Embrace the Dark Divine - GZ Interviews the Evil Twin - Cyprien's Chronicles Team
by The Badger

Yes kids, there is no such thing as the boogeyman. That's because those other guys waiting for you in the corner chewed him up and spit him out years ago. Welcome to the world of Cyprien's Chronicles: Your childhood's inner demons have been waiting for you.....

I've never been a big fan of those generic hack-n-slash, or other so called "horror" films like Nightmare on Elm Street or Scream. What I've always craved in dark storytelling is of a more intimate, psychological, and erudite nature; an elusive, intangible quality that cannot be captured by even the most advanced special effects and copious smatterings of artificial blood. True terror needs to creep up on you through personal fears, slip into your dreams uninvited, and manifest itself in ways you never could have anticipated. What more fertile ground to reap the most intense and personal nightmares from than the childhood years? It's these first visions that touch us before we can even watch those gore-doused films, before our minds can be shaped by the visions of others, and before we really stop believing that those shadows on the wall aren't really monsters outside the window.

It's this theory which drives Evil Twin - Cyprien's Chronicles, an upcoming dark action/adventure developed by In Utero and to be published by Ubi Soft. Enter a vast landscape of 8 worlds with 66 sub-levels, armed with your slingshot, a variety of special abilities, and your alter ego Super-Cyprien. Confront your inner monsters and defeat hideous bosses, and ultimately, The Master himself. Rescue your friends, interact with new creatures (both friend and foe), and solve perplexing puzzles. All of this awaits you in a grotesque fairytale-gone-wrong setting rendered with the most macabre care for the powerful PS2 system.

GZ got the chance to snatch the In Utero team away from their diligent work to give us some info on Cyprien and his world. Speaking with us about Evil Twin is Guillaume Eluerd, Scriptwriter, and Julie Salzmann, Marketing Manager. So, while you're keeping your own demons at bay and awaiting the title, why not get the inside scoop from a team who is taking their work to heart, and their gamers to "hell."

1.    What forms of attacks will Cyprien and SuperCyp have ?  Will all of his attacks, or most, involve different forms of his slingshot attack, and will controller combinations come into play ?  Will magic come into play or will all damage be physical ?

It is true that we based most of Cyprien’s attacks and upgrades on his slingshot. These upgrades come in two ways: one concerns the slingshot itself, with upgrades such as telescopic sight, bouncing ball and laser sight, the other is based on new ammunition. Cyprien will have to free his friends from their own nightmares, every time a friend is set free, Cyprien receives a new ammo for his slingshot. Those ammos are very different from one another and may not only be used as a mean to cause damage on NPCs but also as a way to make your way easier. For instance, at one point of the game, Cyprien receives an ammo that has the shape of a grain. This grain reacts differently according to what you shoot at. If you shoot at an NPC, he will be stuck by plants, but if you shoot in special holes, the grain will create some kind of magic wind that will take you to higher platforms. As you can see, magic may come into play and damage may be physical, it only depends on how you decide to use these ammos.

SuperCyp’s gear includes more powerful attacks than the slingshot ones. SuperCyp was designed for battle and his strength can be five times stronger than Cyprien’s. That includes fireballs, thunderbolts and super charge. All those power mostly cause physical damage, except maybe for the fireball considering that you can open doors with it. But there is one power that includes magic and that’s the “flap flap”. “Flap flap” is the ability to jump while in the air, as if the air were solid. This allows you to reach further platforms or just go faster, jumping over platforms. Here again, SuperCyp might be the warrior, he still has a power where magic come into play.

Now, Cyprien and SuperCyp have another attack, which is a zone attack. SuperCyp’s being a wider one than Cyprien’s. Basically what they do is that they jump on their enemies. It involves a little combination, meaning that you must jump and then press the attack button if you want it to be very effective. However, there are not complicated combos in Evil Twin, mainly because it is a platform game as opposed to a “battle” game. When your life depends on the rapidity of your reaction, a combination of buttons might often be lethal and so did not fit the kind of game we made.

