Don’t Blink!  The Undead Are Watching You in Sammy’s New Western Thriller “Darkwatch”

by Louis Bedigian

 

“Darkwatch gives us the opportunity to create a secret society that has technology that goes beyond their timeframe.”

 

 

We cordially invite you

to a gathering of blood and violence.

 

Please join us

at the Claire Redfield Inn for Casa De Decapitate

our Celebration of Decapitation.

 

666 Devils Slain

Creepy Valley, Transylvania

November 26, 2004

9:00pm to Sunrise

 

Bloody-good refreshments will be served.

RSVP by November 20

to Sir Dark Watcher at 666-999-6699

 

 

“Hey guys, did you hear about the Celebration of Decapitation?” I asked cheerfully, but none of my colleagues responded.  “Well, have you?  And are you going?”

 

They told me that they had received the invitation but did not want to go.  Apparently they think it’s a dirty trick to lure innocent humans into an all-you-can-eat after-Thanksgiving feast for vampires.  Have you ever heard of something so absurd?

 

Five Months Later…

 

Well, they finally got my head sewed back on.  I guess my colleagues were right after all.

 

Lucky for us, most of the invitations we get do not result in something so gruesome.  Prior to having a few pints of blood sucked from my neck, Sammy Studios invited us to the first Darkwatch Academy, their Celebration of Game Design.

 

 

 

 

Darkwatch is an exciting first-person shooter in development at Sammy’s new studio in San Diego County.  They couldn’t wait to tell us about the game and all that it has to offer. 

 

This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Three Concepts

 

Emmanuel Valdez, VP and Creative Director for Sammy Studios: "When we set out to create Darkwatch we actually had three ideas.  One was a platformer, another one was a racing game, and the third one, the first-person shooter idea, was actually a classic western game.  At the time we thought that platformers were kind of fading.  Racing games weren't playing to our strengths.  Developing original character-based games is really our expertise.  Some of us were big fans of the FPS Outlaws, but there weren't really any western first-person shooters out there.

 

"We looked at the games in development, and they were hitting on a lot of the old-west games.  When you look at the old west, when you look at those images, it doesn't invoke gameplay.  When you look at the weapons at the time, the six-shooters, your traditional west weapons just weren't that exciting.  With all the first-person shooter games out there, ranging from military games to sci-fi games that have a whole range of weapons, that [just didn't feel right] in the old west."

 

As a result, the developers decided to make a game that no one saw coming: a western/vampire.

 

EV: "Darkwatch is a secret organization that's existed for thousands of years since the Roman times.  They protect mankind from all that is evil.  Darkwatch takes place in the old west, [which has] done a number of things for us.  One, Darkwatch gives us the opportunity to create a secret society that has technology that goes beyond their timeframe.  We have some pretty fantastical weapons: rocket launchers, sniper rifles, vehicles, etc.  It adds a touch of supernatural and gives us the opportunity to design not only the weapons, but the entire look of the game, the whole visual style.”

 

 

Unlike all those "lighthearted" first-person shooters you play (Doom, Halo, etc.), Darkwatch is very dark.

 

 

Judgment Day

 

One of Darkwatch’s primary themes is the choice to be good or evil.  Suppose you run across a man who has been bitten by a vampire.  You have two choices:

 

1. Heal him by sucking out the contaminated blood to remove what the vampire has left behind.

 

2. Or finish him off and bask in your evil doing.

 

Your choice will affect how Jericho Cross, the game’s lead character, evolves.  His powers come in two flavors: good and evil.  Who knows what might happen if you start acting like a hero by saving people.

 

I Like Brand Name Products The Best

 

Being a vampire doesn’t seem all that bad when you realize all the cool things you can do.  In Darkwatch, Jericho has the ability to perform three super-human actions:

 

• Vampire Jump (ability to jump over buildings)

 

• Vampire Vision (distinguish between good and evil beings)

 

• Blood Shield (ability to withstand any shots from enemies)

 

Using various Brands, Jericho can inflict fear on his enemies, chasing away vicious gunslingers.  The Silver Brand enhances the power of his weapons, while Blood Frenzy makes him invincible.  Turn Brand, Emmanuel’s favorite Brand, enables Jericho to turn his enemies into allies.

 

 

One wrong move zombie thing and you die!

 

 

Watch For These Features

 

• Xbox Live-exclusive online multiplayer for up to 16 players.

 

• Darkwatch uses the ultra-powerful Havok 2 Engine, which was previously used by the developers of Half-Life 2.

 

• Realistic AI – Enemies will run away from explosions if they think they have a chance for survival, or stick around and shiver with fear when they know they don’t.

 

• Two women: Tala and Cassidy.  One’s good, one’s evil.  One could be Jericho’s shining light.  The other could be his worst nightmare.  Which one will he choose?

 

Freeze!  This Is A Stickup!  Give Me All The Answers In Your Vault And No One Gets Hurt!

 

GameZone Online: Take us through the new studio.  If I were a developer just coming to work for you guys, what would I see?  How much power do you guys house?

 

Emmanuel Valdez: [Laughs] Lots of power.

