Another World 15th Anniversary Edition Interview

With its groundbreaking animation and stunning artwork, Another World proved style is often just as important as substance when designing a legendary video game. Fifteen years after it first took our breath way, an anniversary edition is being released and Pro-G caught up with creator Eric Chahi to chat about the legwork behind making a classic.

Pro-G: Where did the inspiration for Another World come from?

Eric Chahi: Another World has been influenced mainly by pictorial art and movies, indeed by everything I liked at that time of my life. Star Wars had a big influence. Science fiction books, comics and fantasy art inspired me too, as well as painters like Michael Whelan, Richard Corben, and Franck Frazetta. I was very focused on illustration at that time of my life, I even envisaged leaving the games industry and going into that field. Jordan “Mechner” Karateka has influenced me too, with the first attempt to create a dramatic ambience in an action game.

The starting point was the use of polygons to create 2D games after I played the Dragon’s Lair port for the Amiga, which was showing incredible full screen animation. That game’s graphics weren’t polygons, but compressed bitmaps directly read from the disk. I thought it could be done with polygons since the animations were flat. I wrote some vectorial code and programmed some speed tests. The idea was to use polygons not only for movie-like animation but also for gameplay contrary to Dragon’s Lair, which has almost no interactivity. Think of the sprites as an assemblage of vector shapes. This proved to be a major advantage because you had big sprites that were scalable and took up less disk space than traditional sprites.

Pro-G: Back in 1991, you designed and developed the game almost totally alone, something which is very rare these days. How did you find the experience?

EC: It was something that I’ve been doing since 1983 when I first started to create games. That sounds crazy today but that was natural to me and, at that time, computer technology was so small that one guy was enough to create a game; it was an artisan time. Working alone is not always easy; it needs a lot of discipline. Passion drove me with that discipline. Anyway, before Another World I worked in a team as a graphic designer on the Amiga – that was a very nice experience, the work on Future War with Paul Cuisset has been one of the coolest collaborations I’ve done. It was the success of Future War and its royalties that give me the chance to program Another World without constraints of any sort or any editorial pressure.

That was a crazy thing to do on a game like Another World and I did not evaluate the work fully; I thought it would be about one year of work. Finally, it ended with two years of fully concentrated effort. It was exhausting, although with hindsight it is one of my richest personal experiences – a true marathon except at the beginning I didn’t know how long it would last. My feeling of isolation (loneliness) nourished the tone of the game itself where the hero is very alone too. The flaw of this process is that it is difficult to have any hindsight about the gameplay and the setting of game difficulty, a point where external feedback is indispensable.

Pro-G: How do you feel about the critical and commercial reception Another World received when it initially launched?

EC: I was not prepared for that. I know the game was different, but I only imagined in my dreams that it would be such a success. At that time in France few games were released worldwide on console. Once the game had been released, the recognition and commercial success it attracted was the last thing I was prepared for. I was exhausted, but it convinced me to start Heart of Darkness, which was the beginning of a true nightmare. That game was the consequence of being unprepared for Another World’s success.

Pro-G: It had stunning rotoscoped animation and visuals for its day; do you think that was the main draw for players?

EC: It was the first thing that stunned the player, having such large-scale animation was unusual. But, if it was the only thing, then the game would have been forgotten. The main draw was the consistency of the universe, the ability to have a live feeling gaming experience and the rhythm of the story. It is a game where everything is suggested, anyone can project his imagination.

Pro-G: How happy were you with the finished game? Was there anything you would have liked to change?

EC: I was just happy to have it finished. There are always some details; I did these on the re-release. I thought the game was too hard in some places. Even today there are little graphic glimpses I would like to change, but at one moment you have to say stop or you can spend the rest of your life improving things.

Pro-G: What was your favourite moment in Another World?

EC: I love the sequence where Lester opened the beasts’ cages to make a diversion and then ran around in all this mess. Or the idea of the underwater apparition, the most unearthly teleportation – there are many sequences I like.

Pro-G: What made you decide to do a 15th anniversary edition of the game?

EC: From the many games I created, Another World is my most personal project released to this day and the one that brings me recognition, so it will always have a special place in my heart. Secondly, as you know, the game was created with polygons, which can be adapted to any resolution; when I created Another World I was thinking that one day it will be able to run on higher specification computers. The idea is to propose something which shows great respect to the first release, so the enhanced backgrounds are in harmony with the flat polygon animation. The true difficulty was to not go too far in the enhancement. Also, I really wanted to preserve the first release so the game can be played also in its original format with 320×200 resolution and 16 colour graphics. This is important to keep a trace of how computer gaming has evolved. We are talking about graphics, but the gameplay has been also improved; it is now more fluent. The sound and music has been remastered too.

Pro-G: What extra content will people be getting with this version?

EC: There is an audio CD with music from Jean-François composed especially for Another World. Also, there is a “making of” split into two sections – a video with a selection of interviews and digital media with original design notes and annotated drawings to explain the process of creation behind the game. That is an important part of this edition.

Pro-G: Do you have any plans to make a modern sequel, taking advantage of the power of next generation consoles?

EC: No.

Pro-G: And finally, what other projects have you been involved in since Another World and what’s next for Eric Chahi?

EC: I worked on Heart of Darkness, which was a difficult development. After that I decided this time to truly take some rest for a while. The business was changing, I was exhausted. I preferred to express myself in other fields than computer games, such as abstract painting, photography and sound synthesis programming. I really needed to refuel my batteries. I’ve been working hard on a new game design for a long time now, something very different. I’m very impatient to get it started in production!

Another World 15th Anniversary Edition is being released by Lexicon Entertainment in Q1 2007 at the budget price of £9.99.