Kane & Lynch 2 Interview page 2

15 Jan 2010 at 17:13:09 by

CL: It's not a cover-up in any way. Actually, it's harder! I found it harder in my career as a game developer to give it this look. It's harder to do than to just have a clean slate. But you'll see that - it's going to come through, totally, in everything we did with this game.

How difficult was it to get the camera angles right? It is a third-person shooter, and I presume you pull out of that third-person view for certain parts of that game?

CL: For the cutscenes and the storytelling in general. I think we go with an approach that you probably know called [in-camera cutting] which is very interesting. It's also something that I think movies are doing. Hollywood is doing it, also! It gives that realness, that "Oh, it just happened right here. It's the footage we got, and we just cut it by hand while we filmed it." That's something you haven't seen in videogames before. Everything is supposed to be so smooth, easing-in and easing-out - give us that rough edge! But you could say that when you're playing a third-person shooter, you are, in essence, the cameraman. You are the one controlling the camera as well as the character. I think we've captured that feeling, that you actually do control a physical camera instead of just buzzing around the character.

Let's talk a little bit about the game mechanics. Will it have drop-in and drop-out co-op play?

CL: On a level basis, yes.

But not through the campaign?

CL: Yes, through the campaign, but not in the middle of the game. On a level by level basis, you can drop in and drop out.

So talk to us a little bit about the story behind this version of the game. What are we doing? Who are we following?

CL: I don't want to give too much of it away yet, but the set up in general is that Lynch is living with girlfriend in Shanghai. He's living the good life, and he's a little bit chubby, as you can see [taps picture of Lynch]. He's working as a henchman for a guy called Mr. Glazer, who's like a boss of all these ex-pat criminals who couldn't hack it in Europe and are trying to be big stars in Shanghai. They're white, they're tall, and they're nasty-looking - so they're doing good, right? And all of a sudden they land themselves a deal that is way over their heads. It's an arms deal, they're going to ship some guns, and they don't know anything about it. So Lynch get this brilliant idea of calling in Kane because he's an ex-mercenary and he's done this many, many times, and of course he should never have done that, because whenever these two guys meet up it's an explosive cocktail. What seems to be a very simple job that just needs to be taken care of gets totally out of hand and has them chased all over Shanghai by everybody - the police, the crooks, everything. They just need to figure out how to get out of this mess.

How does the cover system work? Is it revolutionary? Is it something we've seen before in other games? Will we have destructible environments?

CL: I think it's interesting, because those two things work together in this game. That's what makes it a little bit more unique - the fact that you take cover and it's destructible, so you need to be very mindful of what cover you're taking and if it's solid enough to bear you. That co-relates to the whole down-not-dead experience where you're sitting in that cover, it breaks - "Am I going down? Can I crawl into other cover? Is it breakable? What's happening?" So in that sense the cover system is offering a little bit more intensity than what you're used to. If it's not breakable, it's safe, but if it is, you need to be very careful on how long you need to stay there. It gives a little bit more excitement in that department.

How do you move from cover to cover? Is there a fluid motion of moving from cover to cover, or do you have to get up, un-hunch, run, hunch again, take cover?

CL: No, it's fluid. You can switch from one cover to other cover, you can run alongside cover, you can duck down and cover, get back up... you have fluid motion. You connect yourself with the button, and then you can do all sorts of stuff in cover. Rush out of it, vault over the cover... there are lots of opportunities.

Presumably there'll be lots of opportunities for different weapons, as well, and different ways of killing things?

CL: Oh yeah, sure. We've got a lot of different weapons now.

Any expansion on that?

CL: I think you'll notice that we took a different take on differentiating weapons, and the classes of weapons. It's not just about machine guns and SMGs - it's also about their character, in a way. Who's using them? What are they being used for? You can actually feel that as an experience. When you pick up a weapon from a cop, it feels different than when you pick it up from a goon, because they use different weapons. Pick up a weapon from SWAT, and you have a totally different feeling. So it's a little bit of a different categorisation of the weapon experience.

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