Too Human Preview

Has a game designer ever courted as much controversy as Silicon Knights' Denis Dyack? He doesn't like hardcore forums, doesn't believe video games should be shown off until they're finished and reckons his new game, Too Human, has the most complex control system of any game ever released in the genre. The best thing? He's not afraid to say it. We sat down, turned on our tape recorder and held on tight. This is going to be a bumpy ride...

VideoGamer.com: How do you feel now the game is finally coming out?

Denis Dyack: It's a long time in coming. We're really happy with the final results. It's a really good feeling because Too Human has had a lot of unusual hurdles to overcome where most games haven't.

VideoGamer.com: Like what?

DD: The showing at 2006, having to re-write the engine, those are things most games usually don't have to worry about. And rather than having a ton of positive hype behind the game we've had to fight a lot of negative perceptions from 2006. So from that perspective we feel really good about where we're at right now. We think the game's really strong. The response from the demo has been fantastic so we've been really excited.

VideoGamer.com: You mentioned the negative response to the game, but that's primarily from the hardcore. In terms of the game's success does the hardcore matter?

DD: I don't know. It's really hard to tell from that stand point. Certainly it's pretty clear from the demo that more people like it than don't which is fantastic. And the number of downloads we got, and the interest in the game is extremely high so we're also very positive. So maybe in the end it doesn't matter. Time will tell.

VideoGamer.com: Too Human is intended to be a 360 trilogy. What kind of time frame are we looking at for the second game? A quick turnaround?

DD: It's certainly going to be faster than the first game. The whole idea of doing the trilogy was it was meant for the 360. Plans are still on track, nothing has changed. We're not announcing anything on the second or third game here. We're here to talk about the first. But people should be fairly happy at the development process from here on in. There won't be any more engine re-writes or anything like that. So it should be a lot smoother waters.

VideoGamer.com: So it won't be a massive wait then for the second game?

DD: No, it should not be.

VideoGamer.com: The game was originally designed for four player co-op. But you took it down to two. Why?

DD: Originally we talked about four player co-op and then we took it down to two. One of the main reasons was balancing. We really wanted to make sure that the game played at the highest quality possible. So the actual technology itself supports more. But when we were finishing the game we had to make sure that it represented itself the best during co-op, for gameplay and for balancing and making sure the economy wasn't exploitable. So we stuck with two and we wanted to work on it from there. So that was just a conscious design, what's the best quality we could achieve, rather than just throwing four players in and hoping it worked from a balancing perspective.

VideoGamer.com: Is that it then for four-player for the whole trilogy?

DD: Oh no. It's definitely possible to go up more players as time goes on. I don't want to make a specific announcement but the technology obviously supports more than two. It was a balancing issue and a quality issue that we wanted to make sure the game played the best it could with multiplayer first. We felt it was better to offer a really fantastic two-player experience than a mediocre four-player experience. So that's what we went for.

VideoGamer.com: How much luck is involved in making a successful game?

DD: I think luck definitely plays its part in everything. As an example during the Napoleonic Wars, when Napoleon faced one of the worst winters of all time, that's definitely bad luck. I think having to rewrite the engine was definitely not great. Certainly not something we planned for or wanted to do, it was just something we were forced into doing. But at the end of the day it's not just that that defines how successful you are, it's the dedication of the team, the experience of the team. So it's more than that. But I think it definitely plays a factor.