Shattered Horizon Interview

Broken Metaphors

BT: On that note, one of the things I noticed was the unusual lighting style you’ve used too, where nothing is lit conventionally, like we’d see on earth.

Antti: Yeah. It’s actually on the first slide of our design document to create ‘space feeling’. Lighting is a very big part of that. Using those harsh contrasts and unusual directions and playing those across the battlefields adds a lot to that feeling of being in space and creating that feeling. That’s very well spotted.

James: There are loads of little touches like that. Like, when the player moves then all the little rockets on their suit light up, illuminating small spaces as you move through them. When you’re out on the ISS level where it’s really open you can see those flashes in the distance as players move around, so when your field of awareness is so much bigger than other shooters and you need to be aware of everything around you then having a simple touch like that helps.

It lets you spot enemies faster and gives you a bit of an advantage and awareness that someone may be coming around that corridor. Lighting is a big thing. We have a couple of technical artists who just love that stuff and are all over it. The chance to do a game in space with this unusual lighting was great for them.


BT: It seems you’ve tried to go with a, if not realistic then at least more down to...no. Down to earth doesn’t work. I was going to say grounded, but I guess that doesn’t quite work either. It is a more realistic setting than one might expect though, in terms of the weapon designs and so on. There are no laser rifles, for example.

Antti: Yeah, we say it’s a ‘believable’ world. One of the things that stuck to me from the concept development and prototyping was the moment when we decided to definitely set the game in near-Earth space and...well, grounded it...in that setting. Before that we had various ideas for a specific setting, but it wasn’t important as long as it was in space.

When we had the familiar landmark though then suddenly just being in the game became a much more powerful experience. That’s also why WWII games are popular – because you know of those places, they are familiar and you have all these ideas from TV and movies. For us, one of the strongest images of that type was of the Earth viewed from space.

James: Yeah, we just noticed this funny little trend in FPS games set in the past, or even the ones based on modern conflicts, are always trying to be realistic. The FPS games set in the future though are the opposite – it’s always lasers, aliens and zombie-mutants. We looked really hard too and we couldn’t find any game from recent memory that was set in the future, but still tried to have a believable basis.


When you’re building all the art though and doing all the visual design and figuring how things work then it can all pin together very nicely if you try that though.

BT: OK, my last question is just marked as ‘release date, specifications, add-ons, plans’.

James: You throw that out like it’s just a generic question...but no, we’re just talking about the beta right now. A lot of our plans are going to be informed by the beta and the feedback we get – which is why we’re doing it. It'll be DirectX 10 only, PC only. It’s a Steamworks game too, so we’ll be on Steam and lots of other places too. It’ll be sensibly priced considering it’s a multiplayer only game. If the beta goes well then it’ll be a 2009 release too.

Jaakko: We say DirectX 10 only, but that doesn’t mean you need a monster machine to run it. Something like an 8800 GT should do it. Maybe something less. We haven’t really worked out the minimum specs yet.

And that’s all we had time for! A big thanks to everyone at FutureMark for meeting up with us at GamesCom 2009 – both times. If you’ve got a question or thought about the game then drop it in the forums.