December 5, 2008

First-Person Action/Fighting with Zeno Clash: Interview and Exclusive Art Inside
By Louis Bedigian

“I think that punishing a character with a knee bash in the face feels much more satisfying in first-person than it would have felt in third-person.”

Mirror’s Edge has scored a ton of acclaim for creating an exhilarating and almost entirely unique game within the first-person genre. But it is not alone. Since the days of the Dreamcast (and likely before it), developers have tried to create new first-person games with inspiration from other genres. Mirror’s Edge seemed to have accomplished this by looking at the success of chase scenes in movies, where the lead character is always on the run, and by exploring the possibility of what Tomb Raider/Prince of Persia might be like in the first person.

But where are the other success stories?

Zeno Clash hopes to be the next game that gets people talking. Combining elements of action and fighting games with a first-person view, Zeno Clash is a huge undertaking by any developer. ACE Team, an independent developer based in Santiago, Chile, believes it is ready to meet that challenge.

“In Zeno Clash we’ve been careful of including an elaborate combat system to a first-person game without having to redefine the basic controls with which a FPS is built on,” said Andres Bordeu. Game Designer & Partner at ACE Team. “We are aware that many of the player’s who experience the game will be people that play first-person shooters and we want them to feel comfortable from the start. However, whenever you’re introducing a new game mechanic which is unfamiliar to players you’ll want to walk them through it slowly making sure they don’t feel overwhelmed by all the new options, so we’ve included a few tutorial sequences which teach the new mechanics. These sequences are carefully inserted in the story so they won’t feel out of place.

“The game starts with a dream sequence where the player only learns the backbone of the combat system. Basically punching, blocking and focusing on one or more enemies. Each time a specific ability is learned it is unlocked. We didn’t want to teach absolutely everything at the beginning of the game, so players can get familiarized with the new mechanics progressively. As the player progresses he’ll have the opportunity to learn new more advanced movements that will come in handy when fighting with more difficult adversaries (deflecting & attacking, breaking the adversaries blocking, etc).”

Many action games are now switching a third-person view, thanks in part to Gears of War's popularity. So why a first-person view for Zeno Clash? Didn't that make the development process more difficult?

Andres Bordeu: We believe that one of the biggest bonuses of keeping the first-person view is having a higher level of immersion. You actually feel like you’re playing as the character. It is true that from many points of view the development has been more difficult. When you’re developing a fighting game in first-person perspective you have to get rid of the traditional avatar approach with no feet that can only hold weapons. Your model has to really be in the game and a mandatory feature is body awareness.

We’ve put a lot of effort in ensuring that the first-person view feels immersive. I think that punishing a character with a knee bash in the face feels much more satisfying in first-person than it would have felt in third-person. All our close interaction moves like grabs, or getting grabbed by an enemy feel really good with body awareness. I think that we’re on the right path with this feature and you can see other games like Mirror’s Edge that are taking the approach of moving a traditionally third-person game to a first-person game. The way you experience actions in first-person is completely different to how you experience the same actions in third-person.

Of course, the greater the development risk, the greater the reward should your challenge work out. Now that the game is close to release, what do you feel you've accomplished with Zeno Clash – not just the first-person view but any and all aspects?

AB: I think that our biggest achievement will be delivering an experience that feels truly innovative. We’ve mixed a bunch of ingredients that would put a frown on most people’s faces. We’ve mixed surreal art with an action game. We’ve mixed fighting mechanics with a first-person perspective. We’ve cut out all fantasy clichés from the story. And we’re doing all this all the way here in Chile. I think that many people would have thought that we’re mad if I mentioned the above and we hadn’t started yet, but we’re very happy with how things are turning out and I’m confident that players will welcome Zeno Clash as something refreshing. I’m sure we’ll be able to expand on this exciting IP and start developing other new creative projects.

What are some of the different moves you'll be able to perform?

