17 Oct, 2011
Writer Chris Fowler and Other Ocean’s Head of Development Mike Mika talk to us about their adaption of H.G. Wells’ classic tale War of the Worlds … and what it’s like to have Patrick Stewart on the pay roll …
The War of the Worlds, while a storied franchise, may not resonate with today’s gamer. How do you plan to grab those people in a crowded marketplace?
MM: We hope that, by doing something a bit different, both in pace and design, that we can give people something that truly captures the emotion of the source material. We definitely did not want to make yet another “movie game.” Believe me, I’m responsible for quite a few of those kinds of games in my career.
Watching the E3 demo for The War of the Worlds, we feel that Other Ocean did not shy away from making a difficult game. Did you deliberately decide to make a purposely hard game when more gamers are clamoring for more forgiving gameplay?
MM: We didn’t begin production trying to make a hard game, rather we more or less set out to deliver some key emotions. We wanted to convey things like desperation, exhaustion, hopelessness, and finally hope. That’s really hard to do. And those emotions are not forgiving. As the game came together, well, that’s when we started to see how difficult it was, both to produce and to play. We’ve spent a lot of time trying to make it easier without losing that core emotional palette. It can ride the line of frustration pretty tightly. We tried to balance those particular areas of the game with some mild redesign and also with a judicious amount of save points.
The animation style with the rotoscoped characters immediately reminded me of Another World. Was this an inspiration for the development team, or were there other inspirations that you reached for while mixing in your own flavor for The War of the Worlds?
MM: It was definitely an inspiration. We loved that game, along with Prince of Persia and Flashback. They all delivered incredible stories through the lens of a 2D platformer. They were huge influences on our approach to WOTW. That said, we can only dream of being as good as those games. I hope people feel we’ve at least delivered on a solid homage to these pillars of gaming. There are moments in those games that I remember very fondly. Those WTF moments, where you must make a leap of faith, or jump into a mirror, or do something totally against the conventions set up by the game. I loved those moments. They can be frustrating, too, but wonderful ah-ha moments. We tried to have some of those kind of moments as well as the dramatic action set-pieces that they so wonderfully achieved.
You did not go with the recent re-imagination that was present in the Spielberg movie, but you also did not go with the novel interpretation. What was the impetus of moving the game to this wholly original timeframe?
CF: In the original novel, the cosy world of Edwardian England is upset by unthinkable alien forces, and the hero was appropriately shocked. It’s hard for us as players to do this after world wars and acts of terrorism. Wells’ characters don’t really do much fighting back, which wouldn’t be much fun in a game.
The beauty of the 1953 setting is you have the complacency of the postwar time, but also a population ready to fight back because of the recent war – it propels us into the action.
So … no weapons, eh? Will we get a viral bug gun at some point to take down the aliens (obvious throwback to the 1950′s movie)?
MM: No. We really stood by the source material and tried to find other ways to fight back against the martians, but really, this a game about survival. You do get an opportunity to fight back, though. However, those looking for a fast-paced run-and-gun alien invasion game will have to look elsewhere, because this is a more deliberate, paced, approach.
CF: Nobody wanted another first-person shoot-em-up because it would have been wrong for the source material, but there are plenty of ways of fighting back against the enemy, don’t worry!
We cannot have a discussion about The War of the Worlds without discussing the Patrick Stewart narration. How did you come about getting such a stoic voice for your game, and how excited did you get for having this classically-trained actor on your project?
MM: Some things just happen and you go on forever afterward living in a state of shock and disbelief. We’re making a small, downloadable game. We’re a small team, with limited resources, trying to make something unique and cool. You have your wish lists, sure. One of those items was Patrick Stewart. If you’re working with Paramount, your fanboy brain says “Hey, they can just call him up and ‘make it so’”. That’s not how the world actually works. But, Paramount called him up and made it so. It also helps that he is a huge fan of the source material.
CF: It was the team’s suggestion to go for Patrick, and one I wholly endorsed. He came on board early, so I could write hearing his voice. I’ve worked with actors all my life so it was an easy process, although when he came up with suggestions for line readings I had to bite my tongue from saying ‘Make it so.’
Now, we’re going to throw this out there since we attended the E3 presentation … if this is successful, will you make that Barbarella game that you talked about?
MM: Unfortunately, that would be harder to do than we thought. Barbarella is not actually owned by Paramount, so our dream to make a kinky-shooter may have died on the vine. But then again, we didn’t think we could possibly get Patrick Stewart to lend his voice to us… so anything is possible.
CF: I don’t think the property is currently available in light of the proposed 2014 remake, but if it did I would run over broken glass to be a part of the team. I’m seeing killer dolls and angels VS Durand-Durand…
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