Ninja Theory is coming to GDC Europe to reveal the games it never released

As part of this year’s GDC Europe Design track, Ninja Theory co-founder Tameem Antoniades is planning to give a talk currently titled “The AAA Design Postmortem.”

The session will detail the 14-year journey of Ninja Theory, creators of standout titles like Heavenly Sword, Enslaved: Journey To The West, and DmC: Devil May Cry, including the sacrifices and concessions made by the studio to stay in the game. Footage of unreleased games, the reason why they didn’t go to market, and the specific sales-related decisions that led to their demise will be discussed in detail.

British developer Antoniades also plans to showcase previously unseen upcoming games, as well as the unrealized sequel to Kung Fu Chaos, and various other pitches that Ninja Theory had to put on ice or walk away from. With the next generation consoles arriving at the top end, just as mobile and indie games have taken hold at the bottom, Antoniades plans to explore whether or not there is room for a third path that turns the “squeezed middle,” where many a good studio has disappeared, into an opportunity to redefine gaming: the AAA indie game.

GDC Europe takes place this year in Cologne, Germany, from Aug. 8-13.

Tameem’s Edge Diary – Part One

It’s March 2003 and I’m sat with some colleagues ready to hear Bungie talk Halo at GDC. Ed Fries, head of Microsoft Games Studios, comes up to us. “We’ve just had our first week sales for Kung Fu Chaos. It’s done 10,000 units.” 10,000 units sounds shit to me. Ed sensing our disdain continues, “That’s good for a week”.

I look at my colleagues. They all have a 10,000-units-sounds-shit expression on their faces.

Rewind to January 2003. We’ve just wrapped up Kung Fu Chaos, our first game at JAM. It was a smooth ride. The best development experience I’ve ever had. Nina, Mike and I founded JAM, scaling up from 3 people working from Mike’s bedroom to 22 people, delivering the game on time and on budget while exceeding all of the quality benchmarks set out by Microsoft. We didn’t even have a crunch period. Contrary to popular opinion everyone we worked with at MS were passionate gamers who really knew what they were doing. The same couldn’t be said for their marketing and PR people who were a bunch of…well, you get the idea.

It started when they first showed an early build of Kung Fu Chaos to the most influential magazines and websites in the US without our knowledge. The game was untextured, had placeholder sound, no effects and the combat was only a rough implementation. From there it just got worse but I’m not going to go through the list of fuck-ups because it drives me nuts just thinking about them. However, as the first reviews come in, things are looking up: 92%; 4 out of 5; 9 out of 10; “One of the best games I’ve ever played” said Penny Arcade; then the US’s biggest print magazine score it 50%. Scratch record. “I want to punch this game in the throat”, they say as they take turns to bash it for being racist. Subsequent reviews also decide to take the moral high ground.

A bunch of gaming magazines, newspapers and radio stations send us mails to offer support and defend the game. The PR guys respond with: “Our goal is to make sure no one talks about this. If we stop them from writing about the game we win”. So only those who think the game is racist are given a voice and the game is left to rot on the shelves with no marketing or PR support. Yet the message we get from MS is that they are interested in a sequel. Ever since we gave them a concept trailer for Kung Fu Chaos, MS have wanted developers to give them trailers to pre-visualise the games they are publishing. We start creating a design doc and a concept trailer for the sequel called Kung Fu Story.

Forward to GDC 2003 again. After hearing the sales figures we know that a sequel isn’t going to happen even though MS is saying otherwise. Our options are looking grim. With no sequel in sight, we have two choices: create a brand new IP or do a work-for-hire gig. Our Kung Fu Chaos engine was really only suited for Kung Fu Chaos and the cost of re-engineering it for a license would mean that we wouldn’t be able to compete with those who specialise in low-cost licenses.

Creating a new IP is looking grim too: our market research shows that sequels and licenses dominate the end of a console cycle. Even if we pull off a new IP, the investment we would have to make on an updated engine would probably only last the one game in the current console lifecycle.

What our research does show is that 3rd person action adventures are big but the first generation games in this genre are always shit. Nina, Mike and I originally came from Sony Cambridge, a studio that specialised in 3rd person action games and so we would be treading familiar ground. If we start now, a full year or two before most developers even think about next-gen development, we would have the time to craft a great game and release it early in the next-gen console cycle. Perhaps we could pull off a Halo.

As expected, several weeks after our presentation to MS, they say no to Kung Fu Story but we are already busy designing a next generation original IP codenamed Heavenly Sword. And so begins this diary of the dreams and nightmares that define next-gen development…

Rhianna Pratchett talks Heavenly Sword, Sony, and Andy Serkis

 Rhianna Pratchett talks about writing one of the PlayStation 3’s premiere.

Why Heavenly Sword Matters!

The PlayStation 3 needs good, exclusive titles. So when Heavenly Sword came out, it had a lot riding on its shoulders. Luckily, the game delivered a thrilling action experience, complete with incredibly well-written and -acted cutscenes featuring the work of WETA digital and benefiting from both the motion capture and voice acting of Andy Serkis, also known as Gollum.

The game stars Nariko, a woman who is given the task of protecting a blade that her clan worships and keeps safe, and Kai, her young friend who hasn’t been quite right in the head since some traumatic events in the past. The relationship between the two women and the rest of the clan, as well as the evil King Bohan, make up the bulk of the cutscenes.