2.    What will be the advantages/disadvantages of becoming Super-Cyprien?

When you are SuperCyp, you are all-powerful, you’re a super hero and you maximize Cyprien’s abilities: you go faster, you jump higher and longer, you’re stronger and of course you’ve got special powers (see previous question).  The one thing you have to know is that Cyprien does all the talking and is the only one to have an inventory. Of course, Cyprien is weaker than SuperCyp but he’s the only one who will help you go through the adventure. Even though Cyprien is weaker, sometimes he is more able to pass an obstacle than SuperCyp whose strength can be to a certain extent a drawback. SuperCyp is like driving a very powerful car, it can thrilling, but very dangerous at times, if you’re not cautious.

So all the difficulty lies to choose when using Cyprien and when using Sypercyp, and choose wisely.

3.   Childhood is a fertile time for nightmares of all kinds, and these nightmares lie dormant in our minds, springing up very often in our creative processes.  Did any of your inspiration come from personal "memories," or were there any other influences (literary, etc….) that shaped the minions of darkness or imagery  in Evil Twin?

Cyprien is the product of a great tradition of children's characters confronted with dramatic situations.  David Copperfield, or Victor Hugo's Gavroche spring to mind but also characters like Jim Ballard in Empire of the Sun and Antoine Doinel in François Truffaut's The 400 Blows.

There is also a line of thought that exists between Tim Burton and us.  We more or less belong to the same generation where a whole bunch of references converge, such as German expressionism, decorative art from the Vienna school…  References you will notably find in the graphic world of The Nightmare Before Christmas.  Thus, we were working on the concept of the series when Vincent, Tim Burton's short film, came out.  There was obviously the same preoccupation between this child who imagines himself to be Vincent Price, and who lives in an imaginary world, and Cyprien, the adult-child.

While we have all sorts of influences (literature, classic and contemporary art, architecture…), they are all mixed up within our own perceptions.  We think this applies to all of us.  However, there are some direct references: Arcimboldo is one of them.  His paintings, in which he creates faces from plant material, are surrealistic and ahead of their time; we wanted to take this idea and bring it to life.  Bosch is another of our references, but it is more intertwined.

“The” reference in comics would be “Little Nemo in Slumberland” of Win(d)sor Mc Kay.  It’s an American, or an English strip, from the beginning of the century which tells the adventures of a young child in Slumberland” – his own imaginary world that he created with his logic of a young child.  The very first picture of the strip was always little Nemo in his bed starting his night and the very last was always him fallen of his bed awake.  In between, he had lived a full of incredible adventures.

On the account of personal memories, the others characters must come from there, even though we might not be totally conscious of it. The first example that comes to mind is Lenny. The way he looks, the fact that he speaks… every Teddy Bear speaks, all children know that.

4.   Will there be any puzzle-type elements to Evil Twin ?  What other "adventure" aspects will we see along with the action side of Evil Twin?

We tried to build a varied and elaborate gameplay to give added depth to the game.  We ended with an approximately 60% action game (including combats, platforms, controlling the double personality of the hero) and 40% adventure.  The adventure part mainly leads to explorations, encounters and cut-scenes.

We wished to plunge the player into an increasingly changeable environment, swaying between reality and nightmare, that becomes more and more lifelike and, consequently, unsettling.  That’s why we worked on the scenario to alternate combat scenes and passages requiring reflection, resolution of enigmas.

5.   With 66 levels in 8 different worlds, level design must be both a challenge and an endless wellspring of possibilities.  What kinds of things do you do when you construct or design levels in these kinds of games ?  Do you ever have times when you get stuck and work on something different for a while, or is level design an essential foundation for development work ?

That’s a vast question because basically, it involves the whole process of making a platformer. To keep it simple, let’s say that the two main things we focused on when we started the game, were the abilities of each character (Cyprien and SuperCyp) and the kind of playground they could have. For instance, among the first things we came to study was the size of each level. They had to be big enough for both characters and yet not too big because we knew it would be boring. When we started thinking about that, we already have all the story and the walkthrough made, mainly because as you might know, Evil Twin was first designed to be a TV show, so that we took most of the events and characters we had on the show and adapted them in order to make a video game. It is true that now we are working differently, meaning that we are first and foremost focusing on the gameplay and then add a story, but it was quite impossible to do that for Evil Twin since we had the story before Evil Twin even became a game.

