David Brickley
SPOnG: The first
Alien versus Predator game was known for being quite hardcore, with its save system, use of suspense and the changing of Alien spawn points. Has this stayed the same for this title?
David Brickley: Yes, absolutely. You might have seen the recent trailer where the Alien bursts out of the wall... I mean, we didn't have the tech to do that in the first game all those years ago – the ability to blend the character and the environment together to such an extent.
There are points in the game where we just fuck with your head, for example how we've made Aliens behave in shadows. Which doesn't sound like it works on paper, but the idea is that the Alien determines a unique path to you according to the environment. So, where your flare is or if the Alien's knocked a light out will affect how it moves, or whether it's just going to sit there and wait for you.
You wander into the darkness, and as soon as your torch hits that part of the wall, it's going to hiss and come at you. It's a great way of varying the gameplay because you're forced to go looking, and then all of a sudden you're on the back-foot. All these things happen dynamically because our engine is very good at lighting. And yeah, to have these kinds of fundamentals in place is great, and it was a big part of the original
AvP game – to have those massive levels and the added shock value. I don't think we'll ever shock anyone as much as we did with the initial faceoff in that game.
But yeah it would be nice for people to play it and experience something new in this game, certainly in the lighting and the detail.
SPOnG: Have those AI routines been implemented into the whole game, so that different enemies will react differently to various situations and stimuli?
David Brickley: Yeah, the thing is when you're playing stealth, one of the things we didn't really want was to be massively punitive. If you're going to be the Predator or the Alien you have to really enjoy the hunt, and you really have to put that to practice in the multiplayer. We didn't want this to be an overly punitive system in the nature of
Splinter Cell or
Metal Gear. Just have fun. Go in there and enjoy the kills, and being generally nasty. That's good fun, because you'll have to learn how to use these moves properly if you're going to beat another human at the game.
SPOnG: Do you feel confident that the perks for each species won't be too overpowering for the different classes?
Eric Miller: I think so, I mean in some sense you'll probably look at the game and ask “Is the Marine, who doesn't have those Predator abilities, going to be weaker as a result?”. The short answer is 'no', but it really depends on the skill of the player. There's always that skill factor involved. We can give players the tools, whether they choose to use those tools is entirely up to them. That's not me saying “the developer says it's your fault if you suck”, not in the slightest. The Marine has heavy weapons that nobody has seen yet, like the Smart Gun. When you have the Smart Gun, everyone fears you. In the Deathmatch mode, that would be everybody [laughs].
David Brickley: I think one of the cool things as well is that, despite the game being called
AvP, it is the sequel to a ten year old game which people still remember very fondly. And if I may be so bold, I'd say it was a very uncompromised game that people thoroughly enjoyed.
I don't fundamentally believe that gamers have changed that much in ten years. Gamers want a challenge. They don't want to be talked down to, or have their hands held. We wanted to make sure that the gamers were the guys we had in mind when making this game – to keep the gameplay long-term, to have them master one of the classes.
Eric Miller: But we don't think generally any class is outweighed by another, we've given them all specific safeguards. The Marine for example, has the tools to block all sorts of different moves – listen for the beep on the motion tracker, it's your best friend and your worst enemy.