Prototype Interview

Prototype, from Radical Entertainment (Scarface, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction), is an upcoming open world Crackdown-esque Parkour-style action smash-em-up in which you elbow drop tanks from the top of skyscrapers and surf on enemy mutants. Prototype’s got the potential to be one of the best brand new games of 2009, as anyone who’s read our hands-on preview will know, but there are still questions to answer. Here, Activision associate brand manager Steve Fuller tells us why Prototype will be deserving of your hard-earned cash when it’s released this June.

VideoGamer.com: Prototype was picked up by Activison Blizzard following the Activision Vivendi merger. Why did you keep it when others were dumped?

Steve Fuller: Well, I can’t speak for Activision as a whole because I’m not a bigwig executive, and I actually came over from Vivendi myself. I can tell you why I think they brought it. I think Prototype gives them the opportunity to get into this open world genre of games, which is a very successful, very lucrative genre with some big players in it. It really gives them a chance to come into that space with something new. A lot of open world games are gangster simulators. So a lot of stealing cars and shooting people, things like that. Prototype brings shape shifting, you’re turning your arm into a sword, you’re consuming people, you’re using their physical form as a disguise, you have this crazy agility. It brings all these things together, with this conspiracy story and the Web of Intrigue and consuming people’s memories to piece together the story. It really brings something unique to that category. I think they saw it as a great opportunity.

VideoGamer.com: Why is the open world genre so popular?

SF: It’s because you can buy a game and it gives you a big variety of gameplay. If you’re an action gamer, speaking from Prototype, and you love action, it’s got plenty for you. You have the shape shifting powers, you can change them on the fly, you can jump around and slice off heads and consume people and drive tanks and helicopters, so you have that covered. But if you’re more of an RPG gamer then we have that as well. You’re collecting Evolution Points, you’re customising your character, you’re tailoring him to fit your play style. If you’re like the perfectionist, the Achievement hound gamer, then we have tons of stuff in there for you to run around and explore the city, collect these landmarks, do these side events to earn the maximum Evolution points and max out your character, tons of Achievements and things like that. Open world gaming really gives you a lot of freedom. You buy a first-person shooter you know what you’re going to be doing most of the time – it’s just shooting people in the head. It’s the variety that people like.

VideoGamer.com: What are the main influences behind Prototype’s main character, Alex Mercer, and the game design?

SF: For the main character himself there were a few influences. We looked at things like Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver. We looked at Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal Lecter, he’s not a nice guy, but people still empathise with him and they think he’s a cool character. He’s a cool anti-hero. Those are some of the factors that went into shaping Alex Mercer. We want him to be the same kind of way. He’s not a good guy, he’s not a superhero, he’s not Superman, but at the same time he’s not a pure villain. He’s in between. He’s on his own side. He knows what he wants and he’s going to get it. He doesn’t care what happens outside of that, which is cool. People like a guy with a little bit of a dark streak.

In terms of the game design, influences behind the three-way war and the factions… the worst thing you can have in an open world sandbox game is nothing to do. We wanted to make New York City living, breathing, evolving as you play. What better way to communicate that than having a conflict that naturally occurs as you’re exploring the city? You can actually play off each side as you want, as it benefits you. You can be running through the city, you can be in a normal area, people are going around in their daily lives, turn a corner and now you’re in the middle of a war, in the middle of a fire fight. It’s completely organic and completely natural, and it makes you feel more immersed in that world, that there’s actual things going on. There are objectives being achieved by the military without you doing anything. It’s cool, it makes it feel more realistic almost.

VideoGamer.com: The gameplay reminds me of Crackdown. Was that an influence?

SF: We take it is a compliment because Crackdown was a very successful game. There are elements that are very similar, but you know what? It was similar to The Hulk. Hulk has similar powers as well. So there’s lots of powers, lots of abilities that are just fun in an open world setting. The ability to jump super high, run super fast, lift up cars and throw them around. It’s almost like, these are things where if we didn’t have them people would be really disappointed. When we were designing Prototype, it was all about giving the player ultimate freedom and ultimate choice. If we didn’t let you do that then we’d be lying about ultimate freedom and ultimate choice. So it’s not so much that we’re looking for other games for inspiration, we just thought about what the player would want to do, and then let’s enable them to do it.

VideoGamer.com: Alex Mercer has some incredibly destructive powers. Is the idea to make the player feel almost God-like? I was running around pretty much ignoring anything that was trying to do damage to me. It felt like I was almost invulnerable. How will it feel in the final version?

SF: The demo that you played was tuned to be on the easier side. It’s intended to be the first hands-on, the first time people ever have a chance to actually play the game, so we didn’t want to frustrate them, we didn’t want to make it too hard. At that point in the story, where that is taking place, you’re supposed to be much more proficient with all the powers and his abilities at that point, to deal with all the chaos that’s happening. The game scales as you go along. At the beginning of the game you don’t have all of those powers so you’ve got to be a little bit more resourceful. By the end of the game you have a ton of powers but the Blackwatch, they’ve got more powerful weapons. They’ve dealt with this virus before, they have a familiarity with what’s making you tick, they know how to invent weaponry and things like that to combat it. So the ways they deal with you will evolve as you go through the game to keep up with your level of power advancement. It’s the same thing with the Infected. There’s the general Infected monsters which just shamble about, they’re pretty much just fodder. At the beginning they’re a little bit more of a threat because you basically just have hand to hand and maybe just claws and that’s it. The Infected forces will evolve as well and there’s stronger and more powerful versions to help deal with the stronger and more powerful version of you. It’s hard to communicate all that content and all that evolution and balancing and things like that in a ten minute demo. Trust me it’s definitely something we’re working on. We want people to feel empowered. We want them to feel like, this is bad-ass, I have all these crazy powers, but at the same time there has to be a level of challenge.

