Interviews
Raven’s Don Vondrak talks about X-Men: Legends
“We really, really tried to make every single guy’s powers as cool as they could be”
When Raven Software was tasked to create X-Men: Legends, the goals were relatively simple, if undefined: create a game that did justice to the Marvel franchise, and make it challenging and entertaining.
There had been other videogames in the X-Men stable but to put it bluntly, nothing stellar from that pop-culture based universe.
So Raven set about creating a platform title that would capture the essence of the X-Men – their mutant powers and incredible team play. The result is certain to be one of the hottest superhero titles on the market. X-Men: Legends combines instant multiplayer (plug in and play) with RPG elements and though the storyline is somewhat linear, it was penned by Men of Action, which are current and former Marvel writers.
Don Vondrak, a programmer with Raven, talked with GameZone during a recent event in Los Angeles about the challenges of making this title.
Right at the start of the interview, Vondrak was asked what was the biggest challenge that Raven faced in creating this title.
“Making sure that we kept the characters and all their powers true-to-form and fun,” Vondrak said. “It was to make that when someone picked up the game and they wanted to play Cyclops that he did what they expected him to do.”
“It was fine if we bent the rules a little bit … but I think that was out number one challenge.”
The challenge of bringing four characters into play, each with their own power sets, must have presented a choreographic nightmare for the programmers …
“It was,” Don said. “Without a doubt a huge part of our work was put into making sure it didn’t get chaotic – fun, explosive, a lot of cool stuff happening, but not chaotic. We went about first making the powers, that individually if you played that person that they were cool, and then became the job of the AI guys, that was making the ally AI to make sure that the AI didn’t do too much for you, that it didn’t take up too much of that screen real estate. We spent a lot of time making sure they were on the screen at the same time but not in your way.
“It was definitely a challenge.
“The other thing is we wanted to make all of the effects huge so when the player does it, you wanted to see huge ice shards flying across the screen but when the AI does it you don’t want to take up all that screen real estate, so we really had to balance that.”
Of course the core of the game is the X-Men and their amazing array of powers, an aspect that Raven paid particular attention to.
“We really, really tried to make every single guy’s powers as cool as they could be,” Don said. “When we were going through and making them, we had some written down on paper that when they got in the game that just weren’t fun, so we kept re-tooling them until we made sure that every single character was fun.”
But X-Men: Legends is not just about one character, it is formatted on the concept of team, with every member of the X-Men aiding the common cause.
“We tried to push so hard to make it a team game,” said Don, “and that was one of our No. 1 jobs – A: Make sure it was non-stop action, there shouldn’t any stoppage in the action for anything which is why we insisted on the real-time switching between guys and having the AI basically take over for you; and the other thing was making sure the AI did something for you, we wanted to push the team thing.
“If you really enjoy playing Wolverine, we still want you to have to equip Cyclops and upgrade Cyclops because he’s going to be doing stuff and you need him to do stuff. You have to have the AI help you out otherwise you are going to be in real trouble.”
One of the ways that Raven propels players into switching is through using the mobs that are faced. Early in the game, only two X-Men are teamed up – Wolverine and Cyclops, and they run into The Blob. Because of his body composition, The Blob is resistant to physical attacks. Players, who may have started as Wolverine, will be forced to switch over to Cyclops to use the optical attacks in order to defeat The Blob. Wait, that’s not exactly true. There is another way to use your team that does not involve switching characters.
“Even if you didn’t switch up, we want to make sure you are hitting that ally button for help to make sure your energy guys are hitting that physically resistant guy,” Don said. “It was one of those things that we totally had to have to make the teamwork aspect work out.
“Especially in co-op,” Don said, “that’s what rocked for us. In co-op you could just hit the button and join, and the other thing is you all have access to all four characters – it’s not just these two on this team and these two on this team. Everyone has access to anyone that is not taken. It all just works so well.”
The co-op mode was designed so that anyone, even with limited time, could jump in and join the action.
As Don explained: “If you are sitting in the basement all by yourself and your buddy comes over and he only has 20 minutes, ‘hey jump in, don’t restart a different game mode and help me progress in this story that I’m already going in.’ That was huge for us.”
As the player progresses through the game, they will find that the AI also changes to present a balanced attack against evolving and more powerful X-Men.
Don expounded on the basics of the AI design: “The thing with the AI is if you do too much of the stuff where you attack the guy that’s weaker or attack the guy that you got to take out, it ended up being frustrating for the players, so we had to make sure we balanced it so they did some of that stuff to look smart but they still occasionally just did the grunt mentality otherwise players get frustrated.
“The game is supposed to be about action, hitting and crushing your enemy and collecting stuff afterwards.”
del.icio.us
Digg This
Glink It