 

It's really a concrete shell.  When I walked in I was like, "Wow, it looks like a Costco."  That's basically what it is, it's a warehouse.  We hired an architect that really specializes in creating spaces out of [what is called] office shelf art.  They basically went to the Home Depot and got plywood, rain gutters, metal, etc., and put this place together.  It's an open environment.  The theme of our studio was abstract California.  Our main conference room is in blue, which we call The Wave.  [We have] a giant half-pipe with offices inside.  Unfortunately you can't skateboard in it.  And on the back wall is our mountain wall.  It's pretty neat.  The office space is pretty unique.  My major back in college was architecture, so this was my one and only chance to use what I learned in school.  It was really a dream to help design our studio.  We tried to design a space that would be fun and creative.

 

One thing that I hadn't mentioned before is that we also have a fully-functional motion-capture studio.  The equipment that we acquired from the company that did the mo-cap word for The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions and the Enter The Matrix game.  We acquired all 36 of their cameras.  We have a pretty sizeable studio.

 

 

Oh sure, now you've gone and sent in the skeletons.  That's mature.

 

 

What are you going to be using the motion-capture studio for?

 

EV: Darkwatch is a mixture of motion-capture and traditional animation.  A lot of our human-type characters are all mo-cap.  Are cinematics are all fully mo-cap.  The teaser trailer was all mo-cap.  We're even [allowing other] companies to use our mo-cap studio, various film and special effects companies, and other game studios are planning on using it in the future.

 

Have you found that it's more efficient to use motion-capture technology?  Tom Hanks has said that The Polar Express was made a lot faster because of it.  Is that true of your work as well?

 

EV: That depends.  I'm a big believer in it.  I've been using it since 1992.  It used to be very cumbersome to use.  [Now] we're able to take that data and manipulate it in any way we want.  Before you were really bound to the proportions of the actual motion-capture actors to drive your characters.  That prevented you from having characters with long arms or long legs or just different limb lengths.  Since then it's been a lot more flexible.  The last game I worked on was the Ready 2 Rumble boxing game.  We literally did about 3000 animations with four animators in about eight months.

 

[I'll use] whatever tool's good for the job.  I think [mo-cap] is good for the human-type animations.  There's still a place for animators with a good eye.  A rare breed.

 

When you motion-capture something, all you have to do is insert it into the computer?  Then the artists add textures and is that it?

 

EV: You have a 3D character, and the 3D character is basically a skeleton.  You key-frame that skeleton to move it and to animate it.  The motion-capture is just the data that's applied to the skeleton.  Our process here is as simple as having that character texture mapped and ready to go.  We go to the studio, shoot all day, edit the data and apply it to the character the next day.  So the next day you could have up to 100 animations ready to apply to that character.  I'm not exaggerating – we've been whipping out tons and tons of animations.

 

Is the story complete?

 

EV: The story is finished.

 

How soon into a game's development do you say, "Okay, the story is done, we have to abide by these rules."  How late can you make changes?

 

EV: When you work with the group that I work with, they'll make changes till the last minute.  But since we're nearing the end of the game and we're producing cinematics for the game we had to nail down the story.  It really, really depends on that – how flexible you are able to make the game.  It's just like game development.  You can come up with as many features as you want, but there's gonna be a point in time when you can't add anymore features 'cause you have to balance and tune the game.  Same thing with story.

 

 

More undead creatures?  That's it!  When I die, I'm coming back just so I can haunt YOU!

 

 

Can you go over some of the missions for us?

 

EV: One of the things I haven't hit on too much is Shadow, who is your vampire horse.  The horse is the first victim that you fight in the game.  While you're escaping from the ancient vampire lord on the Darkwatch train, you sink your teeth into this horse, and he in turn becomes a vampire horse.  So there's several stages in this game where you actually ride Shadow.

 

There's one level where you board a train.  So you actually ride Shadow and ride alongside the train and take out all of the different enemies on the outside and work your way inside.

 

Since it's a vampire western game you will find a lot of nighttime missions, but we do have some sunlight.  We have an entire level that is in the sunlight.  Once you join the Darkwatch organization, one of the missions is to save a town that's been overrun by the undead.  That takes completely outdoors.  What happens to your character then is that you don't have your vampire powers, your vampire vision abilities, or the ability to jump super high.  And you don't have your vampire shield.  So it's a very tricky mission.

 

That's just a hint at the different stages in the game.

 

How drastically do the controls change when you're riding the horse?

 

EV: The horse is not a free-roaming horse.  Basically you're on a rail.  You have the ability to go faster or slower, and you have the ability to shoot off him.  You still have the same movement controls.  Look-wise you have the ability to aim around you [with] full 360 degree motions.  You can shoot in front of you and turn around and shoot behind you.

 

We have a lean feature where you have the ability to lean through doorways and shoot.  That feature is carried over to Shadow.  When you lean, you actually use Shadow as cover.  When you're in the train level, you can run up alongside of it and lean to the side and use Shadow as a shield to block the bullets.

 

As far as our vehicle controls, it's slightly different from Halo.  Your look or where you base the camera does not control your vehicle.

 

While you ride the Coyote, you have independent look control where you can fire a gatlin gun, a dual-mounted gatlin gun that's mounted on top of the Coyote.  You can drive and shoot at the same time and shoot in all different directions.

 

Will vehicles be a part of the multiplayer experience?

 

EV: Yes.  Vehicles play a big part in the multiplayer.  We have several maps that are large enough to have our wagon or Coyote.

 

Are the vehicles destructible?

 

EV: No, they just flip over.

 

When are we going to get to hear more and see more of your other game, The Shield?

 

EV: Very soon.

 

Awesome!  I can’t wait.

 

Thanks to everyone at Sammy and Kohnke Communications for having a wonderful conference call.