LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias Interview

David Braben is a game industry legend. As co-creator of the seminal Elite, and founder of UK-based Frontier Developments, David’s had a hand in some of the most innovative and influential games of all time. At a recent Nintendo Media Summit David gave press their first hands-on opportunity with LostWinds: Winter of Melodias, the sequel to 2008’s enchanting WiiWare launch title. In between demos we snagged David for a chat, quizzing him on LostWinds, the Wii’s online capabilities, and, of course, the long-awaited Elite 4.

VideoGamer.com: What changes have you implemented for the sequel? What feedback from the first game did you want to address?

David Braben: The first thing, with any games creation process, is we always want to make the game absolutely as best we can. Quite often, saying a new game’s got new this, that and the other doesn’t mean we didn’t enjoy the first one. One of the things we saw is, even before the first game was made, we had designed and put together so many ideas and richness in the world. Steve Burgess, the lead designer, is just absolutely… the amount of story we’ve got, even beyond this game, is phenomenal. It’s all starting to unfold. The nice thing is it all fits together.

The most noticeable thing with this game is we’ve been able to spend time optimising imprinting more into the space, and so visually you’ll see a lot more. But more importantly gameplay wise – there is tons more gameplay in there. The most obvious thing you’ll see when you first see the game is the fact you can switch between summer and winter. You can see the same locations in summer and winter but they feel very different. For example, Toku now gets cold in winter and needs either to stay near fire or eventually will get a coat to keep him warm. The water freezes so you can no longer swim in it, but you can now swim, which is something you couldn’t do before. You can swim underwater. We’ve got new wind powers as well. One of those is the cyclone, which is like a little tornado. Interestingly, for those who remember the first game, it was in some of the concept art we released for the first game. It allows you to do things, for example lifting up Toku, lifting up enemies, but also you can lift up water to make rain clouds, you can move the rain clouds about and make it rain – which is good from the first game – as watering the plants. Everything’s been carried over. Nothing’s been lost. All of those mechanics are in.

But the beauty is they all work in combination with the new features as well. As I say, you can make it rain on plants. You can move water around, so we use that for puzzles. Also, when it’s winter, if you do a vortex, as you do in the first game, it will make a snowball. You can then use that snowball to smash things. You can use it to weight switches. The mechanics are quite different in a sense. There are also new enemies. We’ve got fire glorbs, remember the glorbs from the first game, which burn you, but they keep you warm as well. So in winter, bizarrely, there’s a balance between keeping one of them alive to keep you warm until you get to the next fire.

VideoGamer.com: Take me back to before the first game was released last year. How did it come about that it was released on WiiWare?

DB: The game’s published by Frontier. WiiWare is a channel made available by Nintendo, for which of course we’re very grateful. It’s enabled us to publish a game like LostWinds that I think would otherwise have been very difficult to publish. Probably wouldn’t have got published, mainly because it’s seen as very different to the games around. People, because that’s seen as a risk, want to see a fully formed game before they can play it, but actually when you think about it, that’s what WiiWare is.

There are a lot of other issues with producing a disc-based game, you know distribution around the world. Clearly digital distribution is something that’s growing very rapidly and it’s something for the future. So for a lot of reasons, Frontier, we wanted to give it a go.

VideoGamer.com: Why did you go with WiiWare as opposed to Xbox LIVE Arcade or PSN?

DB: The original concept of the game was, Steve was apparently looking out of the window – we used to be based in a farmhouse just outside Cambridge – and all of the leaves and blossom and all that sort of thing would be carried up and over the house, particularly when it was windy. There were a whole load of trees outside. It just made the most amazing patterns. We thought, we’ve got to have a game something like this, somehow. That was where the original concept came from. Well maybe if you could blow your character around a bit – it all flowed from that. Originally we weren’t going to have Toku moving. He was going to be controlled purely by the wind, but we thought, nah, this adds a lot more richness. That’s where the idea came from.

When we first saw the Revolution, as the machine was then, Nintendo’s exciting new machine, the controls just seemed absolutely perfect. So for that reason we wanted to do it for Wii. It became logical to do it for WiiWare for reasons I’ve already said.

VideoGamer.com: Is LostWinds, then, a game that will never come out on XBLA or PSN? Would it have to change too drastically for that to happen?

DB: What we try and do is do the best game for each platform as appropriate. It’s very interesting, as control methods are changing, opportunities may also change.

VideoGamer.com: Are you talking about Natal and Sony’s motion sensing wand?

DB: Well who knows? All of these things are enabling new gameplay mechanics, some of which could be quite close to something like LostWinds. What we’re really trying to create is new game experiences. What I like with LostWinds is it does feel very different to games you’ve played before. What I applaud is the way people are experimenting. We do see people experimenting on iPhone as well. It’s great. If you look at the promise the games industry had just in the last few years, the number of new things, i.e. the Wii, iPhone and now talking about Natal and Sony’s wand, where that will go is really interesting, really exciting.