Still, all those characters needed something to say, and Rhianna Pratchett was the mind behind the script for the game. In the past she has written the superbly-funny Overlord, and now with Heavenly Sword she’s proven that you can make an action game better by adding complexity to the characters, while at the same time keeping her trademark humor in the dialog. Rhianna was gracious enough to talk with us about writing Heavenly Sword, poking fun at Sony, and new content for Overlord.

Rhianna Pratchett is one of the writers trying to keep story and characterization strong in gaming, and as always her insights are both fresh and amusing.

Ars Technica: When you began writing Heavenly Sword, how much information did Ninja Theory give you? They knew it was going to be an action game, obviously, but do you have outlines for each character, or did you create Nariko and company from scratch?

Rhianna Pratchett: There was actually a first-draft script in place when I came on board, which is as rare as rocking-horse poo in the games industry, it really is. So Nariko, Kai (the two main characters in the game), et al., were already there, although not all the characters had names, and most of them didn’t really have properly defined journeys, relationships, foibles, etc. So character-wise there were some good bones then and some goddamn fantastic concept art!

My job was to brainstorm the story, characters, relationship, themes, etc. with Tameem Antoniades (creative director) and Andy Serkis (dramatic director) and then write up profiles, revise story documents, and completely rewrite the script (without changing the basic spine of the story too much) with those ideas in mind. From that the cutscenes were drawn and visually scoped out.

I remember you saying that you finished Heavenly Sword before Overlord. Once you’ve turned in your finished script, are you still involved with the game? Is there a sense of “Oh, my job here is done,” or do you continue to follow the development process?

Script-writing for a game is an incredibly flexible process. It has to be due to the nature of games development. So the script was really written in sections as the level design got locked down and then folded together, and polished up all nice and fancy for the outside world. Even a linear game does not mean a linear script-writing process. You’re always going back and forth tweaking this and that in line with design changes.

After I finished the main script, I also worked with the level designers to scope out and write the level dialogue—everything that occurs in a level but does not include cutscenes or ambient stuff. When it came to the combat chatter we needed to hire another writer (Andrew Walsh) to help me out since there was a huge volume of dialogue that needed to be created. It also all had to not only change in tone and delivery depending on the actions of the player during the combat but be pretty much unique from encounter to encounter. I think the technical term is “shitloads.”

Even after all that there were still other writing tasks to do, such as rewrites, on-screen text, chapter headings, even weird funky bits like the plaques in Bohan’s armory. So finishing the main script was by no means the end of my involvement.

When voice acting goes tear-inducingly wrong!

AT: When we talked to Susan O’Connor, she didn’t like talking about what could happen once her words hit the mouths of voice actors in some instances. Do you get nervous before seeing a final game to see how the developers took your script and translated it into cutscenes and dialog? It must have been easier knowing someone like Andy Serkis was involved with bringing your words to life.

I’ve worked on a lot of titles, so I’m only too aware of how wrong—how tear-inducingly wrong things can go at the voice recording stage. Been there, heard that, cried myself to sleep.

Personally, I’ve found that getting involved in the VO directing whenever possible can help a lot, and not just for my control-freak sensibilities. Obviously it allows me to help steer things and offer advice about what I believe to be the right direction for a story or character, just as a movie writer/director would do. But, as I think I mentioned to you before, it’s also incredibly beneficial to have someone there that knows the entire script line for line.

However, it’s not always possible, and sometimes you really can’t get all Charlton Heston “from my cold, dead hands” about it. You’ve just got to let your baby go. Wave it off with a snotty hankie and a tear in your eye, and just hope it doesn’t come back upside down and on fire.

Of course, it’s a lot easier when you know you’re sending your baby off into the hands of folks like Andy Serkis and WETA. Andy had been involved in the development of Heavenly Sword for a long time, and he was fantastically enthusiastic about the project. I also met with some of the other actors beforehand when we had a full script read-through pre-WETA, and I got a chance to talk to them about their characters and feel confident that they would do a good job, which clearly they did! So, yes, the hanky was definitely drier!

Let’s talk about Nariko and Kai for a moment. Nariko is really defined by her relationships: with her father, Kai, her clan, and even who she believes she is. Kai is much odder, and she’s a very funny character, but at the same time there is this core of loyalty and bravery in her. It seemed like these characters were more complex than what we usually get in action games, and it was a very welcome change from the norm. Do you find that lately, developers are more willing to put a better story with more compelling characters in action titles? Do you think a strong story and characters can help action games stand out from the crowd?

The game focuses on Nariko’s journey and obviously that is a mental, almost spiritual one, as well as a physical journey. Nariko has had to live her whole life under a curse, under constant suspicion from much of her Clan that, by the time we start the game, has manifested into downright hatred. She has to find a way to cope with this as well as her duties as a stoic, fearless warrior. It’s unsurprising that this gives her very little time to be a human being.

Nariko is much more conflicted than your average action hero

A constant question for me when helping create Nariko’s character was “What happens when the mask slips”—what happens when you listen to all those little voices—and not only listen to them, but give them body and form, and let them take you over.

Nariko seems very single-minded on one level, but inside there’s a lot of churning emotions going on. When she makes the decision to wield the Heavenly Sword, she knows she is sacrificing her life, but what she doesn’t know—and what she discovers through the course of the game—is that what kills her actually allows her to live more completely than she has ever done before.

Gamers seem to have warmed to Kai a great deal, which I’m very glad about. Writing younger characters is always hard, even more so when they are, let’s say, “special.” They’re a fine line between cute craziness and just plain annoying. She’s a funny little creature, and Lydia Baksh does a great job with her. Kai’s relationship with Nariko is quite central to the story as well. Kai doesn’t care what the Clan thinks of Nariko—she simply loves her without question. In turn, Nariko would do anything for Kai—and does.

