Interviews// Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice - Lead Designer, Chris Whiteside

SPOnG: So you can play through the whole story – how long does that take?

Chris Whiteside: To play through the whole story will take around thirteen to fifteen hours for your average gamer.


SPOnG: And how does this affect the replayability in the game?

Chris Whiteside: Oh there’s plenty of that! There are 60 challenges where we take the Pursuit Force core mechanics and we mix it up a little bit – so, for example, in certain challenges the player might not be able to shoot but instead has to ram the other vehicles and so on, which are loads of fun.

There’s also Bounty Mode, which is the single player missions but you have to complete one on each of the four difficulty settings in the game and for each one you earn tokens, which players can then go and spend in the shop to unlock more stuff.

And of course we also have multiplayer, so realistically the game has around forty hours of gameplay.


SPOnG: And as for the soundtrack, is Richard Jacques involved in this one again?

Chris Whiteside: [grins] Oh yes! It’s Mr Richard Jacques again, my good friend! He did some great music for us in the original. But when we’ve talked about what he’s done for this one I’ve told him I think the score in this one is way better… Richard just completely kicks ass with this one!


SPOnG: He is a legend! He just seems to be getting better as well.

Chris Whiteside: Yeah, he’s getting better and better and better. He loves the project. He knows everything about the game. He loves the characters. He’s talking about eventually doing a Pursuit Force 1 and 2 music album. In fact, if he’s reading this interview: “Richard, you owe me a Pursuit Force 1 album, you keep telling me I’m going to get it, where is it?”


SPOnG: One of the other new features here is that there are five recruits this time around – you mentioned Ashley, the special-ops girl and Preach, the heavy weapons specialist… who are the others?

Chris Whiteside: Gage, the wheel man, so he’ll drive the cop while the cop's gunning from the back of the jeep, and he’ll also support the cop in different vehicles. Then you have Sarah, the helicopter pilot from the first game, and she is pivotal to the story in the game.


SPOnG: She’s the one you’re getting married to at the start of the game?

Chris Whiteside: Yep that’s the one. And she plays a pivotal role in what happens later on in the game as well.

Then you have the Chief, who also made appearances in the first game, but this time around he takes the piss out of the recruits and not the player. So hopefully that shouldn’t be so frustrating this time round!

So you play through the whole story mode as the cop, the commander, the big guy you see here [indicates screen] with his back turned and all these characters I just mentioned are AI controlled, because we’ve got so many core mechanics and so many things for the player to deal with – our whole mantra behind the game was to make it as accessible as possible.