IGTV: Army Of Two: The 40th Day Interview

16 Nov 2009 at 14:02:58 by Andy Alderson

IncGamers' Tamer Asfahani caught up with EA's Alex Hutchinson, creative director for Army of Two: The 40th Day to discuss the upcoming action sequel. Click the image to watch the video interview.

Army of Two got mixed reviews when it came out. Let's not beat around the bush - it was the first game of the franchise and it didn't do as well as it could've done. What've you really done to sort of up and change this?

I think it's an interesting game because the first game was a massive financial success in the sense that it sold over 2.5 million copies, which is right up there in the top couple of per cent. I think it was in the top ten Xbox games sales in North America, for its release, which is remarkable. But I agree with you in that in critical terms it didn't hit all the points that the team wanted to hit. So the goal with this one was to try and figure out why did people respond powerfully to what the first game was offering, and how can we really deliver on it? So we did a lot of stuff. Everything from making sure the core shooting and controls were really tight, all the way through to adding a bunch more content, three more multiplayer modes, a longer campaign, and then trying to get the tone right. In America, no-one blinked at the tone, which was very interesting because it just sort of had a frat tone to it – they were just sort of jokey guys. In Europe there was a little bit of negativity about the tone but it's an interesting problem because then you have a big audience not liking the tone and a big audience liking the tone, so what we tried to do with the new game was split the difference and say “Depending on how you play, we'll change the jokes that they tell,” so if you go around shooting the hostages and high-fiving, the jokes get a little bit more frat, and if you go around being very cautious and saving people then the jokes are a little more low-key.

What Army of Two did do quite well was the co-operative stuff. Like I said, I wasn't a huge fan of the game; I didn't really enjoy the co-operative mode. I thought it felt as if it was an afterthought to a single-player mode that was tacked on to make it more accessible and to sell more. You just said you're going to add a few more multiplayer modes. What are they, and can you elaborate?

Sure. I think that perception is wrong because you can't actually tack a co-op mode on because of all the technical issues you have in the game if you don't plan it to be co-op from the start, and in fact I think that was the initial vision for the game was that it was a co-operative game, and I think if you compare it to other games they usually have a co-op mode on the side, or they have a co-operative element, or a co-operative level, or - even great co-op modes like Gears or Halo – there's nothing in either of those games that you can do in the co-op that is different to the single-player. Whereas in Army of Two, even the first one, and I agree that it had some issues, had multiple moments where you needed to be in co-op. I think actually it's one of the few games, the reason it was so successful was, it actually was co-op from the start and co-op from the ground up.

Another problem of mine was the AI – they were a bit stupid. Presumably you've taken that and revamped it and taken it on board, and equally, another really frustrating thing – I'm sorry, I keep nailing it! - was that you couldn't pick up weapons. Dropped weapons from enemies and ammo, you were screwed. You couldn't do anything about it.

A lot of those things are fixed in the new one, so you can pick up guns off the ground, you can obviously loot bodies for ammo and all that sort of stuff. The AI is second-generation now so we think it's a lot smarter. It looks a lot better, we went back to the motion-capture studio for all the AI in the game, so on all these fronts it's a much better game.

And the story – last time we left off, the guys are mercenaries now – I think if I recall they were in a helicopter and they were disappearing. What's going to happen with the story? Is it going to be very tongue-in-cheek like it was the last time, or are we going to see something a bit darker?

It's both darker and more over-the-top at the same time, I think. In this game, basically, they go off as independent contractors, they start a routine mission in Shanghai, and pretty soon everything goes horribly horribly wrong. So basically we wanted the world to feel unreliable, as though everything around you as collapsing, and the only person you can rely on is your buddy. Lots of games do the saving-the-world scenario. I, personally, am tired of saving the world, I don't think it's very interesting. There's always going to be another game that needs me to do it again. So we wanted to do a game about saving yourselves.

Comment