Yet, it is true that level design is an essential foundation for development work, and we always kept that in mind. However, it’s a work that never stops evolving, even once levels are made. It is rather impossible to modify them but the feeling you can get writing ideas and actually play them, is sometimes so different that you always have to modify things. Looking back, focusing on the characters and level design helped us to make the right choices at the right time, choices about the characters, the types of platforms we would use, the distance, all the things that make a platformer what it is.

6.   How did you get involved in the game world ?  What kinds of things do you enjoy most about working in the field?  What are some of the biggest challenges ?

In Utero's priority in developing the game was clearly given to the ideas, the diversity of the aesthetics and to the story itself, in other words, to the novelty Evil Twin represents in the world of video games…

There were two attributes we particularly liked to work on : the variety of the graphics (as the game features truly impressive graphics) and the dialogs we intended to make full of humor and jokes.

Regarding the biggest creative challenge in the game, without any doubt it was the universe ; creating a new world was of an incredible work.  When you start intending to tell a story, which was our aim, you need a serious coherent story in its largest sense to give your story life.  Consequently, we had to go very deep in creating Cyprien, and all the other characters.

We had to imagine a totally new world with its own history, inhabitants and rules.  We had to go very far into details to make it “true”, and even if sometimes the player doesn’t realize how far we went (because he’s playing a game and not watching a movie so the perception is different) we still think it was a benefit for the game in its whole.  Plus, it was a true way of motivating the team, each of us bringing their own idea, participating in creating the game and not just executing a task.

As for the dialogs, it was a space of absolute freedom. We knew we had to keep one feature of the game totally free from the pressure and the anguish you can have making a game like that.

7.   Can you tell us a little more about Cyprien’s slingshot and the number of different ways he can modify his attacks with it?  Also, are there any other attacks (either as Cyprien or his alternative form) that will be acquired as the game progresses?

Slingshot is for Cyprien what sword is for Zorro.  In other words, Cyprien never goes out without it and will use it all along his different missions to accomplish them.  As far as slingshot upgrades are concerned, there are many “lost” in the world of the sea of Unbabed that you may find.

For example, there are the Telescopic Sight : used to facilitate ballistic firing, the Super Elastic : which increases firing range, the ‘Lead Marbles’ : which increases the power of the projectile, the Rapid Fire Fist and the Rubber-Coated Marble.  On the contrary, SuperCyp does not possess slingshot.

Furthermore, the game is stuffed with funny upgradeable skills.  Every time you deliver one of your best friends, you end up with a new “attack.”  For instance once you have beaten the boss in the “School” island, you will be able to control a paper plane in 1st person view and attack enemies in the distance.

8.    As Cyprien rescues and/or rejoins his friends, will they be able to unite their forces with his in order to conquer The Master?  What other kinds of assistance might we expect from other characters in the title ?

As we just said, every time Cyprien delivers a friend of him he gains a new “power” that will help him battle The Master, in that sense you can consider that they unite their forces… but they don’t become a team if this is what you meant.

Regarding the other characters, out of 100 existing there are about 60 with which Cyprien can interact and communicate.  These conversational scenes play an essential role in the gameplay since they serve to guide Cyprien (the player) and indicate him/her the next mission.

9.   The screens and trailers for Evil Twin have been impressive in their detail and ambience.  What would you say are the hardest items or effects to convey in a game like this, either technologically or psychologically ?

Feelings, no doubt about that. Would it be the fun the player has when he (or she) handles a character and play with it, or the feelings this character goes through during the adventure? The problem is that feelings are nothing but a very subjective matter. They do not answer to rules, do not respect formats, do not have anything to make your work easier.                 Really, the essential questions that we never stopped asking ourselves were: Will the player have fun? Will he dig the story? What kind of feelings will he have when playing Evil Twin? And hopefully, will those feelings be the same than the ones we intended to share at first?

The basic rule for that should be to keep on being as sincere as you were when you started the project, but it’s not always as obvious as he might appear. Time is for that matter playing against you, and you might have to make choices that would break your heart, choices that were not guided by your sincerity but simply by the reality of things.

10.  Evil Twin is targeted for quite a diverse age range, and so therefore it places some extra demands on formulating a plot and script that will appeal to several different levels of gaming experience and also gaming styles. How do you approach issues such as scriptwriting (humor, psychological depth, etc….) and gameplay depth (more action vs. more cerebral) when dealing with such wide-appealing subject matter as in Evil Twin?