I do think that a strong story and especially strong characters help action-adventures a great deal. I love developing characters… I even love the evil ones (actually I especially love the evil ones). I don’t think there are enough video game stars—even well-known ones—that are really fully rounded characters. Lara Croft started out as nothing more that a pretty avatar for the first couple of games, and I’m not really sure she’s ever been able to better herself. True, there was more of a concerted effort in Legend, but that was seven titles in, so rather late in the day!

Maybe that’s enough for some people, but it’s not enough for me.  I want my game characters to be lovable, hateful, flawed, neurotic, confused, bitter, twisted, dark, regretful, wrong, righteous—full of guile, pathos, quick wit, brokenhearted and open-hearted—human.

Although maybe not all in one character! That would be rather a tall order!

Evil characters and good dialogue

AT: I’m glad you brought up the evil characters. There is a line about Bohan’s genitals that was just… it was out there. Do you have fun writing a character who is that crazy? It almost made him scarier, once you were done laughing.  You get a sense he had a terrifying personal life when it came to chasing his pleasures.

The great thing about Bohan is that I could write him with Andy’s voice in my head. It sounds a little freaky, but it’s actually extremely useful. Andy did a great job in bringing out Bohan’s craziness and also the fact that this guy might seem mad as a box of frogs, although almost sane compared to his generals, but he is also extremely, extremely, dangerous and unpredictable. And you know that anyone who would get involved with Whiptail (a half-woman, half-snake General) on a personal level has some questionable tastes.

Andy Serkis (right) and Stephen Berkoff (left) show off the motion-capture look.

Kai’s line about hitting an enemy soldier in his “weak point for MASSIVE DAMAGE” was a great touch. Were you scared that SCEA wouldn’t have a sense of humor about that infamous quote? Did they groan when they first heard it?

We actually didn’t think that line would make it in there, so I’m glad to know it has. It was just a bit of fun really… a kind of wink to the hardcore gamers.

Wait, so even after the game is up, you’re not sure of what actually made it into the final title? It seems odd that you don’t see a final, approved script.

There are always last-minute changes for all manner of reasons, and as an outside contractor, it’s not always possible to keep up to date.

Well, the story and script are only a small part of what makes a good game, so after you’re done writing and the game comes out, do you play the title to see how the story and cutscenes work with the play itself?

I actually got to see a lot of the cutscenes online as they got released, and obviously I’d seen most of the raw WETA footage. I haven’t had a chance to play the full game yet… as I’m still trying to get hold of a PS3. I’ve managed to play the Whiptail fight at a friend’s house. That made me smile; Race Davies is fab, and she’s got a fantastic voice. I’d love to write for her again in the future.

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Devil, Angel, Pioneer: The Truth Behind Devil May Cry’s Unlikely Saviour.

Ninja Theory’s Tameem Antoniades takes on the internet…

Ninja Theory’s Design Boss Tameem Antoniades has learned just what it means to be demonised. In steering the reinvention of Capcom’s Devil May Cry (DMC), now’s his time to prove it’s really a blessing in disguise.

We’re going to read you some pearls of wisdom from the internet, starting with the cryptic: “DMC DOESN’T NEED A F**KING REBOOT.”

Nothing needs a reboot unless that reboot works. Look at Batman. The parallel to the Batman reboot was Catwoman. Nobody needed that, but when it works it can change the course of a franchise in a positive way. It can make it survive.

The decision as to whether DMC needed a reboot or not: it’s irrelevant what my opinion is because that decision was Capcom’s. They felt it needed something, which is why they not only decided to take a bold step and reinvent it, but to give it to a non-Japanese dev. They had their reasons and that was our mandate. They wanted a reinvention – a reinterpretation – and that’s what we went ahead and did.

Much of the argument surely rests on whether DMC4 was considered a dead end for the series. Was it?

There was a feeling from some of the guys at Capcom that it could continue the way it was, but that there were certain tropes that were being – I don’t know how to put this… I think when you compare it to where a lot of games have arrived at – Western games in particular, where levels feel more open and the world feels more grounded – it felt like DMC was a little stuck in its ways. It needed to be let loose. That’s what we were told as part of our mandate to reinvent it.

At the time, Inafune-san was at Capcom and suggested an idea that we should hold on to – that if it was a movie released here in the UK, or in America, what would that movie look like? That defined the approach we took. Because if you took DMC the game and literally translated that into a movie, it wouldn’t really work.

Could some of the animosity come from your strong identity as a studio?

We’ve pushed a strong philosophy in the past, which is that stories matter. That can be irksome to a lot of players. Even recently, David Jaffe was proclaiming that stories have no place in games. I think there is a place for stories in games, and when it works it elevates the experience. But there’s an assumption that if you’re going to put stories in games, other parts of the games have to suffer, which I don’t think is the case at all.

It’s also that we started off as an Xbox developer, moved over to PS3 exclusively, then moved back to multiplatform development. That, to some people’s minds, is a horrendous betrayal. It’s like moving back-and-forth between Arsenal and Tottenham. But, for an independent developer like us, our interest is in making games and trying to reach as many people as possible. We have no loyalty to bits of plastic and circuitry.

More internet: “They won’t have a chance of selling five million units.”