VideoGamer.com: Prototype is a brand new IP. In times of a recession, launching a successful new IP must be the hardest thing in gaming.

SF: Yeah, regardless of the economics launching a new IP is always really difficult. And when times are tough people resort to what they know. But at the same time if publishers don’t take risks and you don’t try new IP you’re never going to end up with a BioShock, or something like that. You have to take calculated risks. Activision’s in a great position because they have so many established brands that it’s OK for them to take a chance. With Prototype we’re maybe not asking somebody to take as big of a chance. We feel like we have a really strong game that offers a lot of different kinds of gameplay to a lot of different kinds of people. I don’t think they’ll be disappointed if they take a risk on Prototype and spend some of their hard-earned money on it.

VideoGamer.com: Do you see new IP drying up over the next few years?

SF: It’s hard to say. I’m not a financial analyst. I certainly hope not, because new IP is the innovation in gaming and that’s what really drives the industry forward. The last thing personally that I would want to see is gaming become stagnant because I love it too much.

VideoGamer.com: What sort of release date are we looking at for Prototype?

SF: June of this year.

VideoGamer.com: Will you do a demo?

SF: We haven’t made any decisions yet. Doing a demo for an open world game is really hard. The breadth of content, it’s hard to distil into a ten minute experience. Radical has a game to finish and we don’t want to start taking resources away from them that they need as they come near their crunch time. We’ll evaluate with them, we’ll see how the production schedule is, but we haven’t made any announcements yet. Demos can be a double-edged sword. If you put together a great demo, it’s great. But, for some reason if you put out a demo that’s maybe not as strong, now you’ve cost yourself a lot. It might just be that the demo itself doesn’t give a fair representation of what the final product is. It might not be that the final product is bad, but it’s just the nuances of making a demo, you only have such a short window to communicate and get people excited about your game. For a game like this that’s just so huge, it’s a big challenge and we need to make sure that we do it right, that we have the ability to do it right.

VideoGamer.com: Are there any multiplayer features?

SF: It’s a single-player only experience.

VideoGamer.com: What led to that decision? Multiplayer seems in vogue right now.

SF: We experimented with having a co-op multiplayer mode and having to cut it out was probably one of the toughest decisions that we had to make. But at the end of the day we’re doing a lot of stuff that’s new. The Web of Intrigue, the storytelling mechanic, the shape shifting, the agility, there’s so much we tried to do in the single-player story, we wanted to make sure that we were giving it enough resources, especially because it’s a new IP. You have to deliver a solid experience in all facets. If we couldn’t make a multiplayer mode that was substantial and made sense and was quality, we didn’t want to do it because we don’t want to give somebody a first impression of, well this is kind of half-assed isn’t it? So we just figured, OK, let’s focus on the single-player, let’s make it really great and then down the line, maybe in a future game, we have all the tech in place, everything is ready to go, then we can do it as long as we can do it right.

VideoGamer.com: So you see the potential for a sequel?

SF: The goal of every game is to have a sequel. It means your game is successful, it means your game is loved, that’s how you build franchises. Almost every person goes in hoping their game will sell beyond the first one.

VideoGamer.com: So the hope from Activision’s point of view is that Prototype can become a popular franchise?

SF: I can’t speak for Activision as a whole, but personally I hope it continues. I’ve had great fun working on it.

VideoGamer.com: Post launch, are there plans for downloadable content?

SF: We haven’t announced anything yet in terms of DLC. We’re coming towards crunch. We’ve already delayed the game once. We need to make sure that it gets out, that it gets into people’s hands. People have been waiting for it for a long time, so we’ll see how DLC shakes out down the road.

VideoGamer.com: As it stands now the opening tutorial level gives you all the powers, and then after that’s finished they’re taken away from you as a flashback plays out. Is that correct?

SF: Similar. The way it is now, you’ll be in a tutorial level, it doesn’t give you all of the powers but you’re definitely in an advanced state. It’s just the way right now that the narrative goes. The narrative opens with him in New York City trying to hunt down a commander in Time Square and then he flashes back from that into what happened and the build up. We’re not trying to punish the gamer by trying to take things away. You don’t want to put them in the game and then bore them with the first 30 minutes. You want to give them something exciting, give them a taste of everything that’s to come, and teach them how to play the game in a fun and exciting way and then kick into the narrative itself.

VideoGamer.com: It reminded me of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, where you began as the all-powerful Darth Vader then took control of the Secret Apprentice who had almost no powers. But there’s a trade off, isn’t there?

SF: No, I agree. It’s a fair comment, but at the same time Alex Mercer is never going to be powerless. He’s still going to be able to run faster than a car. He’s still going to be able to charge up a punch and punch a guy halfway down the street. He just might not be able to juggle them into the air and follow up with nine more punches right away. So I don’t think we’re stripping away the fun or anything like that. We just need to give something to build up to. You don’t want to start the game super powered, you have nowhere to go from there.

VideoGamer.com: If there’s one reason why gamers who are still debating whether to pre-order Prototype should, what is it?

SF: Surfing on people’s bodies! And you can kick flip off of them for extra style points. And it’s hard because I can’t decide between that and elbow dropping tanks. If you don’t get excited about elbow dropping a tank professional wrestling style from the top of a building, I don’t want to know you!

Prototype is due out for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC this June.