As we said earlier, the story of Evil Twin was set before we started making the game. So were most of the issues considering scriptwriting. We had a pretty clear view of the kind of humor we would use, as well as the depth we wanted to reach.

As for the gameplay, let’s say we knew that we wouldn’t change the face of the video game industry for ever, but only that we would try to make it as good as in titles such as Mario, Banjo Kazooie or Rayman 2.  Basically, we dealt with that issue knowing exactly the kind of game we wanted to make and the kind of story we wanted to tell.

After that, it was mainly a work on rhythm. Where should we put some pure action sequences? Where to put more cerebral ones? Where to put the dialogs? Where should it be funny? Where should it be deep? We came to answer those questions once we came to test the game. We would cut sequences here and there because they were too long, make things easier because they were not that funny to play… things like that.

11.  As a culture, we have an affinity to flirt with things of darkness, or to “Embrace the Dark Divine,” as one of the taglines for Evil Twin states.  Where have you gone with Evil Twin that you feel will take users on a new journey through this seductive psychological territory?  What kinds of things set Cyprien’s journey apart from other titles of a more macabre nature?

The spirit of Cyprien's personality lies in his ambivalence: a child who grew up too quickly by force of circumstance, and who is subsequently at odds with himself.  The hero's pronounced personality and its ensuing development in part represent the originality of the game we developed. His unconventional past will serve as the element that triggers his adventures and the very reason behind his quest.

Left to his own devices, Cyprien finds himself confined between his fears and his desire to be infallible in front of the group of children of which he is the leader. Whilst he is much like any other child with an active imagination, he is also a child apart, separated from others by his past.  It is this dual aspect that will carry the game and build the scenario as a search for the inner soul.

Throughout the game, Cyprien is in an imaginary world with which he interacts, and which is of his own doing, since it is the expression of his dreams and nightmares. Consequently, he must confront his own demons. Most of the worlds he will go through will be directed by his friends, perverted by their most horrible faults.

Of course, it is not the first time video games deal with those issues, but Evil Twin has some kind of… real madness. We decided to show those issues in their most distorted form, not necessarily perverted form, but most distorted for sure. If was not for the humor present in the game, the story would be most gloomy. A kid losing his parents on his birthday, a world destroyed by a maniac of darkness… Just look at the vision we offer of the school. Those tables lost into the void, this robot-teacher watching you with laser eyes, the living-dead like little girls inviting you to play, if you scratch the funny surface of it, you would realize that the vision offered there is far from being funny. It’s not that it is scary, just… disturbing.

12.  I, like many other gamers, find myself spotting aspects of a particularly atmospheric game (such as what Evil Twin will be) slipping into my dreams and sometimes even in reflections of life?  When creating a game such as Evil Twin, or any others you’ve worked with in the past, do you ever have to take a step back because you feel like you’re almost becoming “too immersed” in some of the concepts – or do you feel, “the more real, the better?”

It depends on the story you want to tell. Some stories require you to be “too immersed”. Take Alice In Wonderland, for instance, how could it be less “immersed” and yet have the same impact? In order to tell a story, you got to have a point of view, the better the point of view will be chosen, the more impact it will have. If that point of view forces you to be real, regardless the limits, then you have to stick to it, otherwise you’re telling a different story. On the other hand, if the point of view you have chosen require you to take a step back, then it is for the better.

Evil Twin somehow required us to tell the story through Cyprien’s eyes. Cyprien being a kid, all his friends had to be smaller or as tall as him, all his enemies had to be way bigger than him. All characters, but a few exceptions, answer to that rule and it’s rather the same for the sets. Cyprien starts in a world of dreams where the characters are funny, but the more he comes to realize that his mission is much more important that what he cares to admit, the more realistic the sets become, ending with the vision of his own disturbed mind that is Loren Darith, the master’s tower.

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Check out the Evil Twin website right here: http://www.ubisoft.com/eviltwin, and stay tuned with GZ for all hot news, release info, reviews, cheats, and more for this upcoming title!

The Badger would like to thank Guillaume & Julie from In Utero for taking the time out of their busy schedules to talk with us and take us behind the scenes of Cyprien and his world.

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