Usually the worst creative crimes are made when you’re trying to make a game for someone else – some perceived demographic that, in all likelihood, doesn’t actually exist. From my point of view there’s only one way to try and make a successful game, and that’s to make the game you want to play. A game that everyone involved is proud of. So from that point of view I don’t care if it sells a thousand units or two million units. I believe the time you spend making something has to be worthwhile. You’ve got 20 productive years of work in your life; if you’re gonna spend ten or 15 percent of it on something, make it worthwhile.

“I’m sceptical of how this game will perform. How much it will tear, how the framerate will hold up.”

I think that comes from the fact that Heavenly Sword didn’t hit 30fps at times. Then, when we moved to Unreal, we pushed Enslaved out in half the time of Heavenly Sword, if not less. And that one had some framerate issues which we regret; we should have held on and refused to release the build to the publisher until we’d hit that framerate. On this game we’ve got a commitment all round that we’ve got to hit it. And we’ve made sure that the game runs at a good solid rate all through development. So I don’t think that’s an issue. The people who’ve been testing the game say it’s really responsive, and these are people who know DMC.

Why did you use Unreal rather than MT Framework?

There was a brief discussion about using MT Framework, but it came down to the amount of time we set ourselves to make this game. We didn’t want to spend a year learning a new engine. We’re already deeply experienced with Unreal. That just meant we could hit the ground running and focus on the gameplay and content without wrestling with technology.

Did you decide at the outset to ignore the vocal minority? People who often sound more informed than they are?

When we announced the game, all we released was the trailer and a 2D portrait art of Dante. That’s when the bulk of the criticism came in. We hadn’t actually demonstrated any in-game video at all. So a lot of that’s just hot air at that point. You can’t steer the game project based on that.

People form a relationship with a series, and if that gets broken or bastardised, people get upset. That’s understandable. So I don’t dismiss it. We’ve all been there: the new Star Wars stuff, it’s changed a lot but not added anything. I think we’ve added stuff. We’ve added interesting things to the series that you wouldn’t have got from Capcom Japan. If we do our jobs right, you’ll get a good, fun game with interesting angles that bring something fresh to DMC.

Do you regret the way Dante was unveiled to people?

I don’t know what would have happened if we’d have revealed him now. Would we have got the same level of vitriol? I don’t know. But it’s good that we’ve got the bulk of it out of the way and can move on. Until you meet that character and see him, and hear him talk, and see the scenes he’s in, you don’t get him. He’s not a comic book pin-up in the traditional sense.

How about this theory that he’s modelled on you?

What can I say? He’s a decade and a half younger than me, way better looking… The only thing he’s got is black hair. And he’s male. I didn’t design the character. I didn’t go to our designers and say, “I think it’s a really good idea if we make the new Dante look like me, because I want to be in the game.” They’d laugh at me. They’d throw me out the window.

“Only DMC fans are going to buy this. It’s not going to win a new audience.”

I don’t know if that’s true. So far it’s the DMC fans who have been vociferous about not wanting to play it. [Laughs] It’s the people who haven’t been interested in DMC since the first ones who are starting to get interested. But I’m not a marketeer. Philosophically, the way to make a successful game is to believe in what you’re doing, then hope that sales follow. I’m not trying to design around what I think people will want. That’s where you get into creative bankruptcy. That, more than anything, will kill a series.

“It’s never going to win over Bayonetta combat-wise, so why even try?”

We never set out to beat Bayonetta in combat. We’re aiming to make the best DMC in the series. We want our combat to be better than the rest, because we take pride in our work. We want it to be accessible; to have all the arcane hardcore depths that you’ve seen in DMC.

When Itsuno-san from Capcom and his crew come out, we spend days going over the combat system, and things they’ve added to previous entries that you won’t find on GameFAQs. But in terms of feel, we’re aiming this as something that’s like a movie. Something with rules that make sense; that has characters that feel real, that you empathise with. For that reason, we’re not looking at Bayonetta.

Are you trying to prove something to yourself as a designer with this game?

DMC is a hardcore game, and that’s where it should stay. Itsuno-san said the general philosophy of DMC is that the more you give it, the more you get out of it. In DMC, the philosophy is to constantly give you harder modes of play, more depth and experience, and more chances to excel. That doesn’t mean you have to exclude everyone else.

And I think it should be a hardcore story. Every game we’ve done so far has been a Teen-rated game, and this one’s not. I get frustrated that, despite there being violence and blood in gaming, the stories are all so very safe. Your average novel or play has the prerogative to push boundaries and break ground in some fashion, but in games that seems to be ignored. So that’s what I’d love to do with DMC.

There was a lot of collaboration involved in Enslaved. Writers, musicians, actors, techniques… Is that the case here?

We have music artists involved from different genre spaces who are working with us. We’ve taken our performance capture techniques further. We’re working with Giant Studios who shot Avatar. We’ve got head-mounted cameras, and we’re capturing the motion of the cameramen as well, so what we shoot on stage we get in the game. Alex Garland is story consultant, so although I’m writing I’m still under his consultation.

Have you binned all the character archetypes from earlier DMCs? Dare we say it, the massive tits?

If it’s true that the average console gamer is over 30 – which I totally believe – then you can’t use those cheap tricks to titillate people into wanting to buy your game. I’ve nothing against big tits – I’d rather have my head resting on a pair right now – but if you’re going to try and stimulate someone on different levels, there’s better ways to do it. If you look at the stars in movies, the women people find really attractive are often not the ones with the biggest tits. You’ve got to be attractive on a different level.

We did that in Enslaved with Trip. People loved her, not because she had big breasts and high heels, but because she felt like someone who could be your girlfriend. That to me is more attractive than a prostitute walking around with a big gun. Not to demean prostitutes – it’s a valid form of commerce.

