We did. We took a lot of elements from the movie. For us, the key was, "Let's tell a really defined story with a beginning, middle, and an end with a nice arch and get that story done." That story was our focus of trying to match it to the film.
But then on the same token, we want to be able to play within the boundaries of that and go a little bit crazy, so we do all these twists and turns. The fact that we sat down with Mark Millar and we literally walked him through every single level of the game and said, "This is why this level is here. These are the story reasons for this level. This is where it takes Wesley. This is the arc."
We got some really great feedback from him in terms of, "I love this. I didn't like this." And then we were able to blend his comments. We did the same thing with Timur (the film director) and made sure that the two great sources that we had to draw from; we were taking in elements story wise that would fit.
If you are a fan of the comic book and you saw the movie, and you were like, "Oh, the movie is nothing like the comic book!" The game doesn't try to divert to the comic book elements, but what it does is it gives a lot of that vibe that you had in the comic book and brings that into the game. Fans of the comic book I think will find plenty of things in the game that make them go, "Oh ok. These guys clearly were fans of the comic book first and then saw the movie and incorporated the movie elements."
A lot of that was how amazing Top Cow was. So many times licensers become so protectionist. They are like, "Well you didn't license the comic book, so you can't use anything in the comic book." This is an example where Top Cow was like, "Screw that! We are gamers." Matt Hawkins and those guys, those guys are really big gamers! They were like, "If you see something in the comic book, use it if you want to use it!" We wanted to keep that movie chronology and timeline intact, but we definitely brought elements of the comic book back into the game story as well.
You were saying that Mark Millar doesn't have plans to do any more Wanted books.
He won't do any more Wanted comics.
Does that mean that someone else wouldn't pick it up and do it?
He would have to say that it is OK for someone else to do it. I think for us, he was fine with us telling the story in the movie world, because he wants it to live on in movies.
So did this start production before the film was finished?
It actually started production just as they started shooting the movie. Normally, if you want to do a game based on a film, you have got to be out two years in advance. I know that everything else that we are talking about doing here at Universal is all stuff that does not even have movies until 2011, 2012, or 2013. We are already starting to work on stuff that is that far out so that we can get a jump ahead.
I think for us, we would love to come in before or at the movie launch when that makes sense to do. The lucky part for us is that the highest leadership at Universal believes in games and wants us to make the best games. I think Wanted was a great first project for Universal to start with. I think we learned a ton. I think we made a project that is solid and fun to play and makes good use of the IP that it has on top of it. And it feels right, natural, and doesn't feel forced.
When you play Wanted, it is not going to feel like, "Oh, they crammed in the movie license here." This game was built from the ground up to be the movie license. We didn't take sort of like Splinter Cell and toss Wanted game play on it. By the way, I love Splinter Cell. I am just trying to use a great game that people would want to reskin to be a different game. That is clearly not what this was.
This is what, the third movie-based title you have worked on? Scarface, Riddick ...
If you are going way back, I did a bunch of movie based games back in the day. Alien Trilogy. I did South Park, which is based on the TV show, for the N64; just the original N64 shooter. That is the only South Park I worked on back with Iguana. My sensibility at the time was probably perfect for that; basically violent or really crude humor.
Since I moved to Universal in 2001; The Thing, Chronicles of Riddick, Scarface. When Vivendi sold Universal and the games company stayed with Vivendi and Universal went away for a little while and I was still at Vivendi, I worked on Ghostbusters and obviously Riddick, which was Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. I started that project off. I worked with Starbreeze again. I also worked for a little bit of time with Tim Schaeffer on Brutal.
If you have a chance to work with Tim Schafer, he is fucking awesome. |
Have you seen the finished new Riddick game?
I have. It is a Universal properties game, so it is our game.
Are you impressed with it?
I think it is fucking awesome. I really like it. I think Starbreeze did a great job. What they did with taking that Universal concept of doing sort of a Riddick box thing and going back and adding elements that weren't in the first one and retelling the whole story; I think there is a lot of that there.
Speaking of the movie stuff, do you ever feel hemmed in by working on movie-based titles?
No. I think with most movie based games, if you are a fan of the movie ... I remember as a little kid we went to go see Star Wars. We would go sit on the beach with all of my buddies as a kid after Star Wars and sort of make up our own. Like, "What happened to Han Solo? What did he do between the point where this happens? What was he doing just prior? How did he get in all that trouble?"
We were sort of making up our own side stories from a very early age. When we started working on movie games, it allows you that same freedom. But to be able to say, "We are going to do a prequel story. We are going to do a sequel story. We are going to tell you what happened between."
You almost sort of watch movies, like whenever a main character sort of goes off screen or a side character goes off screen for a period of time, it is like, "could that be some game play in there? Could we tell that story in the game rather than in a movie?" I think what it does is allows you to do fiction extension that is really, really meaningful.
Sort of like the ultimate fanboy experience.
Yeah. It is great. And you get to work with all this unbelievable talented people who work on movies and obviously love them. If they didn't love movies they would go do something else. So many times, the people who work on licensed products, they so want to make their own original game. You are never going to be like sort of known in this industry for working on movie properties I sort have developed a reputation of like, "Oh, get him because he has done a lot of movie stuff." But a lot of times when people do good movie stuff, the first thing they want to do is like, "Fuck that. I want to go tell my own original story."
I always wanted to do an Escape from Alcatraz game. |
To me, that is an interesting premise. I think it is one of the underlying reasons why Riddick was really ... despite the face that it was a phenomenal game made by an amazing development team, that essence shined through. Like, "Oh yeah. I get the point. I am going to break out of prison." There is not this, "Oh, let's have a level where you are in the jungle. And here is another level where you are in the arctic." It was like you were in a prison and you had to get out. We know the character gets out because we know the character goes on to be in the events in Pitch Black.
But it is like take those creative ideas that you have to do original stuff and adapt them into the games you are doing. I think that is the case for Wanted. I sort of always wanted to do something that had a little bit more Max Payne style shooting to it. I think Wanted was a great case for us to do that.
We say Max Payne, but even the whole element of Time Crisis and using cover mechanics in games. Could we tell something different with our cover system? Could we go beyond what other games have done with cover? When you are doing a game based on cover so soon after Gears of War, you had better have something interesting to say with your cover system more than just, "I am going to pick up this car and move it!" That is great, but Epic already did that. So if we are just doing that, then we might as well reskin Gears of War for Wanted. No. You do something that is innovative.
One of the things we do at Universal all the time is we ask ourselves, "Is this an innovative mechanic? Has this been seen before? If it has, are we doing it in a different way? Is it going to be fun?"We sort of ask ourselves, "Are we pushing? Are we continuing to move the industry forward?" We so rarely think of the games we work on as movie games. We think of them as great games first and foremost, so we are working on a game.
The same way that you would want to make an original IP game great, that is what we are trying to do here.
Having said that, Escape from Alcatraz would probably be a really cool game.
