"The Bureau: XCOM werd te vroeg aangekondigd"
Ontwikkelaar 2K Marin heeft uitgelegd waarom XCOM van een first person shooter in een third person game is veranderd, namelijk The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. Kort gezegd, 2K was veel te vroeg met het aankondigen van de game.
Afgelopen weekend hebben vijf medewerkers van 2K Marin een zogenaamde Reddit AMA gedaan (Ask Me Anything), waar meerdere keren de verandering van de game ter sprake kwam. Narrative designer Erik Caponi gaf aan dat het team het toch niet geschikt vond om van de game een fps te maken.
“Game development is a process. You don’t have an idea, plonk it down, and then build what you had in your head. You try things. You see what works. You put stuff on the screen and see how it plays. It’s something that non-developers don’t realize. For everything you see on the screen in a shipping game, there was a ton of stuff that was tried and thrown away,” aldus Caponi.
“So, the interesting thing about the history of the earlier version of The Bureau, is that you guys got to see behind the curtain a bit and see some of that sausage being made. The game was announced too early, before the process had really been seen through to the best and most credible version of the game.”
“In 2010 and 2011 the devs were still fine tuning the concept for what an XCOM shooter really is. It’s hard to consistently tell fans what to expect of a game when the concept for that game is still being baked,” zo voegt senior product manager Nik Karlsson toe.
“Once we knew The Bureau was a very challenging, very tactical, very calculated third-person shooter we went to work telling the world about it. I feel like we’ve finally overcome the education hurdle that was in front of us, for the most part people understand that this game is no longer a FPS, and it’s no longer a detective game, it’s a tactical third-person shooter that’s reflective of the core XCOM tenants.”
UI artist Pat Guarino vertelde dat het niet makkelijk was om van first person naar third person te gaan.
“You suddenly go from a character who is essentially hidden 100% of the time to a character who is constantly on screen. That means modeling, texturing, and a significant amount of animation work.”
“There also needs to be a complete revamp of the camera system. A camera that used to be tied to a single perspective is suddenly out in the world bumping into geometry and clipping through walls.”
Creative director Morgan Gray vindt wel dat het de moeite waard was.
“Third person gave us a lot in terms of gameplay benefits. With the focus on tactical combat third person let’s you see yourself, your team, the enemy, and grok the battlefield all in a single eye scan. But it was a hard change, the chief difficulties came from work done on cover mechanics, and player animations.”
“There is lot more to create when you are moving away from disembodied hands holding guns. The other major benefit, is it let us put our main character, William Carter, front in center all the time, which helped cement him as a proper character in the game world and in the narrative.”
The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is vanaf 23 augustus speelbaar op pc, PlayStation 3 en Xbox 360.
