So the multiplayer is something you'd want to do?

I think even online presence as a concept as well. It doesn't necessarily have to be multiplayer. The way you play it and share with your friends, and see what your friends are doing, compare your records to friends – stuff like that is also really interesting.

Assassin's Creed is a perfect example of a single-player game that has no multiplayer, but a connection that's done really well. Obviously, if you have a riveting story and an environment in which you can play in, you've got everything -

It can feel tacked on, and it's important to us that we don't just put it in there just because it's a hot thing to do and just because everyone expects it to be there, and I think a lot of people who ask about it, also – they wouldn't want to play it unless it was really, really great. When we have this strong foundation that we have now for Just Cause 2, then we'll see what happens in the future and then we'll feel more comfortable about doing it.

As far as the story goes, I presume there's scope for a Just Cause 3?

[Laughs] I guess the Agency in Just Cause is probably open to operate anywhere in the world where there's work to do, so we'll see what happens in the future!

Where would you like to go? It's becoming very difficult to have an original setting now. Panau is beautiful, it's great, but we saw it in the initial Far Cry, the first Just Cause... and now we've got Modern Warfare which has done deserts and snow, and Operation Flashpoint – where can you go next?

I'm not sure at the moment, but it's important for us to find a setting that works well as a playground for you to have all this fun, where you can use all these fun tools that you have at your disposal – the grappling hook, the parachute, all these different vehicles. That's the important thing: to find a setting that allows you to have a lot of fun. Where that may be, I don't know, at the moment?

I'd suggest... Madagascar?

Perhaps! We'll see. I was speaking to some Australian guys, actually, who were saying our next game should be in Australia.

Why was it important to bring Rico back? He was a bit bland in the first game.

He was. You probably noticed he's changed quite a bit, and why we did that is because we wanted him to be a bit more rugged, and change him a bit from the first game. In the first game he was a bit like a secret agent, and that's not the way he does things. He goes in with a bang, and causes a lot of chaos, and that's why we redesigned him completely. His look should reflect that a bit more.

Finally, your favourite thing about the game itself? What, for you, is the killer feature?

I definitely think it's the way that you can develop your own style while playing it. I can watch a video of someone else playing it, and I can immediately tell that it's not me playing it, because I would do it in a different way. That's really interesting. A lot of people start developing their own style, start talking to each other - “I did it this way, how did you do it?” “Oh, I used a helicopter!” - stuff like that. Even small things, and small decisions, that really have a huge impact in your experience.

The Avalanche engine looks incredible. Have you thought that Avalanche is something you could sell? Remedy has got its own engine for Alan Wake, which is incredible, and what seems to be happening now is that developers seem to be developing their own engines from scratch. Will you guys continue to develop the Avalanche engine, maybe to sell?

We'll definitely continue to work on the engine, and improve on it a lot. That's something that we do all the time – adapt it to different products. But we don't have, in the immediate future, any plans for licensing. You should never say never, so we'll see what happens in the future, but at the moment we have no immediate plans to sell it.

Is Just Cause 2 really your IP now, to keep, or are you going to work on other IPs?

We're actually already working on other stuff at the moment. The IP, of course, is owned by Square Enix, so we'll see what happens in the future.

Any hints?

You know how it is! [Laughs] We can't talk about it at the moment. It's going to be interesting stuff as well.

Open-world?

We'll see what happens. We haven't said that we'll only work on open-world games. We'll adapt the engine to whatever the requirements of that game are, so we'll see what happens in the future. It's going to be interesting. It's not a puzzle game! [Laughs]

See the video of this interview along with footage of the game, and clips from our interview with Nvidia's Bea Longworth over on IGTV.

Comment

Add a comment using your Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Google or OpenID accounts.
blog comments powered by Disqus