VideoGamer.com: So once those control systems come out it might be time to have a look at those and see is you can make something work with LostWinds perhaps?

DB: We’re certainly doing more in the world of LostWinds anyway. The very fact that we’re doing this sequel shows it’s been successful. But also, what those opportunities are, we’ll look at.

VideoGamer.com: You mentioned a lot of the LostWinds universe has already been fleshed out. What else beyond the two WiiWare games we’ve already seen has LostWinds the potential for?

DB: It makes it sound horribly commercial. Just talking a bit more about the LostWinds world, which a lot more of it is revealed in Winter of Melodias. You find out about another character called Riverin, who has a similar experience to Toku in discovering Enril, but he’s discovered a bit of Balasar, who is the ultimate bad guy in the LostWinds world, which is where all the glorbs come from. So he becomes turned evil, so think of him as a sort of anti Toku. He features in this game. Also Magdi, Toku’s mother, has gone missing. That’s what the story’s about – finding her. So there’s a lot more richness in the story for people who care. It doesn’t get in the way but you meet new characters. We’ve also got cutscenes in there, which we didn’t have before, explaining a bit more of the story.

VideoGamer.com: You mentioned Riverin – perhaps someone you might look at for their own game?

DB: [Laughs] You never know!

VideoGamer.com: From a core gamer point of view, the Wii isn’t known as the system of choice for downloading games. Is that changing or is that something you’re going to have to battle against for the foreseeable future?

DB: On all platforms it’s changing. What is on offer online is changing. What Nintendo announced today is also very interesting. This programme whereby you introduce friends and then you get gamer points, isn’t that brilliant? But even if you just introduce one friend, that’s 500 points. That’s a lot. It will change with time. I’m very hopeful. The take up of Xbox LIVE, for example, has been quite quicker, probably because the people who are driving it are actually the more core gamers. The real beauty with Nintendo though is it’s brought a whole new audience who are still not entirely familiar with the concept of gaming. So it’s a step at a time. When they discover what’s available online… I mean Nintendo brought my mum to games not that long ago with a DS.

VideoGamer.com: What game?

DB: Brain Training. But now, she’s playing more traditional games.

VideoGamer.com: Like what?

DB: She was playing Animal Crossing and Professor Layton and the Curious Village. So she’s now thinking, oh there’s another one coming out. It is changing. The average age of gamers is now apparently over 30. Compare that with the average age of the population, they’re not that far apart. So we’ve got a very big representation of games within a lot of ages. There are still a lot of people who haven’t been introduced to games, but with online on Wii, it is gradually improving. There are a lot of people out there who don’t realise it’s even possible, and that the wireless network is built in – you don’t have to buy anything separate.

VideoGamer.com: Why do you think that is?

DB: People buy it often for a specific game, whether it’s Wii Fit or something like that, and see it as a Wii Fit device, and then only later realise, oh I can play other stuff on this. World of mouth does that. Friends, particularly the playground will help a lot, especially when there’s 500 free points for everyone you can bag!

VideoGamer.com: So you see that audience engaging in online gaming and downloading games just by virtue of a process they go through over time?

DB: Yes, I think so. It’s not going to be overnight. The Ambassador Programme is going to help a lot. People are already starting to connect. It’s true with all consoles, on average it’s fewer than 50 per cent are online, maybe Xbox is slightly higher. But it’s interesting with time the percentage with Xbox has fallen. It’s not risen. But the numbers have risen. It’s those numbers that matter. It’s quite obvious, the reason the percentages have fallen is as with the PS2 generation, where the early adopters are often core gamers like you and I, that then spreads to a lot more people who, to be honest, don’t want the fiddle of connecting it up, until they realise, oh, cool, free stuff! I’ll sign up after all.

VideoGamer.com: I can’t let you go without asking you for an update on The Outsider.

DB: Oh it’s very exciting. One of the problems with games, especially games with long development periods, is if you talk about them all of the time it becomes old. So I’ve intentionally gone quiet. And we will be quiet for a while, until we choose the right time to start talking about it again. I don’t know, it’s all opinion. If you talk about something all of the time then it becomes old.

VideoGamer.com: Do you have any idea what year it’s going to come out, or is that still up in the air?

DB: We do. But we’re not saying it!

VideoGamer.com: It’s too late for this year, then?

DB: It’s not this year.

VideoGamer.com: Finally, Elite 4, I read online that you’re looking at it as a space MMO that you won’t start work on until The Outsider’s gone gold. Is that still the case?

DB: There is absolutely tons of stuff about Elite online. Hardly any of it’s true! Some of it is, but I’m not going to say which. We are working on it and it’s very exciting.

Lost Winds: Winter of Melodias is due out exclusively on WiiWare this October.