Raven’s Dan Vondrak talks about X-Men Legends II
By Michael Lafferty

“We have so much stuff extra in the game”

There is something wonderfully compelling about the X-Men Universe. Sure, it is populated with great heroes, all with separate motivations reflected through their characterizations, but it is also filled with great anti-heroes – mutants working for the opposition. Some of the Brotherhood mutants are every bit as compelling as the X-Men and but for a matter of ideology, they would have been members of Professor Charles Xavier’s school (and some were) rather than associated with Magneto’s evil society.

When Raven Software finally created the first X-Men Legends game for the home console system, it was a fans’ dream come true. Playable characters that had the powers so well known and interacted in a very cool way. They battled the Brotherhood, of course, and the game was a joyful romp through wonderful levels, thwarting evil.

Activision had an event for that title, about a year ago, and the opportunity arose to talk with Raven’s Dan Vondrak about the title. Excitement underscored the interview – Raven was obviously excited about the opportunity, and what it had created. The subject of multiplayer was brought up. Yes, there would be same-console multiplayer co-op play, but alas, no online play. Would that be addressed in a sequel? Well, if there IS a sequel, it would be looked at.

That was the gist of it. Ok, now zoom back to the present. There is indeed a sequel – X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse – and there is multiplayer co-op game, and this time, it is online. Raven developed the game for the Xbox, PlayStation 2 and GameCube platforms (no online for the GameCube) – Beenox did the port to the PC and Vicarious Visions did a superb job of bringing the game to the PSP – and the game sports nearly 100 levels, 16 playable characters, better interaction between the characters and the opportunity to play as either X-Men or Brotherhood, or a team that combines mutants from both factions.

Apocalypse is on the loose, creating havoc and attacking both the X-Men and the Brotherhood, so an alliance is formed to battle this super menace.

Vondrak took time during the recent Activision event in San Francisco to talk about the newest X-Men title.

Question: The first X-Men game was very well received and enjoyed great success. How you to start to create a sequel, how do you take that success and build on it?

Dan: “Everyone was like, ‘I wish we could have gotten this in, I wish we could have gotten that in,’ so we all had our own personal wish lists. And then it was really easy, the fans love the game, so we were able to go through all the forums, and go ‘obviously people want this in the game, so we have to get that in.’ Or everyone wants Archangel in the game, so we have to get Archangel in the game – and that’s what we did, we took our lists and combined it with some of the forums things. It was pretty easy. Online? It was easily the most requested from everybody, so we got to get online play. Co-op turned out way better than we ever anticipated.

“We had so many pages of stuff to get in the game, there was only so much time, so we had to cut a lot of stuff we would have loved to have gotten in, but we have so much stuff extra in the game.”

Q: You have the Brotherhood and X-Men working together – was that one of those situations where you said ‘Ok, we are going to do this, now how do we pull it off?’

Dan: “Yeah, we all wanted to do it. The idea of the X-Men and Brotherhood working together is something we all wanted to do. We toyed with trying to do some of that in X-Men I, so the way we came up with Apocalypse, we thought ‘Ok, who is the biggest, baddest enemy there is, and it is Apocalypse, so that was how we wanted to do it. We knew from the beginning it would be awesome. Just having the Brotherhood and X-Men on the same team totally rocks.

“What we’ve done is we’ve made sure conversations change whether or not you are playing an X-Men or the Brotherhood, and the different story points – like the mission briefings where Xavier will be giving the mission briefings and (one of the Brotherhood) will start hitting on Jean Grey and Cyclops will be like ‘hey, back off!’ – so that was totally a blast to do. That’s the whole reason we did it was to get that chemistry of those guys working together.”

Q: You’ve kept the game format where game players can create their own team for the missions, but does the dynamic change if one creates an all-X-Men team or an all-Brotherhood team?

Dan: “Depending on who you are as a character, the conversations will change. People will treat you differently if you have an X-Man on the team or a Brotherhood on the team. There are also different team bonuses. If you pick just the Brotherhood team, you may get Brotherhood Bash – so you get bonuses like that. And if you pick just the X-Men, depending on which X-Men you pick, it may say ‘Classic X-Men.’ “

Q: Did you have problem putting in skill sets for the Brotherhood, much like the leveling up skill sets for the X-Men.

Dan: “It was fun! It was awesome! We actually get to be evil with some of our powers. It was great because we were able to be a little meaner with them and just say, Ok, the guy just doesn’t fall to the ground and is defeated. Like with Juggernaut, one of the best powers he has is crimson rage, and the more he pounds on somebody, the bands around his arms start to glow and he begins to grow. The longer you can pound on somebody effectively, the bigger Juggernaut will get.” 

Q: Did you do anything differently graphically with this game?

Dan: “Yeah, we were actually able to get more memory out of the engine, so we were able to up-res all the character textures and the polygons in the world. We were able to get several more polys in all the … everything has a lot more polys this time around. You will notice in a lot more of the environments we were able to go a lot more organic with them. The art did an unbelievable job to make sure the leaves all looked good, the trees all looked good, and the rock works well … it’s the same engine but we got a lot more memory for art work.”

Q: Did the diversity of the power sets for the X-Men and the Brotherhood, rendering all that onscreen at the same time, create any problems with the engine?

Dan: “Basically what we had to do was limit ourselves. It was tough, the engine had to do a lot. We just had to make it do it, so what we would do is specially load only the features in for certain characters in the team and keep all that in the memory. It was tough, but the art just kept making it look prettier.”

Q: When you are creating an AI for Apocalypse and his goons, wouldn’t that be easier to script than, say, the AI for the Brotherhood that is working with the X-Men, when those two groups are basically enemies to begin with?

Dan: “A lot of times we would throw in the banter, like Cyclops would use a beam shot and Juggernaut would say ‘nice shot, one-eye.’ But the AI sort of got an overhaul. In X-Men I, we were stretching the boundaries. And we knew we were going to be bringing in all this neat stuff with the Brotherhood, so the AI guys sort of started from scratch.”

Q: What is your favorite foursome (with some playable characters currently embargoed, Dan was asked to pick those he could mention) in this game to play with?

Dan: “The team that really destroys … my favorite team is (embargoed character), Wolverine, Juggernaut and maybe Magneto. There is nothing more satisfying that having Magneto picking guys up and chucking them. Like there are times where there is a laser trap in the way, and you’ll see this right in the first level, and everyone is always trying to figure out how to shoot it. Pick a dude up and chuck him into it and he will blow it up for you. It’s like no big deal.”

Q: Why do you think people are drawn to a character like Juggernaut?

Dan: “People like smashing stuff. You see this big, hulking dude, and if there is something breakable in the game, you use his charge power. People like being powerful.”

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