Alien versus Predator interview

The Console Audience

BT: Returning to AvP, was it hard to come up with new ideas for the third game or was the focus very much on just recapturing the feel of the old games?

Tim: No, I wouldn’t say it’s hard to come up with new ideas – that’s the easy part. It’s bringing them to fruition that’s the tough bit.

With the first games though, there was so much that we wanted to be able to do that we just weren’t able to at that time because of the time or the technology, or even just because of the bounds of what we were asked to do with the game. This time we’ve been able to really focus though on what we actually want to get out of the game in terms of look and feel and narrative and getting all the facial expressions right and the dialogue.

A lot of enemy behaviour stuff too. A lot of stuff that people struggled with in the original game, or which weren’t wholly successful like navigation for the Alien player and being able to climb all over the world. A lot of people loved that, but a lot of people really struggled with it too and found it quite tricky. So, this time we’ve put a lot of effort into making that as intuitive as it can be, particularly for a new console audience too – which is a much wider range of gamers. We’ve done a lot of new stuff this time to make sure that people know just how they are orientated in the world and can move smoothly and jump to specific points to help execute those kills.


BT: So, you mention adapting things for the console audience, were there any specific concessions you had to make for the PC market?

Tim: Well, I really don’t see it as making concessions. The PC version plays very well with a console controller if you want to play it that way, but we have a large number of PC players in the office and the game works equally well with a mouse and keyboard and it gives you the extra ability to look around faster and so on.

In many respects though I’d say that the development and expectations of FPS players, particularly on consoles, have helped to make the genre a lot more sophisticated in many way. Things that PC players expect to be able to do for themselves, like pixel-perfect accuracy, are countered by…a lot of the things we do help the less hardcore player have a good time and be able to hit their targets, but they don’t take control away from what they’re doing. We always strive to please both ends of the market, if only because we’ve got both in the dev team itself.

I just don’t really see these things as ‘dumbing down’, so to speak. It’s about refinement and creating a better, more sophisticated experience.


BT: I noticed from the presentation too that you had a lot of iconic moments from the films in the game – the sentry guns and the aliens testing the perimeter and so on. Did you deliberately set out to capture those specific moments?

Tim: Well, yeah. I think it would be remiss of us to not deliver those key moments that people want to relive. At the same time though they’ve got some new twists on them and we don’t want people to just relive the same moments from the movies. Those familiar elements, like the sentry guns or the aliens ripping through doors, players want to experience them but they want to do it in a new way.

We’re doing some similar stuff with the Predator gameplay as well, with leaping through the jungle and stalking Marines. When you introduce all three species together and you have these iconic moments from one specific movie, but you then throw in something from another race or movie then you get a whole range of new stuff going on. It’s fun.

BT: One thing we weren’t quite sure of from the presentation was whether or not the three campaigns overlap and if they’re set in the same location?

Tim: Yes, they do. Yeah.