F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin Interview

F.E.A.R. was great, but F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin promises to be even better. With original developer Monolith Productions in charge and 360 and PS3 versions set for release at the same time as the PC version, the future’s bright, or should that be dark, for fans of all things F.E.A.R. With the game’s Friday February 13 release date (what else?) inching ever closer, we thought it would be a good idea to sit down with primary art lead Dave Matthews (who may or may not have a band), and face our greatest fears.

VideoGamer.com: The first F.E.A.R. was very much a PC game, coming to PC first then moving to consoles afterwards, but with this you’re going for a simultaneous launch…

Dave Matthews: Right. The first game, the two ports were done outside of Monolith and they were definitely done delayed. From a Monolith perspective we feel they didn’t do everything that they could of achieved. We thought about it and we changed our way of development. So now we can develop all three SKUs simultaneously, which is great because if I create an asset I can build it, I can check it and I can check it on all three SKUs simultaneously. Is the intent the same? Does the wall look great? Yes. Check it in and it goes into development.

VideoGamer.com: Was that three times as much work then? Presumably you want it to look the same on all three platforms. Is it challenging working on all of them at once?

DM: It definitely has certain challenges. I’ve been in the industry for about 16 years and this is the first time I’ve ever worked in this kind of a format where it’s simultaneous creation and simultaneous validation. Normally you create an asset and you work on, if it’s off Xbox you work on Xbox, if you work on PS1, PS2, you’re working on that. Then you’re like now how do I get that to work on this? I don’t have to work in that mentality now and I don’t ever want to go back. There’s a lot of wins to doing it. Ultimately it saves us a lot of time. One of the problems is if you’re not quite sure what the target is when you first create then you end up having to redo it and redo it and redo it, but if right off the bat you can check on all three and I’m really close to what I’m looking for then I only have to redo a little bit and I’ve got all three done.

VideoGamer.com: There’s a common perception that the PS3 is a hard platform to develop for. Have you found that?

DM: People said that about the PS2. I was the lead character artist on God of War. So I think it just takes time to understand the hardware. 360, it’s the same thing. It’s hard getting like the AGIAs chips and all that kind of stuff, DX10, it’s just it’s new technology and it takes an amount of time for us to become comfortable with it and learn all its cool bells and whistles. It just has its own challenges, that just have to be overcome, just like all the other consoles.

VideoGamer.com: Is the PS3s reputation not deserved then?

DM: When I think about the development system for 360 it feels very much like a PC does, where the PS3 still feels very much like a console. There is a difference in developing for both of them. I’ve been in consoles for a long time so for me I don’t feel an apprehension to it.

VideoGamer.com: You mentioned some things maybe weren’t done as well as they could have been with the console versions of F.E.A.R. Can you be more specific?

DM: I’ll say ports, but I’ll even go as far to say the expansions as well, there were certain things that just felt like they lost a bit of the F.E.A.R.-ness. What’s that odd formula that makes F.E.A.R. really enjoyable? It’s a delicate formula and if you don’t understand it and understand it implicitly it can slip through your fingers. Because of that it was frustrating for us from an outside perspective looking in going: ‘You guys don’t quite get it’. That was another reason why we needed to push forward when we wanted to create F.E.A.R. 2 and bring it back home. From a story perspective when they went to Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate they took the story in a different story arc far from where we wanted to go. That was a big impetus for us to come back and overlay the first mission with the end of F.E.A.R. because at that point we’re shoring it back up and as soon as the explosion happens we move forward then you’re right back in the story arc.

VideoGamer.com: That’s not a very common technique, to align yourself so directly with the previous games.

DM: We have a very definite story that we want to tell about Alma. The first F.E.A.R. was about Alma as a little girl and just exposed what she was about, culminating with her release. Now we want to continue that story. Now the focus is, now that she’s out, what does that mean? In all its facets.

VideoGamer.com: For 360 and PS3 gamers out there, is this going to be a much better F.E.A.R. experience than the last one?

DM: Oh absolutely. I think we’ve done an excellent job capturing that essence of F.E.A.R. on consoles. I’m really pleased with it. We have a huge usability lab up at Monolith so we’re constantly bringing in tons of people to play the game. Some people are F.E.A.R. fans, some people have never been exposed to F.E.A.R. It gives us a great palette of information. Inevitably, time and time again the responses we’re getting from the usability are that, people that have F.E.A.R. experience, they’re constantly commenting that we’ve captured that essence.

VideoGamer.com: Moving sideways, is piracy a big concern for you?

DM: I think it is. It is for all developers. It’s something that exists and we can’t ignore it. The more precautions you take against it the better you can minimise it. We’ve aligned ourselves with Steam, it’s one of the facets as to why we wanted to go with Steam because it helps mitigate some of that.

VideoGamer.com: Piracy seems to be getting a lot of press at the moment. Is it threatening the future of the PC gaming market?

DM: I don’t know how much there’s been an escalation at all in piracy. I think it’s probably been there at similar levels. We’re getting more press about it and getting more awareness of it. We have to constantly be aware of it. Again I would take any precautions to try to stop as much of it as possible.

VideoGamer.com: Would you ever consider putting up the PC version later than the console versions are released?

