Gunlok Interview

LOK, STOCK AND... A SLEW OF SMOKING BATTLES

At the end of the 21st Century, mankind made a near-fatal error. It handed over control of the machines that for decades had taken care of its menial tasks, assuming that its faithful servants would exist indefinitely in a life of subservience. However, once the machines realised the power was their own, they took it into their own hands - and waged war against their creators, plunging the Earth into darkness.

Upgrades!

Nightvision...

Jason Kingsley, Rebellion's CEO and Creative Director of Gunlok was kind enough to have a short talk with us, and answer a couple of questions about their latest project.

Action Trip: Assuming the role of a battle-armored hero, one of mankind's last survivors, players must fight through 15 levels of futuristic mayhem in a world overtaken by robots... What we've heard of the storyline until now suggests just another Terminator clone. Is it linear or dynamic?

Jason Kingsley: The storyline is linear in the game, though the specific way in which you complete each mission is very open, allowing you to make the story your own, each player having a different experience.

A decision was made early on to make the story linear, so we could control the pacing, the build up of tension and the climaxes. Although the set up - robots taking over the world is reminiscent of Terminator the story diverges right from the beginning. As you get deeper into it and by the end of the game it becomes clear that there is a much bigger story developing... in fact its more reminiscent of many of the post apocalyptic stories from the pages of 2000AD the Galaxy's Greatest Comic, which predate the Terminator by about 15 years!'

AT: You have announced the game as a tactical RTS with some adventure aspects and subtle puzzles: As the game progresses, Gunlok recruits a squad of tough, maverick robots, each offering different skills, weapons and abilities that must be intelligently utilized together to defeat the enemy. Progression through levels is sometimes by brute force, sometimes by ingenuity and cunning but always by deploying squads wisely to take full advantage of their individual strengths. So, when balancing among the genres, which one do you hold in favor.

JK: We did not decide to create a game that is balanced between RTS and RPG. We have built the Gunlok gameplay up from scratch, thinking 'What would be the most fun?' Certainly we've been influenced by RTS and RPG games, but have only taken elements that have fitted with our vision of Gunlok gameplay. We have tried to build an original game from the ground up. There are too many 'me too' products out there. Gunlok is original.'

AT: You said that the adversaries within the game are so intelligent they'd qualify as Mensa geniuses. So far we know that each uses a unique 'view cone' to patrol the landscape, which the player must avoid or risk becoming spotted. Similarly, players must evade the enemy's 'hearing range', which also alerts them to intruders. So, the perception of the units has indeed been done in a rather intelligent way. Could you say the same for their personal and group tactics and behavior as well?

JK: Oh yes. Some of the enemies are very devious.'

Fry!

Silos needed...

AT: You stated previously that you developed a new display technology that allows an astounding level of detail, with players able to view the action from any vantage point - from high up above the conflict, to right over the shoulder of the characters. Could you give us any further details about the graphics engine and the expected game requirements?

JK: The graphics look utterly gorgeous. We've got shadows on shadows, which has never been done before, multi coloured lighting, super high resolution textures, and a whole bunch of other high end graphics features -thought he game will run on a low spec machine too! The graphics engine includes proprietary third person, full 3D with user controllable camera; Direct 3D, tested from 640x480x16bit to 1600x1200x32bit; support for stencil buffer shadows (on both characters and landscapes), compressed textures (each level can have up to 128 Mb of textures with standard texture resolution of 1024x1024 pixels), hardware transform and lighting (takes advantage of the very top end graphics cards like the nVidia GeForce). We've been running the game on machines as low as a 200 MHz Pentium Pro with a Voodoo 2 graphics card, turning off some of the visual effects, like shadows, and running at a lower resolution. However, to see the game in all its glory with shadows and detailed textures you need something like a 400 MHz Pentium II with a decent graphics card. If you've a faster computer then you can up the resolution to as much as 1600x1200.'

AT: Will it have a multiplayer mode?

JK: Gunlok has a superb multiplayer mode allowing many different types of multiplayer games to be played over the Internet or LANs. You can play the single player missions co-operatively, each player taking control of one of Gunlok's team. We've got deathmatch levels, capture the flag and more!

AT: We heard November being mentioned as a probable release date. Is that final?

JK: Yes. Well in time for you to put it on your Christmas list!'

This would about rap it up for the time being. Gunlok seems to be a triumph of style and content, and its not long until it will have a decent chance to prove what it's worth. See you soon in the review section