AB: From an offensive point of view player’s will be capable of performing basic attacks like punch strings and strong punches to combine them with more complex moves depending of the adversaries state. Beat down enemies can be stunned allowing the player to quickly finish them with an uppercut or grab them which gives multiple options to deal more damage. The key is not to get overrun while trying to perform a grab. Perhaps too many adversaries will be close to the player, so it would be preferable to punch the enemy so his body lands on another enemy and knocks him back too. While the player is grabbing an enemy he might also want to toss him in a direction so the enemy falls off a bridge or in to another enemy.

From a defensive point of view the player will want to master some counter attacks that come after deflecting or eluding an enemy attack. Players that try to wear out enemies that block too much will find themselves briefly with no stamina to block or throw good punches. So if a player is getting nowhere with regular attacks he might want to try dodging a punch and recovering with well placed hook. These are harder to perform because they require good timing and enemies will try to confuse you by alternating quick attacks with other slower attacks.

Everything is also tied with the weapons. A player might want to attempt to play it safe and reach for a gun and drain an enemy’s life by shooting at him from the distance. However we’ve programmed the AI to do a good job at disarming an armed player. Players will have to make shots count since most weapons have small rounds and longer reload times.

Some enemies will use different attacks techniques. Can you tell us about them? What are they like, and are they different from what the player will use?

AB: Enemies share some similarities with the player, but they are built around the player so they make out the most of the combat system. We’ve tried to give enemies a lot of diversity by including different attack patterns and movements. Some characters will try to wear down the player by blocking a lot and attempting a well landed attack. Others will have poor defensive skills but they will throw everything at you. Since our characters are so visually different from each other we hope that players will learn some of these patterns just like in a fighting game you get better by learning the adversaries weaknesses.

We also have heavy characters that work very different to light characters. They’re extremely dangerous at close range and they try to run you over if you keep too much distance. Combine those with some boss battles and the dangerous wild life the player will encounter and there’s a lot of diversity in the action we’re offering.

Is there a particular way that new moves are acquired? Ex: do you have to gain orbs and purchase them, or…?

AB: As mentioned previously new moves will be taught in special tutorial sequences that will unlock these moves. Our focus is to make sure that a player learns and feels comfortable with a move set before he is required to perform additional learning. This is why the tutorials are spaced with enough time. Enemies will also require the player to make use of these new abilites progressively.

Do you have any melee or projectile weapons?

AB: We have a couple of melee weapons that play a special part when fighting heavy foes. Heavy characters cannot be defeated with your bare fists, so you’ll have to keep a good grip of your hammer or bone-club if you want to survive. Heavies are not that easily defeated even if the player has the proper weapon. They’ll deflect your swings and charge from distances to keep you busy and on the run. Bashing weapons can also be used by and against lighter characters, and they are most effective.

For projectile weapons we have a dual crossbow, a skeletal grenade gun that fires explosive shells, fish layered pistols, a musket and the skull bomb, which is basically like a timed grenade. Enemies also carry these bombs so the player might find himself forced to break contact and run because someone dropped one of these right next to you when you least expected it. In some cases a character might think that throwing a grenade at a friendly getting beat up is the best way to get the player off him.

PC and fighting games usually don't mix. How did you get around the typical hurdles and design controls that feel right for a fighting game but work with the typical mouse/keyboard setup?

AB: I guess the right answer would be iterations. We’ve perfected the game a lot as an iterative process. Our first approach was to keep the controls as simple as possible, delegating certain tasks to the game so the player didn’t have to worry about them. Basically, we were trying to avoid the keyboard configuration nightmare you have with some hardcore games. But what sounds right on paper doesn’t always work well after it’s implemented. We ended up removing some control simplifications that felt restrictive and we let the player manage those variables. The end result was much better. The controls are fairly standard for a first-person game, and they transition very well to the fighting mechanics.

I think it’s important to have a simple control scheme when you’re presenting a new game mechanic that not everyone is immediately familiar with. The depth of the system should be in how the player uses these options and how the game expands on these options with new reactions. As an example I can refer to our deflect movement. To perform a deflect you have to block just before an enemy attack lands. We didn’t add a ‘deflect’ key to the control scheme. If we want to raise the complexity a bit more we can make the enemy counter-deflect and you’re required to react accordingly. No new buttons were added to these interactions and there’s a lot of skill required to perform the full set of moves.

