Grand Theft Aerial? “Just Cause” Takes Hijacking to the Skies…and Beyond!

by Louis Bedigian

“When I play it now and when I see other guys playing it, I think we have everything in it that it needs to be a complete game that's fun for everybody.”

Imagine a world, not unlike Vice City, where you can go anywhere you want, and do anything you please. Cars, motorcycles, helicopters – they’re just the tip of the iceberg. In this world, you don’t have to wait for a sedan to pull off the road before you can take it. You don’t even have to wait for it to stop.

If you need a ride and you’ve gotta have it now, hit the skies and parachute toward your target. How? First you hijack a plane or a helicopter. Second, you locate the vehicle of your dreams by hovering over it, or by using your radar (for when there’s important materials inside and your eyes just aren’t good enough). Third, ditch the aircraft and dive toward the vehicle. That’s right, jump out of a plane and skydive to your target – your moving target.

Release the parachute as you approach to keep your bones from shattering, then whip out a fancy grappling device to hook onto your desired vehicle. Once attached, you can release the parachute, land the vehicle’s roof, hop in through the window, and kick the driver out the other side.

That’s one of many clever, James Bond-defying techniques introduced in Avalanche Studios’s new action/driving game, Just Cause.

GameZone Online witnessed an exciting a demonstration of the game at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo. Shortly afterwards, Magnus Nedfors (Lead Game Designer) sat down to chat with us about his amazing title.

“I think we have a good balance between the free-roaming part and the storyline that runs through the game,” Magnus told me, speaking about the game’s open-ended gameplay. “There are [some] story missions that you have to complete to throw off the dictator of the islands. While you can complete the game just by doing those missions, you will have a harder time because you won’t have all the equipment you’ll get by doing the side missions. I think we have a really good balance between those two.”

He continued: “Also, the player has tools to sort of always [get back to the mission]. Even if you’ve flown to the other side of the island, there are tools to get back to the next story mission briefing. So you can fool around as much as you want to, then decide you want to get back to the story. Press a couple of buttons and you’re back to it.”

What we saw in Just Cause – the lead character jumping out of a helicopter, opens his parachute, lands on a car, hijacks it, then jumps on top of the car’s roof, hops to another car, hijacks that car, and then…!  How is this done as far as gameplay goes?

Magnus Nedfors: We have tried to fine-tune it so it’s not too easy, because there should be some skills to learning those tricks. But once you’ve tried it a few times, you’ll learn it pretty quick. The best way to start is by using the grappling hook [vehicle attachment]. It’s pretty easy to learn that, and then you’ll advance to other stuff.

But you can land on cars without the grappling hook…?

MN: Yeah. And on boats, planes, helicopters, etc.

I’ve seen him hang from the wing of a plane and parachute to another hijacking. That too is a simple action?

MN: That too is a button press. Depending on your settings you can have the buttons displayed for you, and when you learn the game you can have them turned off.

The massive environment we’ve seen – is that THE game world, or is there more than one, or…?

MN: That’s the environment. I think that’s enough [laughs]. We wanted a world that was open up from the very beginning of the game, a world where you could go anywhere and not have a lot of [restrictions].

Can you perform all of the hijacking techniques from the start?

MN: Yes. Actually, the grappling hook will be given to you, but all the other stuff – if you know about it – you can do it from the beginning.

Are there any other techniques planned?

MN: I think we’ve shown most of the stuff. It’s more like learning how to combine the moves into a series of stunts that will be challenging for the player.

Tell us about the Just Cause’s weapon lineup.

MN: We have 20 different handheld weapons. They range from signature dual-guns to rocket launchers and sniper rifles. The usual stuff. In addition to that we have stationary weapons. We have tanks, aircrafts, cruisers, and so on.

How many vehicles do you hope to include?

MN: There are 89 different types of vehicles in the game. Each one [provides] a unique experience. Of course, some of the cars are similar in size and will sort of feel the same, but they aren’t. They will all have small differences [that set them apart from each other]. They range from scooters to motorcycles to ordinary traffic cars. We have boats, water scooters, helicopters, planes – it’s quite a big range from small to huge.

I really like cinematic effect of the camera as you change angles. What would you call that?

MN: We’ve done a lot of work with the camera. You have so many different modes, you can ride everything, you can parachute. So every different mode has its own camera system that we’ve put a lot of work into to make them feel the same, even though they are not exactly the same. There are needs to be different – how you drive the car is setup differently than how you fly the helicopter, and you need to be able to do different things with the camera.

[During stunts] the effect is what we call the Action Camera. When you pull off a stunt, the camera will [show off a specific angle], and then you’ll have control over the game. I’m really happy because it doesn’t feel like it’s breaking up the gameplay. You want to see the scene, and then continue. It feels really good. 

Where did this game begin? PC? Xbox?

MN: It started as an Xbox game originally. When we started the project, the PC’s quite close (when it comes to coding) to the Xbox. We wanted to see if we were able to do it on the PS2. I was really shocked when the programmers came back and said, “Yeah, we can do it on PS2.” They decided to fund the PS2 version.

And also, we’re really happy we did a 360 version, because it’s really made for those kinds of consoles.

Technology-wise and game-wise I’m most impressed with the PS2 version. Obviously it’s not the best-looking version, but compared to other PS2 game it’s really nice looking. The amount of hours we’ve put into squeezing game of that size into PS2…it’s amazing.

Do you have any final thoughts about the game, its development, etc…?

MN: It’s almost hard to say stop [development], but I’m really happy with the results. During development I wanted to put more things in, but when I play it now and when I see other guys playing it, I think we have everything in it that it needs to be a complete game that’s fun for everybody. I’m happy with the game and look forward to going out to the store and buying myself a copy. That’s a really nice feeling you have when you finish a game.

Thanks for your time Magnus, it was great speaking with you.