The game seems full of ideas. How smoothly are you able to iterate them when dealing with Japan and the US?

Something I believe deeply is that the path to success is strewn with failure. The more you can close off dead ends, the more chance you have of making something good. So we’re quite happy to try as much as possible, as quickly as possible, before we get to the truth. And Capcom are very good at allowing us to do that, to make mistakes.

One of the ideas that came out of that was this idea of The Malice, the world being a character. It was this idea of explaining why the demon doors appear every time you have a fight. How do you explain that trope? One of our artists had the idea of the world being alive, trying to block you. Then we extended that into traversal, so you can pull out bits of the environment and move through it. We developed that idea, pushed it out, did some tests, showed it to Capcom and they liked it. In other instances we’ve done the same and it’s fallen flat. But that’s the nature of things. Nobody got fired, it’s part of the process.

Were you keen to keep all those aspects separate? It’s one thing to have a novel traversal mechanic, quite another to mix it with a combat system.

We’ve been trying to integrate combat and traversal and Malice and all those bits into each other. We’re trying to make a world that feels like it’s contiguous and not separated out into mini-games. DMC’s a combat game and that’s what it’s always going to be about. But if we can add some variety around the sides, I’m all for that.

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DmC Devil May Cry: Ninja Theory & Capcom Interview

DmC Devil May Cry is looking better every time we see it in action, so we caught up with Ninja Theory and Capcom to discuss Dante’s latest outing.

DmC – Devil May Cry is bold project for both Ninja Theory and Capcom. The demon-slaying escapades of Dante hold a special place in the hearts of many gamers, and the fan base is so devoted, that any game attempting to reboot the franchise needs to be better than acceptable; it needs to exceed expectations.

No pressure then, but after chatting with Ninja Theory’s creative chief Tameem Antoniades and Capcom’s lead producer Alex Jones, it’s clear the studio is treating Capcom’s IP with the utmost care, and then some. Read on to discover why DmC could set a new benchmark for the series.

The specific plot of DmC has been shrouded in mystery so far. Would you consider the game to be a direct reboot, or does it fall in line with the series canon?

Tameem Antoniades: It’s a re-birth of the series that doesn’t adhere to the original canon but draws heavily from it. If you’ve never played a DMC game before, you can get stuck right in from the beginning with our game. If you have, then consider this an alternate take on the story.

Alex Jones: We’re essentially building on the gameplay foundations laid by the previous four games, whilst at the same time taking the series in a fresh direction.

We’ve seen a few instances of DmC’s younger Dante in combat. In an industry where intricate brawlers like Bayonetta exist, do you feel in any way pressured to match the intensity and depth of that game, or indeed the brutality of Devil May Cry 3?

TA: The short answer is “yes”. Intricate combat, depth, variety, and brutal challenges are the minimum we want to achieve. We also want to add new play styles in combat involving aerial combat and instant switching between several weapons.

I believe the combat should be a brutal expression of style so we are trying to give the player the tools and method to express themselves.

On top of those foundations, we are adding gameplay elements that complement combat such as elaborate traversal, a more dynamic world and a videogame story, which hopefully for once, treats us like sophisticated adults.

Can you give us an insight into how Dante handles in the game, and which of his previous Devil May Cry iterations he falls most closely in line with, and why?

AJ: We have of course taken inspiration from all of the previous games, but Dante in DmC has very much his own feel. Dante is young and relativity inexperienced in DmC, with a real anger and sense of rebellion about him. As a result Dante’s fighting style is more that of a street brawler than the choreographed fighter seen in previous games.

In the most recent trailer, we saw Dante reverting back into his ‘old Dante’ guise. In what ways can you give us an insight into this mechanic?

TA: What you’re referring to is Dante’s Devil Trigger. When Devil Trigger is activated in DmC, Dante gains in power and speed, while all of the Demons in the current encounter are lifted from the ground and suspended mid-air ready for some aerial pummeling. The longer you stay off the ground, the more damage and longer your Devil Trigger lasts. It’s a test of skill.

AJ: Visually what you’re seeing when Devil Trigger is activated is Dante tapping into his inner devil. Even though a large part of the DMC fan base are spitting blood and want clarification on the matter of hair colour, I don’t wish to give away any spoilers at this point.

We’ve also heard recently that DmC will take place across parallel worlds. What will this mean for the plot and gameplay? What freedom does this feature give you to explore characters and events from across the series?

TA: There is a parallel world behind the real world, a demon dimension called Limbo superimposed over our human one. From here, the demons are instigating an invasion, controlling all parts of society behind the scenes.

Dante is able to go into Limbo and see the truth behind the illusion. He can see the wretched, malignant version of our own world and take on the demons.

What specific qualities did Capcom see in Ninja Theory that might have landed you the DmC job? Did you have to produce a proof of concept, or prototype to seal the deal?

TA: I think one of the key factors that attracted Capcom to us was our experience in telling stories through games. They told us that they wanted to give Devil May Cry a refresh, a new lease of life and part of that was to give the series a more contemporary feel.

As a studio we have a real focus on narrative and a belief that you can create evermore immersive game experiences by pushing storytelling techniques. I also think our distinct art style was one of our attributes that Capcom could see fitting within the Devil May Cry franchise.

Bosses have always been such a huge part of Devil May Cry’s novelty. Can we get an insight into what you have done to ensure that these encounters will still in the mind?

AJ: We’re taking traditional Devil May Cry boss fights and thinking about them in the context of Dante’s new abilities and our dynamic, surrealistic world.