Tell us about the "punk fantasy world" the game is set in.

AB: Before we started building this game we started thinking how to really stand apart from the rest of the titles. After all, the FPS genre is one of the most competitive scenarios and we didn’t want to shoot ourselves in the foot by making a sub par cookie cutter game. At the studio we are big fans of art styles that are not commonly seen in games. Actually, all our sources of inspiration came from authors that were not related to videogames; Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings, the art of John Blanche, the art featured in ‘The Dark Crystal’ film, etc. Edmundo (our art director) also had a bunch of incredible concepts and illustrations that would transition beatifully to a 3D environment. We started thinking that surrealism could be that edge that we were looking for.

After we settled for the new art style and chose the punk fantasy theme we decided that the whole concept had to go deeper into the game. The first story drafts we had were not very consistent with the ‘punk’ themed game. Edmundo started from scratch and re-wrote the story. We were concerned in avoiding the clichés of the fantasy genre. In our story Ghat (the protagonist) isn’t trying to save the world from an obvious evil plot. There are no magical items like rings of power or hero swords. We have no established races like dwarfs, elves and orcs. There are several different intelligent creatures that live together in Zeno Clash’s caotic world. We wanted the story to be more about the charactars and their conflicts with each other. We also tried to avoid making any judgements by labeling something as good or bad. We didn’t use the typical color codes where the bad guys dress in black and good guys dress in white. In the real world bad guys don’t think they’re bad and they don’t necessarily dress in black.

Zeno Clash is using Valve's source engine. Tell us about that -- your decision to go with that engine, what it has done for you as a developer and for your game, etc.

AB: The decision to use Source was an obvious decision for us. The SDK has a lot of great features and we were able to immediatly focus in building the game. We’ve also had tons of support; directly from Valve and from the community which is very active. We also wanted to make sure that we were developing on a platform that would be correct for a new studio like ours, and Steam was an ideal solution when thinking about the distribution of our game. We are also very interested in retail, and we’re currently searching for more retail partners, but developing the game from day one knowing that it’ll be available in Steam has given us the tranquility to push forward without losing the focus on the project.

The other thing about the engine that has us very happy is the versatility to approach different problems with different solutions. On several occasions we’ve read or heard that people thought that Zeno Clash was running on another engine, because it has very little resemblance to Half Life 2 or other Source powered games (not from an aesthetic point of view, but from a technical point of view). I think it’s very important that an engine gives you the resources to mold your ideas the way you envisioned them. Take Team Fortress 2 for instance. It also looks nothing like other Source games, still it uses the same technology.

Some of the character designs are very unusual. Talk about the process of planning their look and final design, and about how you brought them into the game.

AB: In Zeno Clash you’ll meet all sorts of strange creatures and characters. You will meet your brothers and sisters, which are not all human. You’ll encounter crazy nihilistic rejects that live in the woods, babbling incoherent things. You’ll also find strange beings that live in the far corners of the land. Developing all these distinct characters required us to have an open approach to design.

The design process at ACE Team is very free. We think that if we have the liberty to express new ideas and we’re not tied to a demanding design document cool new concepts can surface during the development process. Setting everything in stone during the pre-production can be counter productive for a title like this. It’s not that we didn’t go through pre-production, it’s more that we leave space for new ideas along the process.

As an example we have a character that is this sort of bounty hunter. He is a marksman that plays games with the player by shooting at explosive rodents that run close to the target, and not firing directly at him (I know this sounds very strange). We developed the designs, models and animations, included him into the game and even recorded the voice acting. Suddenly someone thought this guy would be much more interesting if he was a blind marksman that can hear the high pitch of the rodents and needed them to find his target. The idea was great for the character, so we re-recorded some of his lines and made the necessary modifications.

Thank you for your time.

AB: Thanks to you for the great interview!

Share | Digg This | Glink It

---