June 24, 2009

GameZone Discusses C.O.P. The Recruit with Ubisoft’s Nouredine Abboud
by: Steven Hopper

“You’re not playing a corrupt or bad cop; it’s more about having street cred.”

Of the variety of genres that have been seeing huge support on home consoles, the open-world genre has been one that hasn’t really been explored very much on the Nintendo DS. While recent titles like Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars have stepped up to the plate by offering huge worlds that capitalize on the strengths of Nintendo’s handheld, compelling open action games haven’t quite gotten a fair amount of developer support.

Ubisoft is looking to change all of that with their upcoming cop-action game, C.O.P.: The Recruit. The Recruit is geared towards changing the perception of what the DS is capable of, crafting a compelling and fun storyline and open gameplay that is set to dazzle gamers looking for a full open-world experience on their handheld.

At this year’s E3, we sat down with Nouredine Abboud, Senior Producer on the game, to discuss C.O.P. The Recruit, and touched upon the game’s finer points, including its development, the balance between storyline and open-world gameplay and other points.

What can you tell us about the game’s storyline?

Nouredine: So, as the title of the game says, you’re a young recruit who’s just been recruited by the cops. You used to be an underground racer, and you were forced to choose between going to jail or joining the cops. You have your mentor, Brad, who also used to be an underground racer and helps you become a cop.

It’s interesting because from one point of view it gives us the opportunity to use your underground connections. Also, it gives you a reason to have gameplay that is not just about either being the bad guy or the good guy; you are always working on the two lines. And the game itself, once you get onto the police force you have a helluva day because on your first day at the office, there is a terrorist attack being planned on New York, and so you’re right away sent on the mission. Things get a bit tricky when your mentor Brad is placed under arrest on forced allegations.

At one stage, it’s about understanding who the good guys and bad guys are, and the fact that you have a foot in both worlds. However, you’re not playing a corrupt or bad cop; it’s more about having street cred.

In the build we saw, the art direction had almost a 70’s cop show flair to it. Was that a deliberate move in the game’s development?

Nouredine: I will say that the 70’s feel is linked to the [E3] demo. There’s one character that’s an informant that has a sort of 70’s look. Also, the graphics style is quite colorful. However, I must admit that the inspiration has more to do with what can be found in more recently in the world of comic books.

If you look at the evolution of comic books, a lot of paper comics have become a lot more colorful due to the use of computers. This kind of comic book 2D art was what inspired us. Having a very strong 3D world for the action, we wanted to have 2D style comic book cutscenes, and we didn’t want them to look cheap compared to the 3D game, so this is why we spent quite a bit of energy on the colors.

We had some very talented guys from Singapore work on the game and its graphical style, and we had teams from about five different countries help work on the game.

The game is an open world game, not really a genre that has been explored a lot on the Nintendo DS. Why did you decide to create it for that system and not a console?

Nouredine: There were two reasons. One reason was opportunity. In fact, we worked with a tech team of two guys who had worked especially on Nintendo games on the Game Boy Advance, so we had a very good way to create something that would really kick ass, especially on the DS. Behind this opportunity was the fact that there weren’t a lot of games like that; it’s good to not go into a crowded place. So, the idea for us was to see if we could do it. It’s funny, because if you look at the competition, you have GTA [Chinatown Wars] which is doing it from a top-down view, and you have games that look open-world but aren’t. I don’t think I’m wrong in saying that we’re the only true open-world game for technical reasons.

So, for us it was the chance to bring something to the platform that hadn’t been done, and on the other hand, we also know the sort of gamers that like open world games. So, I think the main reason is a technical one, since we had a technical team that is very good at it.

Secondly, we also wanted to add some features that couldn’t be done elsewhere, including the use of the touchscreen and the stylus, so it was about taking a game genre that works very well but is not available on the console, adapt it to the very specific strengths of the system, and wrap it up in an interesting story.

As far as story-driven games and open world games go, there is often a bit of a separation, as adding more elements to one side can often take from the other. How did you guys find the balance between story and the open-world mechanics?

Nouredine: It was one of the main concerns of the team when we went into the project. At the beginning, it’s good because you have a lot of time. The engine was developed in two years and we’ve been working on the game for more than two years, and in the beginning we wondered “if we could do the perfect open-world game what would it be?”

We wanted to have a compelling story, because in a lot of open-world games, there is a set lack of purpose. Even if you don’t play for one or two days, it’s pretty difficult to get back into it. So what we decided was to give options to the player in the way they want to do the missions, and we’ve added a lot of free-roaming missions that are created during the game, like a bank heist or hostage situations happening as you play, so there are a lot of side missions. However, the main evolution of the story is reasonably linear. So, there is a beginning, a middle and an end, but the way that you do main points can vary.

We even added some small “previously on…” moments, so every time you save the game at a specific stage, you get a “rush recap” when you get back on, which is a quick recap where we use 2D cutscenes to summarize what happened in your previous play session, which is a way to bring a sense of purpose to the open-world gameplay.

Will the game have any multiplayer features?

Nouredine: No, for very technical reasons. The game runs at 60 frames per second with no loading times, and the inclusion of multiplayer wouldn’t let us be able to do this. Including multiplayer would have forced us to go back to 30 FPS, and we fell that in a game where a big part of it is driving, 60 FPS is a must.

What was your biggest challenge when developing this game on the DS?

Nouredine: We had three big challenges. The first one was technical, and we weren’t sure that we’d get there. And I must admit that our tech guys are really the ones who succeeded.

The second challenge was what we discussed before, which was the open-world versus the story. This is also quite difficult to assess, and it’s only when it’s all done that you can see how we did on it, but we have the feeling we’re there.

The last challenge was utilizing all of the possibilities of the DS, including the stylus. The easy thing to do is to make casual mini-games, but most gamers don’t just want to play casual stuff. So the challenge was trying to do something using the stylus that adds to the game experience without being a mini-game. And so we created the camera feature where you move a security camera to find a guy that you’re looking for, entering found key codes using the DS’s writing abilities, and so on. You can call a SWAT team or an ambulance and several other gameplay functions. Those sort of things had to use the stylus and be “mini-sized”, but not be boring mini-games. Those things were our biggest challenges.

Would you consider the game geared more for a hardcore audience or something that casual gamers will be into?

Nouredine: It’s not a casual game, due to the usage of the D-Pad to drive the car and to shoot, which is quite hardcore in nature. So, even if you explain it very well, you’ll still have a certain number of people who will have a hard time moving in the space with those commands.

But I don’t think it’s as simple as being a hardcore game or a casual one; it’s hardcore, but it’s also has casual elements to it. The main thing is that it has a nice story, the graphics are quite nice, and you’re not just a bad guy killing everybody. It’s not too difficult, and it’s on the DS, which also has an audience that is mostly teenagers. I’ll say that it’s for the hardcore and gamer audiences, but not purely casual.

You can’t run over pedestrians unlike similar titles like GTA; is that a deliberate move?

Nouredine: It’s deliberate and quite difficult to do. The pedestrians run away and move out of the way just in the nick of time, and they always escape. The main reason behind this is that you’re playing as a cop, and he’s on a well-intentioned mission. You can still destroy the environment and run into buildings and knock over telephone booths.

You can create havoc on your way to a mission, but you’re not going to kill people on the way. Also, though, it ties into our rating. We’re not trying to create a Mature game, and so it was a deliberate move and the full game will also be like that.

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