First a News Reporter, Now a News Maker, Matthew Carter Must Get Through His Toughest Assignment Yet: The Cold War

by Louis Bedigian

“How you get past those obstacles, and how you achieve those goals is very open-ended.”

Can a journalist be a hero? I ask myself that question every single day. Then I go into work, arm myself with the most lethal weapons known to man, and save the world again and again. In video games. I haven’t really saved the world, though I do have a potent arsenal ready just in case (including a very deadly Nintendo DS stylus). What do you mean the Princess is in another castle!? A journalist’s work is never done…

Matthew Carter, the star of Cold War, knows that all too well. He’s a journalist-turned-hero in Mindware’s new stealth/action game. “One thing we tried to do here,” said George Chastain, Executive Producer, “was stay away from an elite character who was a super, Splinter Cell-type agent, in the sense that he could do all these acrobatic moves and kill a guy with a single pinky, that kind of thing. We tried to make our lead character an everyday, average Joe kind of reporter.” 

George continues: “Kind of an Indiana Jones type. Indiana Jones is an archeologist, but he’s kind of a super archeologist if you will. We did that with our lead character, Matthew Carter, in that he was kind of a heroic journalist, but not a super agent. His main skill set revolves around the fact that he’s kind of a MacGyver type. He’s able to take various household items and put them together and form nuclear bombs so-to-speak. That was what we tried to emphasize in the gameplay, and really try to focus the game on these gadgets to either (A) blow your way past obstacles or (B) a stealthier way past obstacles, depending on the way you want to play.

“It’s possible to go through the game guns blazing and have a very enjoyable experience. It’s also possible to go through the entire game and never fire a weapon and have a very enjoyable experience. We tested the game out with many first-person shooter types and people who love stealth games, and everyone seems to enjoy either method that they like. The gameplay is open. It’s a story-dependant game so you do have to accomplish certain goals to make the story continue. But how you get past those obstacles, and how you achieve those goals is very open-ended. The gadget system has a lot do with what makes that so open-ended.”

Once he was finished debriefing us, George gave us the opportunity to pick his brain for new information regarding Cold War. 

The story sounds intriguing, but how did you go about presenting it? A lot of games use voice-overs, but most voice actors just don’t cut it.  How did you make sure that the voice actors conveyed the kind of emotion, the feeling that you wanted? Did you work with a specific team of sound professionals to get this job done?

George Chastain: In my opinion one of the strongest points in the game is the voice acting. I think the voice acting is great in this game. It does exactly what we wanted it to do. We worked with a company called AudioGodz. Lani [Minella], she was our talent finder. We went to LA and hired some local talent. She was our casting and voice director and I was there along with my producer. We really oversaw that part of the production. It was critical. We monitored it very closely. I come from the stage industry – I was a stage director many years ago. I have a lot of expertise in directing local talent. 

How much time was devoted to the voice acting? Did it take away from the time that was spent developing it?

GC: No. Once you have everything done right at the beginning and you’ve got the schedule and people are moving in the direction you want them to, development kind of keeps itself going. You’re just overseeing assets at that point and making sure they’re the quality that you want. Production didn’t slow down at all.

We did spend a great deal of time on the actual recording process. There were two of us. We’re on e-mail everyday with our laptops and we’re not losing touch with our developers, anything like that. It wasn’t like we’re at one place and completely blind with what was going on with the product. There was no stoppage at work because of that.

Over the course of the project it was probably about five weeks of hardcore work on that [the voice acting]. But at any given time it was a two-week chunk period.

What was harder to be honest wasn’t necessarily the North American voice recording, but the other language recording for German and French. That was a little bit harder to control since I don’t speak German or French. That was a little bit more difficult to make sure that we were getting the right sense of the dialogue that we wanted. We had greatest success with the Russian translation since a lot of the guys on the Mindware team spoke Russian. They were able to say, “Okay, that’s not really fitting the mood we want” and whatnot. The German and French were particularly problematic in that regards. I’ll have to see what the native German and French speakers say before I can comment on that. 

Let’s talk about the missions.

GC: That’s another thing I like about the game. It was one of my biggest fears about the game – the potential repetitiveness of the gameplay. I constantly worried about it. Finally when I got a complete build and was able to play from start to finish, I realized that every level had different objectives that made the game feel different from one level to the next.

In some levels you have to get from point A to point B as fast as you can and escape. In order to do that you have to avoid detection by the guards, take them out, and whatnot. That’s from the early scenarios.

Also there are scenarios where you have to disable the power system. Your goal is to do that. In other scenarios you have to latterly stalk one of the main villains and overhear a bunch of phone conversations. Your goal is to figure out where you can go to hear those conversations. He told me he’s going to have them, but where? That’s really fun and hard to try and figure out exactly how to get there.

[In some scenarios] you have to escort characters and get them to safety. Other scenarios you have to carry one of the characters on your back and get him from point A to point B. Slight differences but they really have an impact.

During one of the scenarios you have to stop a core meltdown. You have to do a combination of about four or five different things to stop the meltdown.

There are also a few levels in which you’re not playing as Matthew Carter. This other character is more of a fighter. So it changes the game from the stealth you’re used to. [This character] is the head of Presidential Security.

There’s a building that’s burning and you have to try and get out as quickly as you can. Some levels are time-based, etc.

I just told you a bunch of stuff that quite frankly I don’t think anyone else knows [laughs].

Awesome.

GC: I think the developers will be quite angry with me. 

Can you tell us about the gadgets, such as the X-ray camera?

GC: The X-ray camera is a device that allows you to do several things. First it allows you to see through walls. What shows up – [if] there’s a character on the other side of a wall, or on the floor below you or above you, you will see the skeletal figure of that character. You can locate the enemies before going up to the room, which is very advantageous if you’re trying to be stealthy. The other thing it does is emit an X-ray charge. The charge can discombobulate enemies. It basically renders them on conscious. You can do it through a wall.

This does three things: (1) it’s not lethal. (2) It disables enemies before you get in there. The third thing it does is that the charges have impacts on inanimate objects: fire extinguishers, oil cans, and various other potentially explosive things that you can blow up and thereby get rid of several agents at once. One trick is to snap your fingers, get the attention of bad guys who chase after you, and as soon as they get next to the fire extinguisher, snap the X-ray camera and blow it up, taking out the three guys.

The X-ray camera will also lock out security devices, like laser cameras.

There are also ammunition gadgets that allow you to change common bullets to rubber bullets or armor-piercing bullets. Then there’s a slingshot, and there’s a bunch of devices that you can rig as ammunition for the slingshot, like a sticky grenade. Anesthetic balls that will render enemies unconscious on impact. There’s tracking devices that can be shot off the slingshot.
 

Thanks to everyone at DreamCatcher, Mindware, and Kohnke Communications for having a wonderful conference call.