By doing this we’ve come up with new ways to think about boss battles, particularly in terms of what tactics are needed to succeed in them. This has been a particularly deep area of collaboration with Capcom.

Overall, what or who would you say have been your biggest influences when creating DmC, and why? How did these inspirations help guide the project?

TA: I’d actually say that the most powerful influence has come from the team at Capcom that we’ve been partnering with. Working with people like Hideaki Itsuno, Director of Devil May Cry 2, 3 and 4, has enabled us to tap into a real wealth of Devil May Cry knowledge and development experience, especially in combat.

On the story side, Alex Garland, who I worked with on Enslaved has really inspired me personally and has continued to mentor me through this game. On art, Alex Taini, our visual art director and Stuart Adcock our technical art director always inspire me with their bold vision.

Performance capture has become Ninja Theory’s bread and butter. In what ways has Capcom encouraged you to explore that side of things again in DmC?

TA: Performance capture is a technique that we really believe in and use to push the way we tell stories in our games. It’s the driving force behind the DmC narrative. By using our own techniques and technologies we’ve been able to take things a step further from Heavenly Sword and Enslaved.

We capture voice, face and body simultaneously, a technique we pioneered in gaming. In addition, we are also capturing all on-set camera motion for a more realistic feel.

This is also the first game I’ve written, cast and directed myself. If i do my job right, you should be seeing a story of Dante that breaks the myth that all videogame stories are trite and will never stand up to the best that theatre and film have to offer.

We shot DmC at Giant Studios in LA, where Avatar was shot, using a lot of the Avatar crew and similar technology. As you say, utilising performance capture is something that we’ve become known for, so Capcom were of course keen that we used our expertise in this area for DmC. They pretty much let us get on with it.

We’ve read that Capcom was prepared for a negative reaction to new Dante. Can we expect similar bold decisions to be made with other aspects of the game; narrative, gameplay, motion control and so on?

TA: We were all prepared for a negative reaction to an extent. Capcom moved one of their much-loved franchises to an external studio for it to be taken in a new direction. It would be naive to think that there wouldn’t be a reaction.

But we’re happy and we have the full support of Capcom with our chosen narrative and gameplay direction. This approval alone should assure people that although this is a re-birth, with some bold decisions being made, we are not just a bunch of monkeys.

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Enslaved: Odyssey to the West Wins Best Videogame At Writers’ Guild Awards

Best Videogame

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West – Alex Garland and Tameem Antoniades

Exploring Enslaved with Tameem Antoniades

Video games are no longer about dots on the screen and beeps coming from your speaker. Game developers can now tell dynamic stories with stunning graphics, stellar voice acting and true to life motion capture. Enslaved: Odyssey to the West from Namco Bandai is a game that captures all of these qualities to make for a beautiful action packed experience, which should stack up alongside ‘game of the year’ selections for 2010.

Enslaved was developed by Ninja Theory and written by Tameem Antoniades (Chief Creative Ninja) and Alex Garland (writer Sunshine/28 Days Later). The lead character of Monkey was brilliantly voice acted and motion captured by Andy Serkis (Gollum in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy).

The following is an interview with Tameem Antoniades touching on the writing aspects of Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.

SCRIPT: Enslaved opens with a spaceship damaged and on a crash course to a post apocalyptic New York City – how did you go about establishing the two main characters of Monkey and Trip and their motivations in the opening act?

TAMEEM ANTONIADES: We already had the backgrounds for the characters and the world fleshed out and we wanted to start the game with a bang. It is more important in games to do this – to hook and motivate the player to keep playing. In Enslaved, the opening level just establishes the character archetypes, with Monkey being the brute and Trip being the weak female. Once the archetype is set, there is plenty of space later in the story to subvert expectations.

The motivations are simple: she wants to escape, he wants to escape, she needs an escape pod, he needs one and thus an immediate tension is established. Once they crash land, she enslaves him with a slave headband and orders him to take her home and the set up for the rest of the story is complete. Simplicity is always on our minds as you have to keep the player involved as much as possible and so having long scenes runs against that.

SCRIPT: Enslaved is based on an old Chinese novel called Journey to the West – what challenges did you face adapting the story into a future/science fiction setting?

ANTONIADES: We were very liberal with our interpretation so we didn’t find it difficult at all. We simply replaced the demons with mechs, the magic with technology and built on the sense of adventure and companionship you had in the novel.

SCRIPT: The character Trip is the emotional backbone of the story – she commands Monkey and drives the story yet we never get to play as her in the game. Was Trip always so determined and technically savvy and did your development team ever want to make her playable in the game?

ANTONIADES: No, we never wanted her to be playable. To make her playable would mean making her an action hero. It was far more interesting to us to explore the relationship between Monkey (you) and a non-playable character. Can you have a complex emotional bond with someone who to all intents and purposes, is artificial? It’s been done in movies but not really believably in games.

SCRIPT: The game has been praised for its story – yet an outsider may perceive Enslaved as simply: ‘get Monkey & Trip from point A to point B’. How did you structure the chapters or ‘acts’ to convey an engaging tale in such a minimal approach?

