Aliens vs. Predator 2: Primal Hunt Interview

Our 'fav' Sierra PR girl, Sarita Churchill was kind enough to hook us up with Paul Pawlicki, Assistant Producer at Fox Interactive and let us pester Paul into answering a few questions about the upcoming expansion pack to the highly acclaimed Alien vs. Predator 2. So is Dunya afraid of Gene Simmons' tongue? Find out this and more in our exclusive Alien vs. Predator 2: Primal Hunt interview.

Action Trip: I hear there are going to be some new weapons in the expansion. Give us more details on that. Secondary fire options, their power, etc.

Putting an alien to sleep.

Check those corners. Argh!

Paul Pawlicki: There are a few new weapons in the Primal Hunt expansion pack. Our Corporate mercenary has dual pistols and a 360-degree motion tracker. We have also added deployable sentry guns. They are limited in single player but they can be found in the multiplayer maps too. Set one of these bad boys up and can rest a little easier while you aim for the bad guys. Well, at lest for a little while. The sentry guns tend to overheat and run out of ammo but they're a great defense while they last.

No longer are the Humans the only race with a rapid-fire weapon. The Predator has a new toy as well. It's called an Energy Flechette and as the name implies it is an energy based weapon. The Energy Flechette can be used to lay down a suppressing fire that works very well when retreating from swarming Aliens. Not that a Predator would ever need to retreat.

AT: Would Gene Simmons make a good alien, or Predator maybe?

PP: Neither, he's in a category all his own. Our next game is going to be Aliens versus Predator versus Gene Simmons.

AT: Tell us more about the human Dunya. That's a Slavic word for quince, and it's a common name around these parts... So, is she of Slavic descent, or did the name just sound exotic / cool?

PP: Wow. I can't believe you made the connection! We were originally going to call her Quincy but we didn't think that was sexy enough. Someone in the office said, "Dunya is the Slavic word for quince so why not call her Dunya and..." I'm kidding :. Dunya is a character from Aliens versus Predator 2 that we decided to further develop in the Primal Hunt expansion pack. William Westwater at Monolith wrote the original script for the AVP2 and he gave her that name. I have no idea why. I think he was trying to give the game a bit of that old Cold War vibe. That or maybe he has an Aunt Dunya and told her he would put her name in his next game.

AT: What about the levels; what are you shooting for in terms of level design? Any new features / cool concepts over the original game?

PP: One thing that we've done in the expansion pack is to create some remarkable levels that are specific to Predators with never-seen-before textures. We've even have some nice orange, volumetric fog that Predators love so much on some of the floors. The level design and art is quite different from the human levels and offers a nice contrast to what we've already seen in AVP2.

The game does take place on the same planet as AVP2 so there are going to be areas that are familiar. We didn't want it to look exactly the same so this time when you play through the Human pods, for example, you will get to see areas that were off limits the first time around. There's the morgue, the reactor room, the botany lab, many new areas to keep the game fresh and interesting.

AT: How long is the expansion in comparison to the original game (AVP2)?

"There coming outta the God damn walls!"

Making an alien laugh to death by telling him Jay Leno jokes.

PP: The original AVP2 had 21 single player missions. Primal Hunt has 9 new missions. That's just about half of the original. That's the mission count. Time of gameplay isn't directly proportional to the amount of levels though. For Primal Hunt we've gone ahead and upped the difficultly a bit. There are more enemies more often with very little time to rest. The action starts right away and lasts to the very end. So it may take little longer to get through the expansion pack missions then the missions in AVP2 but you can always go through the game on easy if you're in a hurry.

AT: Any new AI tricks?

PP: We're focusing more on creating new content than on changing the AI for Primal Hunt. You will however see more Aliens swarming at one time and there's more combat synthetics trying to blow you away then ever before.

AT: Your favorite race in the game and why?

PP: Aliens are my favorite race. It's the closest I can get to my dream of being a super hero. Climbing on the ceiling, pouncing over a huge distances and biting the heads off my mortal enemies (damn dude, you have some nasty dreams - ed). It doesn't get much better than that. Spiderman may be able to climb walls and leap vast distances too but you'll never see him bite off someone's head (true - ed).

AT: What about the multiplayer? Is this a single-player expansion only, or are you working on some new multiplayer features as well?

PP: Primal Hunt offers a great single player experience but we haven't stopped there. We have gone ahead made some additions to multiplayer. I've already mentioned the deployable sentry guns and that the new weapons will be available in multiplayer. Beyond that there is the Predator self-destruct. If a Predator's health is really low he can set his self-destruct timer and take you out with him. If you hear him laughing you better start running. We're also adding some server options that will give players more control, such as creating servers that exclude certain player classes or only allow specified weapons in a game. Plus there will be four great new maps in the box along with some other tweaks when the game ships.

AT: Would Dunya be afraid of Gene Simmons' tongue?

PP: Um, no. On the contrary, I think that Dunya would like Gene's tongue.