Interviews// Haze: Rob Yescombe, Screen Writer, Derek Littlewood, Project Leader

Posted 17 Aug 2007 16:42 by
SPOnG: Why there are two different kinds of soldiers?

We said, "OK, let's create something that's a more thoughtful experience, something that's a bit different." So, the thing we wanted to do was have these two very different sides, that weren't just two sides that were unrelated, but making them interlock.

Having this idea that the Nectar is the strength of the troopers, but it's the strength of the rebels because they can use it against the troopers. All those different abilities and the way they overlap on the two sides makes it a much more coherent experience, but I think makes it much more interesting to play, too, because you're looking for those exploits that you have of the other side's abilities.

That was where the game started from, really.

SPOnG: Can you play as both sides?

RY: It's a single character, and his moral experience through the war that guides him from one side to the other. So, he's a defector.

SPOnG: But you have Nectar from the start of the game?

RY: At the start of the game, you're a Mantel soldier, and all the Mantel guys have Nectar.

DL: At the start of the game you're on the deck of the Mantel land carrier, which is an enormous vehicle they use as their base of operations in the jungle, and you stand up and you see a plane being shot down, and then basically you jump into a drop-ship, it flies into the jungle, drops down, the door opens, you jump out and you start fighting. So, that's your first taste of action in the game, and right at the start, the very first thing that the other troopers are saying to you is, "Use nectar, try using Nectar, use your Nectar."

For beginner players, a nice thing about the way the trooper and the rebel game-play pans out is that Nectar is quite a good training aid to use to make them a bit better at the game. It assists with your aiming, it makes you more powerful, it makes you less vulnerable to damage and things.

So, actually what happens as you play through the campaign mode is that you're playing as a trooper and it's you learning the basics of the game, learning how to play the game in terms of the mechanics, using the controls and everything, learning about Nectar. As you get further on you start learning about the disadvantages of Nectar, and then when you change sides you start using that against the Mantel troopers, and also you learn a whole new set of abilities.

DL: On the trooper side of the game, in terms of the control mechanism, the only additional control you have is using Nectar. That's the one extra thing you have on top of a normal FPS.

But then when you join the rebel side, and you've been playing a bit longer and you're comfortable with the controls, we start introducing the additional rebel controls, which actually involve more controls. The controls on the Rebel side of the game are quite a bit more complicated than the trooper controls.

If you sit someone down with the game in multi-player, and they haven't played it before, making them a trooper is always easier than making them a rebel. But as players get a bit more experienced with the game, they tend to switch onto the rebel side and prefer playing as a rebel.
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