Even if your game is pretty hugely different, are you worried about inevitable comparisons and callbacks? RPS: The second you revealed your setting people started bringing up BioShock, which was set underwater and had some horror overtones, even if it wasn’t actually a horror game. It was a good way to differentiate ourselves, and we just liked the setting. It was a great decision in hindsight, because we felt like if we were going to set it in space, there would be tons of other games in space, like Alien: Isolation being the big one. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. It’s hostile in a different way from space – even more hostile in a way, because you have this enormous pressure difference just outside you. It’s a very cool setting, because normally, you don’t really think about how weird the ocean is, with the big pressures around you deep below and all the weird creatures that live there and so forth. Just after we’d released Amnesia, we were were talking to each other – what should the next game be about? He says we should set it underwater, and I said, oh, I was thinking about that too. Me and Jens, who’s the other co-founder of Frictional Games, we used to live in the same city, and we’d meet up every other month in a park. Grip: Actually, it was a pretty quick decision. RPS: So let's get the zombie skeleton ghost elephant whale in the room out of the way first. I spoke with him about how he hopes to evolve the game, inevitable comparisons to the Big Daddy of gaming's small undersea pond, BioShock, why simple monster AI is better than more sophisticated options, the mundanity of death, and how SOMA's been pretty profoundly influenced by indie mega-hits like Dear Esther and Gone Home. Currently, it still feels a lot like a slower-paced, less-monster-packed Amnesia in a different (though still very traditionally survival-horror-y) setting, but Frictional creative director Thomas Grip has big plans. SOMA didn't scare the scuba suit off me, but I did find a creeping sort of potential in its soaked-to-the-bone corridors.
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