DM: It was really important, with F.E.A.R. originally being a PC title, we wanted to make sure that, if we came out at different dates it could be construed that one is a port of the other. We wanted to make sure that that was never even a concern. It’s really important for us to still continue to recognise our community that’s PC because they’re so amazingly active. For us to even to come out later, there’s no way we would want to do that.

VideoGamer.com: What do you think about the whole issue of DRM?

DM: I was a little upset with Spore, I’ll admit that. Just because I have four or five PCs in my house and multiple people that would play the game, and the fact that there’s only one profile that everybody would be able to play is very frustrating for me. So from a personal aspect I think I probably wouldn’t want to go with DRM, I’d find a different solution for it.

VideoGamer.com: Is including DRM a risk? Do publishers end up shooting themselves in the foot?

DM: Warner’s getting digital copy pretty big right now. One of their mantras is the idea of, if digital copy is easier to deal with than going with the process of ripping or anything like that it’s far more likely for people to accept it. If we could find a solution that would be very similar then it would be adopted.

VideoGamer.com: Did you ever consider bringing F.E.A.R. to the Wii?

DM: It’s never been asked of us. I don’t know if we’ve ever considered it. I don’t know. I think if there was enough people out there that really clamoured for a Wii version it might be something that we could look to in the future. Currently on F.E.A.R. 2 I can say there are no plans yet for the Wii.

VideoGamer.com: There’s this perception of the Wii generally that it sells so well but it’s not getting the volume of decent third party games it should.

DM: I have a Wii and I love my Wii but I find that a lot of the Wii games that I enjoy, and what I like about the Wii game so much, is that it’s a party machine. You have a bunch of friends over and you play. Even on 360, I have Rock Band and every Friday I have six to eight people that come over and we take turns and we drink rum and coke. It’s a very social aspect, and I think the Wii really lends itself to those social type of games. I don’t necessarily think that F.E.A.R. 2 is very social, because it’s such a crafted experience for single-player. It’ll have multiplayer component and all that kind of stuff but I don’t think you’re going to have eight, ten people come over and they’re going to sit and watch while one person plays.

VideoGamer.com: Is that maybe part of the reason why? It does seem that that’s what the Wii only gets.

DM: And I love them! I’m not complaining about it!

VideoGamer.com: What kind of plans do you have for supporting the game in terms of DLC?

DM: We definitely recognise that there are a lot of options and opportunities for us with DLC. I don’t know if I’m currently allowed to say anything about that so I’m going to give you that answer.

VideoGamer.com: Any content that you might theoretically produce, would that be something that you would be keen to have parity across all platforms?

DM: Oh absolutely. I think it’s necessary. If we expose something that’s really smoking cool on 360 that it has to go to everything else. And because our pipeline is the way it is, it should be relatively easy for us.

VideoGamer.com: DLC is so important now. From a development point of view is it something that you’re viewing as a key part of your gaming strategy or is it an additional thing afterwards?

DM: I think it’s something you have to plan for initially. If you plan and you structure it right all the DLC has more meaning. I’ll come back to Rock Band. I’ve downloaded almost all the songs and they’ve managed to get a ton of cash from me, but what I like about it is it breathes longevity into the franchise, into the game. Because of that you just keep wanting more and more and more. So if you think about it ahead of time and you plan for it, it gives you those opportunities.

VideoGamer.com: Is it difficult to think of giving up stuff to put in the DLC without watering down your initial product?

DM: From our perspective and our philosophy, also we have communities saying, we need to have, like the EPA. The EPA literally was created for the game because the community from the first F.E.A.R. was like, I want to be able to have a skin of the powered armour, I want to be able to go around and tear shit up with the powered armour. It’s because the community out there shot for it that we put it in. DLC wise if there was something that we didn’t even slate for, and they’re clamouring for it, we’re the type of company, we’ll release it. It would be unwise of us not to listen.

VideoGamer.com: Are companies that don’t listen to the community missing a trick?

DM: It’s definitely a missed opportunity. You can have some great ideas but as soon as you add two or three more people the range gets bigger and then ultimately the more people you add the more options and features you can potentially come up with. But then you have to come back to the development team to be able to decipher which ones you want to push forward. Is it congruent with what the franchise is? And two, does it make sense development wise to be able to support it? And is it a healthy thing ultimately for the franchise? Hopefully that’s what comes back to the experience of the developers, to be able to decipher all of that stuff. I think we have a really good win on the EPA which is exactly that. We implemented the powered armour right off the bat and it felt lacking, so we were like, we needed to do something more. We looked at all sorts of things, and we built some ideas where it was a slow and lumbering type of a mech. We tried that and it ceased to feel like F.E.A.R., it ceased to feel the way we wanted that experience to be, so we sped it up. As soon as we started speeding it up it started to feel a lot more like, if we kept ratcheting it up faster, its motion, we were like, we’re getting back to something we enjoy and it still felt like F.E.A.R. as well. So it’s taking our experience and leveraging good suggestions in our games.

VideoGamer.com: Do you have demo plans?

DM: We do have demo plans. I can’t tell you the dates yet. We also have other plans to tell you for cool features on multiplayer.

F.E.A.R. 2 is due out on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 on Friday February 13 2009.