ANTONIADES: We invested a lot in performance capture, that is, capturing the facial expressions, voice and body motions of multiple actors on set simultaneously. This is no different to shooting a film – it stands or falls on the performance of the actors. That’s what the game is really about: what you can see in the faces and eyes of the characters rather than what they are saying. I personally think storytelling works best in games when the plot is simple and the depth is invested in the characters

SCRIPT: Monkey is brutal in a fight yet tender around Trip who is beautiful. He becomes her protector and savior but always keeps his distance – there must have been debates back and forth as to their dynamics in the story – can you give us a sampling of what things were most debated in the writing process?
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

ANTONIADES: Well, Monkey is meant to be brutally tough and pragmatic to the point where he is almost inhuman. We originally had him punching slaves in order to reach his escape pod. Alex Garland (co-writer) thought this just made him unlikeable and he was right. So we talked it through and decided that at his heart, he has to be a good person if we are to empathise with him.

We also had him throwing a screaming fit once he was enslaved. Again, Alex suggested that a character of real strength, a real Alpha male, would be more calculating and calm, that throwing a fit would be a sign of weakness, not strength. These kinds of debates happened all the way through the story.

SCRIPT: Monkey and Trip have to fight robots and transverse difficult landscape until finally facing the antagonist of the story. Since we don’t really ‘see’ the bad guy until the end – what conventions did you use in the story to engage the player to continue on through to the end of the game?

ANTONIADES: The story follows the traditional three-act structure. The chapters themselves were also designed with their own three-act structure in mind. In fact, my advice to Alex was always to write the script as if it were an action movie and we’d figure out which parts would be interactive and which would be cut-scenes. The genre we followed was that of a road movie, where the relationship drives the story forward. The physical journey is secondary to that and almost irrelevant.

It felt wrong to cut-away from the main characters to show the villain. As a player, you shouldn’t have more knowledge of the enemy than Monkey himself otherwise you would feel disconnected with his ID and that would take you out of the immersion.

SCRIPT: What advice would you give someone who is trying to break into the video game industry writing for video games?

ANTONIADES: It’s tough to break in. I think realistically, finding a way in as a designer and getting involved in writing as you develop as a designer is probably the right way. There is not a lot of respect for story and writing in general in video games but that is starting to change.

However, there is still mistrust from both the gaming and writing communities of each other’s craft and so I think it pays to try and get involved from both angles. The only reason Alex worked for us was because he had already proven himself in movies and novels, had a passion for video games and was prepared to work hands on with us for two years. Along the way, he earned himself a designer credit due to his deep involvement and willingness to learn.

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New Ninja Theory Game to Be Announced At Tokyo Game Show

The new Ninja Theory game will be announced at Tokyo Game Show this week

Ninja Theory told their followers on Twitter today.

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Ninja Tweeting!!

That’s right, the Ninjas have joined Twitter.
Be sure to follow them

www.twitter.com/NinjaTheory

Enslaved Interview: Tameem Antoniades

Back in 2007, Cambridge-based developer Ninja Theory was inadvertently forced onto a pedestal as one of the studios championing the PS3, with their ambitious exclusive, Heavenly Sword. Three years later, they’ve had plenty of time to reflect on their pursuits as they go multi-platform for the first time.

Their latest project, Enslaved, continues their principle of engaging players through meaningful storytelling and characters, thanks, in part, to some humbling-input from screenwriter Alex Garland. Following his session at Develop 2010, we sat down with creative director and co-founder, Tameem Antoniades, to talk about media influences, drama in games and why game developers aren’t recognised in the same way as other creatives.

Heavenly Sword received mixed reactions from press and consumers. What was most overlooked about the game?

Tameem Antoniades: At the time when we did Heavenly Sword, we were one of the first studios to tackle next gen, so I think we actually achieved a lot of landmarks in that game, like the lighting system, we could do close-ups of facial performances. That was the first time performance capture had ever been done in a video game, and I think it was the first time in the world it had been done with multiple actors at the same time, in games or movies. James Cameron was actually on set when we did that, and [Weta Digital] used King Bohan as an example of what they could do because they were pitching to him for Avatar. So, technically, there were some real breakthroughs that were made, and some aspects of the game maybe didn’t live up to those breakthroughs. It’s a shame that, in my opinion, character actors and facial performance still hasn’t reached that level that we achieved back then across all games.

Sony owns the IP for the game, but if given the opportunity to make a Heavenly Sword sequel would you take it?

TA: I don’t know. I would say “never say, never,” but we’ve kind of moved on now.

You’ve previously worked on Xbox and then PS3, Enslaved is your first multiplatform title. How has this transition affected the studio?

TA: It’s been positive. It’s meant that we’ve focused more on the creative challenges of making the game, the story, the gameplay, rather than the technical changes of producing brand new tools for a brand new machine, and then trying to fit the game around that. So a totally different approach and we totally welcome it.

Enslaved is based on the ancient Chinese novel, Journey to the West. Why was this novel ripe to be adapted into a video game?

TA: I think there’s a reason that novel’s survived 400 years and continues to be adapted, it’s because of the characters. Monkey is a cool, antiestablishment, anarchic character and Tripitaka is totally the opposite. Forcing those two together, with a headband, on this perilous journey is just a good adventure.

There have already been many interpretations of this story, including an opera by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett and the 1980s TV series, Monkey. Have any of the previous interpretations influenced Enslaved?

TA: Yeah, I suppose so. My main reference is the TV series because that’s what I grow up with. So Tripitaka is a woman as far as I’m concerned – in the book it’s a man, and the guy’s name is Monkey, as opposed to Sun Wukong. So to me he’s always been Monkey, that’s his name, not the Chinese name. In that regard I wanted to make it look back to that TV series, introduce elements from the original book. And everyone seems to adapt it in different ways, so I felt free to do something totally different with it.

Enslaved appears to have a strong focus on puzzles and the co-operation between Monkey and Trip, similar to ICO or even Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom. Was this a conscious reaction to the literature?

