July 22, 2009

Survival/horror and Innovation with Cursed Mountain's Marin Gazzari
By Louis Bedigian

“Instead of using an ordinary game pad, normally causing a very stiff body posture, Cursed Mountain “opens up” the player in front of his screen when he performs the prayers and gestures and literally pulls him into the game.”

Upon the game's announcement, Wii appeared to be an unlikely choice for Cursed Mountain. Even now, with a remake of the original Silent Hill on its way, Wii isn't the first console most people think of when they think of survival/horror. How, then, did Deep Silver come to select Wii instead of PS3 and/or Xbox 360?

"At first we thought about the game itself," said Producer Marin Gazzari. "We came up with this initially weird idea how cool it could be to have a game take place in the Himalayan region: the loneliness, the environment, the religious buildings and practices. When we were developing the concept we felt that we really wanted to offer a different fight experience. Not too far away from what people know, but with some very special elements. All the stories about the real background and rituals combined with the rise of the Wii with its motion control features led to the decision to create it for Wii. It was the designed gameplay that drove that. And we believe that there’s a huge audience out there who are constantly dumped with casual entertainment and we want to give them something they really don’t get every day."

How will Cursed Mountain utilize the Wii's unique features, such as motion controls?

Marin Gazzari: We use the controller in very many different ways to convey the feeling of interaction with the ghosts and the environment. The combat system obviously is one of the strongest elements. But also moving objects, climbing, balancing, searching the environment for cursed relics and using the speaker in the Wiimote for radio transmissions are all part of the gameplay.

Controlling the character in the physical world is straight forward. In certain situations we utilize motion sensing for climbing, balancing, chases etc. But when you enter the Bardo, the shadow world, you sense the enemies with the IR pointer and you use praying and fighting gestures to defeat the evil sprits. Depending on the difficulty of your opponents you will fight with simpler or more complex gestures and with one or two hands.

What does it mean to "sense the environment" with the Wii remote, as noted in a recent press release for the game?

MG: The Wii controller is used like a flashlight in order to search the surrounding environment for enemies, gameplay assistance like hidden doors and objects. While sensing the environment, Eric the main character is entering a different state called Bardo – The realm of the afterlife. It is the intermediate stage one passes through between death and rebirth.

The basic idea is: simple to learn movements with your hands represent movements of attacking, defending and praying. You will sense what gestures can defeat the enemies and bosses, and then you can use the motions to ‘redeem’ them. I think we have been really innovative here but managed to keep it pretty easy to learn. It balances very well across the entire game.

Cursed Mountain deals with a curse that prevents the dead from leaving the area, causing their souls to wander indefinitely. Who or what is the source of inspiration for this theme?

MG: All ideas are based on real-life Buddhist mythology and religion. In Buddhism, every mountain is a personified god. In our case Chomolonzo, The Sacred One is personified by a female goddess. Local people and sherpas perform certain rituals in order to be allowed to climb up a mountain and return safely. Eric’s younger brother Frank, who went missing on a hired expedition, did not perform those rituals properly. Therefore the goddess got very angry and spread the curse over the complete region. The inspiration for Cursed Mountain is the perception of the Himalayan region from a standpoint of a westerner in comparison to the actual Buddhist ancient rituals and conventions.

By now, most gamers are used to the techniques survival/horror games use to scare us. Is there anything new that you hope to introduce with Cursed Mountain that'll really catch us off guard?

MG: As we are fully supporting the Wii gesture system we are convinced to bring a very immersive new horror experience into the living rooms. Instead of using an ordinary game pad, normally causing a very stiff body posture, Cursed Mountain “opens up” the player in front of his screen when he performs the prayers and gestures and literally pulls him into the game. The player must encounter the dead souls that surround him as well as his own fear to have lost his brother, climbing in high altitude, trying to reach the summit of The Sacred One.

Speaking of the elements, the hostile environment; the mountain itself is the most attractive enemy. In order to survive, Eric needs to defeat his inner self to climb up, pass the death zone, and return safely from Chomolonzo. In Cursed Mountain fear is not only created by claustrophobic indoor action, but also by the beautiful but dreadful mountain scenery.

Eric Simmons, the main character, comes to the cursed mountain searching for his missing brother. What led him to believe his brother, or at least details regarding his disappearance, could be found there?

MG: Frank Simmons was hired by Edward Bennett to locate an ancient artifact, a so called Terma on the summit of Chomolonzo, local people call The Sacred One. Eric is an experienced high altitude climber, well known in the international climbing community. He is on an expedition near by and hears the word from Bennett that Frank did not return to base camp. As Eric is already acclimatized he is able to ascend Chomolonzo quickly in order to safe his younger brother. He starts his journey in a city called Lhando, where he hopes to find Bennett for further and more detailed info about Frank.

When Eric encounters the wandering souls, are they in solid (human-like) form? Have they turned into monsters? Or look like ghosts?

MG: Well, monsters are always a cause of definition. Eric is encountering dead souls that are stuck in the Bardo due to the curse. Eric has to deal with dead farmers and monks from the Himalayan region, but also other climbers who paid a very high price for their dream to summit The Sacred One. Especially the westerners don’t know what’s going on and some of them don’t even realize that they are actually dead. These confused and poor souls continue their daily routine, not knowing what else to do.

How will he deal with this threat? Can he fight back?

MG: Eric is a grounded, down to earth person and doesn’t believe in supernatural things. He is accepting the fact that he has to deal with phenomenon’s he can’t explain, because his main cause is to find and save his brother. In Lhando Eric finds his brothers ice pick. Due to the spiritual connection between the brothers Eric realizes that this mountain gear is very special. Frank has performed an ancient ritual, which gave the ice pick special powers in order to resist and defeat spiritual enemies. During the game Eric will find more artifacts that power up the item offering a more effective attack mode.

If he can fight, what are his abilities – is he able to use weapons or perform any special attacks?

MG: Due to the ice picks special powers Eric is able to interact with the Bardo. He can use the ice pick as melee weapon, but he is also able to exercise a range attack with a beam of energy created by the mentioned artifacts above.

After reducing the opponents health to a certain limit a special finishing move is available. Frank is able to defeat the enemy performing a mantra, a Buddhist prayer, with gestures of both arms. Based on the enemy’s level, each ghost class requires special prayers and gestures, which are more or less complex depending on the enemy.

The entire game world is said to be visible from every level. Tell us how the game was designed to meet this need, how each level is linked, etc.

MG: This task was actually a very tricky one. It was most important for us to convey the openness and beautiful mountain scenery of the Himalayas. Standing on the top of the world, overseeing all those 26,000 feet high mountains is very impressing but also frightening as we stated above. And that feeling is a vital part of mountaineering. The biggest challenge was continuity, as Cursed Mountain is a level based game, we had to make sure that the transition between all levels and the mountain scenery in the background coop with each other.

First we created a rough 3D model of the valley and the mountain that the levels would be placed in. We used real world satellite data for this, so the dimensions are approximately those of real Himalayan terrain. The areas where we would play in were then marked and rough versions of the buildings were added. This allowed us to check all the scenic views very early in the project and made sure that it's possible to see were you came from and where you're heading since the game consists of a journey up the mountain.

The rough model was then cut into pieces. The artists added buildings and refined the terrain until we had enough detail for each level. The detailed models were then simplified and merged together to create the background geometry for each level.

With such high visibility, are you able to explore the whole game from the start?

MG: Well, you are able to explore the mountain and the trail up to the summit from the very beginning. You see all levels that lay ahead of you and vice versa, when you are ascending Chomolonzo and turn back, all accomplished levels that you already passed.

Thank you for your time.

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