the one sword is an interesting design concept. What kinds of weapons might we see during the game?
Tameem Antonaides: Your sword transforms into one of three stances by merely holding down the shoulder buttons as you attack. Speed stance is the most technical and good for countering, evading, quick combos and juggling. Power stance is great for block-breaking, blocking heavy attacks and knocking enemies into other enemies. Range stance is good for clearing out large numbers of enemies so that you can focus on the tougher ones and also for deflect arrows and sweeping objects at enemies.
In addition you have aerial combos, can pick up and throw pretty much anything in the environment, and use hand-held and mounted cannons in army situations. Games like Ikaruga and Panzer Dragoon Orta have demonstrated that you can have a puzzle element to action and this is an attractive direction for us.
SPOnG: With plenty of close combat action going on, how will the enemy AI react to certain situations and approaches from the player?
Tameem Antonaides: Enemies all respond to the different stances and weapons. Each has a sophisticated one-on-one combat system as well as a higher-level group intelligence. Even in army situations, individual enemies will dive out of the way of a rocket when you fire at them.
SPOnG: Will Heavenly Sword feature continuous gameplay similar to Zelda or will the action be broken up into missions?
Tameem Antonaides: The sword belongs to a deity and anyone who wields it dies within a matter of days. So the game starts with Nariko’s death on the battlefield whilst holding the Heavenly Sword. And then, like A Christmas Carol, you get to relive the days leading up to your death in the form of flashbacks. Once you play through a flashback sequence, you can replay it in random order with any skills you have gained later in the game.
SPOnG: We’ve noticed that the game features a Life Clock during certain parts of the action. Can you explain what this is and how this ties in with the storyline, if it does at all?
Tameem Antonaides: It is mainly a narrative device and won’t limit your game-playing time. We did explore some mechanics to link it into gameplay but it was quite tough to play and felt like quite an alien concept to a lot of people so we dropped it.
We designed them to look and move like in a typical kung fu movie
SPOnG: What are the advantages and pitfalls of working on the PlayStation 3, and what’s been the most memorable (good or bad) moment so far during development?
Tameem Antonaides: It is a complex and powerful console but so was the PS2 at the time, and all the other consoles before it. A good console developer will be more than capable of tapping into its power and getting some amazing performance out of it. PC developers may find it harder as was the case since the dawn of consoles. Some things never change. There’s no need to panic and it is getting easier to develop for all the time.
I remember the weeks leading up to our E3 demo last year. We had just ported the code over from a PC prototype and the game was running at about 4fps and looked more like a PS1 era game. We knew that E3 was coming and we needed to do some serious optimisation. Every day, we got faster and faster and it looked better and better.
It was really only a couple days before E3 that we got it running at full frame rate and looking spectacular. It was an amazing race against time and an incredible effort by all, especially the engine team.
SPOnG: The SIXAXIS controller can be used to change camera angles during certain moves in play. In what other ways are you bridging the gap between gameplay and cinematics, and how much of a challenge is it for you guys to achieve this?
Tameem Antonaides: We use camera cuts on cool moves a lot, but only on the ones that don’t interfere with gameplay. We use SIXAXIS as a look-around feature so you can peek left/right by tilting the controller while you fight.
When you throw any object, you can choose to go into Aftertouch where the camera follows the object from behind as you steer it by tilting the SIXAXIS controller. We have the hero sequences, which are great cinematic moments that are often branching so that they are not all-or-nothing scenes like in other games. We use picture-in-picture where appropriate so that we do not interrupt gameplay with cut scenes.
Even with the group combat AI, we designed them to look and move like in a typical kung fu movie. And then, of course, we create these huge scenes with thousands of enemies that you can blow up with explosives and fight through.
I believe we have some of the best digital performances in any medium, games or film, thanks to the amazing talent and effort that was put in this area by Andy, Weta and the character team at Ninja.
We really have gone whole-hog in trying to give you a great blockbuster feel to the whole game and it has been very, very challenging to achieve what we have.
SPOnG: Heavenly Sword draws a lot of influence from its martial arts style play. What inspired you to take this direction for the game’s action?
Tameem Antonaides: It’s just a genre that has pretty much been ignored by games. Even games based on Kung Fu licenses haven’t captured the feel of the genre. Japanese developers have their own style of anime-based action that they rarely move away from and Western developers mostly avoid combat altogether or reduce it to very basic hack-and-slash. It occurred to us that we could capture this style and make an in-depth and varied combat system that could make you feel like you were playing through an epic martial arts movie.
We stand alone in this genre
SPOnG: When Heavenly Sword was first revealed, many were quick to refer to it as “Goddess of War”. Do you think the comparison with God of War is justified, and in what ways are the two similar or different?
Tameem Antonaides: We both feature cinematic moments and are both third-person action adventures heavy on combat. One of our three stances, the Range Stance, has blades that come out on chains. I think that is why we are compared. We both set out to make a truly cinematic game experience and we arrived at the same solutions. Bear in mind that we had developed our combat engine before ever having seen God of War so it’s a case of synchronicity.
On the other hand, our focus has been much more on making you feel like you are playing through an actual movie, which is why we have collaborated with the likes of Andy Serkis, Weta Digital and Nitin Sawhney. We have fighting game-style encounters that range from one-on-one bosses to large groups all the way up to thousands of enemies. At the core of it, we designed Heavenly Sword to be a game that could only be achievable on next-generation hardware, and in this regard we stand alone in this genre.
SPOnG: Heavenly Sword is stylised very differently to your last project Kung Fu Chaos, yet still retains the same martial arts theme. Are you guys looking to see how many different types of martial arts games you can make or might you look into different themes for future projects?
Tameem Antonaides: We’re pretty good at making combat systems and action now. We made huge strides in each game from No-Combat-Experience to Kung Fu Chaos to Heavenly Sword. I think we can make another huge leap forward and would like to see where this takes us, whether it is martial arts themed or not.
SPOnG: Given the style of your projects, particularly Heavenly Sword, where does Ninja Theory stand with the ‘video games are art’ debate?
Tameem Antonaides: Given the amount of artistic talent in so many fields that are involved in game making, I would say that anyone who says that games aren’t a form of art is bigoted. For me art has to show a unique skill and be engaging. Some art is better than others as are some games.
SPOnG: It must have been pretty cool to have Andy Serkis (Lord of the Rings, King Kong) join the production team. What roles did he play behind the scenes and does he play any characters in the game itself?
Tameem Antonaides: Andy has been invaluable. We at Ninja approached Andy because we knew we lacked the experience in casting, character development and on-set directing. We brought him on as a Ninja and worked with him hands-on on the shop floor. He introduced us to Weta as he said that we were very similar in the way we worked and would get along. He worked closely with me and our writer Rhianna Pratchett to flesh out the story and characters. He cast all the actors and gave them all a crash course in performance capture and what it means for an actor. He directed all the actors for each scene and plays King Bohan, the main villain in the game.
Going out to New Zealand with him, the rest of the cast, and working at Weta for six weeks was an experience I will never forget, but it was really tough. We would be on-set at 7am, work on the scenes till about 6pm, select takes until 9pm, edit until 12pm, and then often write until 1-2am. We would repeat the whole process the next day for 6 weeks with barely any breaks. Like all of us Ninjas, he has invested a lot of his time and creative juices in this project.
SPOnG: Thanks for your time, Tameem. |
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