TA: We wanted to make a buddy game before we decided to that Journey to the West was the wrapper for it, because Another World – one of our favourite games on the Amiga – had that relationship and you felt for a non-playable character. I wanted to do that again in a way.

Due to the reliance on co-op, have you had to spend more time on, and consider more carefully, Trip’s AI?

TA: Yes. When you’re doing a game where you’ve got to protect another character and you’ve got to work together, it stands or falls on the AI of that other character. So that is actually our primary focus in this sense, because you don’t want it to devolve into a frustrating escort mission. She has to do smart things, she’s not got to put herself in danger, she’s got to help you, and if you don’t have that right you’re done for.

Story and cinematography are given pride of place in your games. How have your storytelling techniques evolved since Heavenly Sword?

TA: We used to have cutscene characters and game characters, and our cutscenes were real-time, but they were rendered onto Blu-ray. Now we’ve got just one character for cutscenes and gameplay, so we can do close-ups and things during gameplay. The cutscenes are running in real-time and we can transition better between cutscenes and gameplay. And we use a lot of environmental cameras that are quite cinematically placed.

You’re also a believer that it’s the story that should drive the game, rather than the gameplay.

TA: I totally believe that. I’m not apologetic about that either. One of my favourite games is Resident Evil 4. When you finish that game and you start playing the challenges, stripped away from the context of the story, stripped away from the atmosphere, it’s just bare. It’s not fun anymore. Somehow, if you can get the story and gameplay right, they both elevate each other.

We got the sense from your talk that Alex Garland has radically shifted your game design philosophy.

TA: Alex has changes the way I look at games and he’s changed the way everyone that’s worked with him has looked at games. It’s not about cutscenes, it’s about drama. It’s about how you introduce tense, drama, atmosphere, moment by moment while you’re playing a game. That the rules of drama apply within gameplay, which is something we didn’t do in Heavenly Sword. But we very, very much focused on that with this game.

Garland worked on the script and you said he’s even worked on level designs. Do you have any background yourself in film or theatre?

TA: No, I don’t have any background. My background was a programmer, and then designer, and then creative director. I’ve not be exposed to the film side at all until we did Heavenly Sword and now Enslaved. I couldn’t ask for better teachers.

You also collaborate with Andy Serkis and Nitin Sawhney. How important is it for you to work with talents from outside the games industry?

TA: I think it’s more a case of working with the best talent you find in their field. And that’s what we strive to do. I think if you what to make something successful – and I don’t mean sales success, I mean successful as an experience – you need the best people you can. I can teach Alex Garland about games development and the intricacies of that. I can’t teach a game developer to write like Alex Garland. So that’s the approach.

Performance-capture has become a common practice in game development, helping to shape characters. What has performance-capture helped you to do in Enslaved that you could not do previously?

TA: What it helped with Enslaved, having more experience, is to tell stories through the performance of the faces, so [players] can know what a character’s thinking regardless of what they’re saying. I think that brings a more sophisticated tool set for storytelling. It’s less patronising to players. We know how to read faces, so we don’t have to spell everything out. It just makes things better.

In today’s market, how much do audiences value a developer’s pedigree?

TA: I don’t think the majority of the audience give a toss about your ‘pedigree’, they care about the game. There’s maybe a small group of people. We’re not superstars, so we don’t have that big following. I think you get judged on the game that you make. You don’t get judged on the names that are associated with the game either, you get judged on whether the game works.

When will mainstream audiences begin to attribute the same cachet to game developers that is afforded to novelists, musicians and filmmakers?

TA: Probably not for a couple generations. There’s a technological barrier that’s difficult to see behind. When CG’s in films, people dismiss it as “the computer made it,” they still do. When they look at Avatar or Gollum in Lord of the Rings, [the creators and character actors] don’t win the awards, they don’t get appreciated, it’s the computers acting. And that perception is going to die when the people that make those judgements die, so it’s probably going to take a long time.

Actually, I think you get a lot of mutual respect from people who work in other mediums, like filmmakers. They really appreciate the effort that goes in. Other creatives really appreciate and the gaming generation appreciates it. But if you want to go for recognition, I don’t think games are the place.

We ask because people often mistake the publisher for making a game if only their logo is on the cover.

TA: I think that if a game is successful, then people will say “oh, it’s from the guys that made this…” I think that still holds weight.

You’ve worked with both Microsoft and Sony on original titles. How would you describe their treatment of independent developers?

TA: That’s really broad. I think it changes from developer to developer and I don’t think, because you’ve got different people working with each developer, there is a universal answer to that. But I think there’s a general trend for more collaboration and respect. I think in the old days, developers were [treated] like talent was in the old film industry where they just get totally shafted. I think that’s not the case anymore. At least, mostly not the case.

What’s it like being an independent studio in the current climate?

TA: It’s good. Happy to have the independence, happy to be creating cool stuff. You can’t ask for more. The kind of games we do are very high-end, so the barriers to entry are very high which means there’s not many people actually doing them. There’s enough demand for these kinds of games, so I think we should be OK.

Has it been harder for you to hired people, particularly graduates, or offer students work experience?

TA: I wouldn’t have thought so. We did an internship programme this year for animators. We got eight animators in, rented a house for them, paid their wages, got our leads to teach them, and they did amazingly well. We kept a few of them, and we want to expand that. So I think if you make an effort you will find the people you need. Half of our studio is from Europe and all over the world, and practically no one is from Cambridge, where we’re based. So I think you can draw talent from everywhere.

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