The most famous example of Old English literature, Beowulf has been translated and adapted on numerous occasions, with Montpelier-based Ubisoft Tiwak spnding the last eighteen months crafting their own take on the story, based upon Robert Zemeckis' upcoming movie. Due for release on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, and PSP in November, TVG recently sat down with Alex Remy, Associate Game Manager at Ubisoft Tiwak to find out more:

TVG: Beowulf has been built with the YETI engine, which has already powered Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter; how well has it coped during the development of Beowulf considering how different the two titles are?

The fact is really that when we started developing YETI and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, the engine was designed to have three pre-requisites. One was that it had to be next-generation only. Secondly, that the YETI engine must be capable of being split so that production [of a single title] could go on at two different studios. For instance, Beowulf is a co-production between Ubisoft Tiwak, which acts as a core team responsible for all the core game elements, and Ubisoft Shanghai, responsible for a big part of the production such as level and character designs. Thirdly, the YETI engine must be a platform that delivers on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC at the same time - there's no lead platform - they're all the same.

And of course, it's a game engine that can be used for an FPS game or an adventure game; one of the first versions of the YETI engine was used to do an adventure games that was never released. So it's a platform that's designed with tools to be intuitive enough for the artists and the level designers to use, not only the programmers, to tackle whatever type of game we want to do.

TVG: Since Beowulf has been designed by Ubisoft down in Montpelier, did production begin on the game immediately after the team completed development on the original GRAW in 2006?

Yes, exactly. We jumped from the tail end of production on GRAW to the conception and pre-production of Beowulf at the same time, so we had a year and a half on the title.

TVG: Earlier in the presentation of the game, it was mentioned that there had been some technical difficulties during the production of the PlayStation 3 version; have they now been ironed out?

Yes, they're totally straightened out. We're going to ship three versions, though the PS3 title will be released one week after the Xbox 360 version due to some mission improvements with Sony. We're right in the process of certification with both Microsoft and Sony, which should end this week. Then we're good to go into manufacturing.

TVG: There's also been a mention of SIXAXIS functionality in the PS3 version; could you go into any details?

To be honest the controls are pretty basic. The engine delivers the same experience on three platforms, so what we have for SIXAXIS is essentially for some of the grab functions and the struggle - where you have to bash 'B' [in the Xbox 360 version] you can use the SIXAXIS to deliver one specific move. But we haven't pushed it too much; again, in eighteen months of production on three platforms we couldn't take the specific functions of the PS3 and push it to the limits of what you could do with SIXAXIS. If we'd have been exclusive we'd definitely have gone all along that way, but since it was multi-platform and dealing with the PC controls too it would quickly become a big mess.

TVG: Do you offer to plan to offer support for DualShock 3?

To tell you the truth, I don't know and I wouldn't like to say anything that would be s**t and just backfire.

TVG: Beowulf has been given an 18 certificate; how difficult was it to balance between staying faithful to the movie's vision and not limit the game's potential at retail?

For many reasons right from the beginning we knew what we wanted to at Tiwak for this particular game was to make a non-traditional licence and not tackle a licence the way most other people would in the industry. I'm not saying that all licensed games aren't good, but what we tried to do is make an experience with Beowulf that was true to the original materials, true to what Zemeckis is trying to do [with the movie], and also use the original ideas that we were all having and hoping for when we were signing the licence. So we knew we were going to go for mature content because of the original material, the sexual innuendo, the violence, the boss battles in there to get a sense of the themes. It would have been a shame to tone it down for just marketing reasons.

I think the main difference between this project and whatever the summer blockbuster is, is the fact that there were two creative visions between Zemeckis and when we came to show the concept he said "I like what you guys are trying to do, so you have the freedom to do it." There's never been that much co-operation at Ubisoft in the past from what I know. So we showed off a lot of assets - Gabrielle Shrager [Lead Story Designer] went many times to actually write and review her whole Act II, the missing thirty year period, with the scriptwriters over there [in the US]. We share many of the models from the movie and put them in with much lower polygons, but Beowulf [the game] is notably based on the model in the movie. There was a very cool exchange of ways, and there wasn't the usual sort of licensor/licensee type of relationship where we have to follow what they want. So the freedom that we have in this case is why we could have a mature theme and not tone it down for licensing reasons.

TVG: And does the entire game take place in the missing thirty-year period in the Beowulf story?

Nope. The game plays for about eight to ten hours, so six hours is devoted to the second act and the rest is act one and three, which follow the events of the movie.

TVG: A morality system has been built into Beowulf; can you go into further detail into it and how it plays out in the game?

To be fair, because it's based on the original materials - it's better to play Heroic. You can play completely Carnal but what we've tried to do is have the player at the very beginning experience both the extreme Heroic and extreme Carnal [sides of the Beowulf's personality], and then for the rest of the game you have the tools and it's up to you. You know that using Carnal powers will have consequences that can be pretty negative because you risk getting a 'Game Over' if you kill your men or if you don't care of them. You do have the choice between them for most of the time, but when you're in boss battles, you will have to defeat them in Carnal mode. We want players to be dragged between one extreme to another, acting heroically but if they're nearly dead capable of tapping into Carnal powers.

Later on in the game you get waves of enemies - one of the intentions was to have a really deep melee combat game where the character is surrounded by enemies - but when you're losing despite being tactical and heroic, chaining cool combos together and stuff, there's going to be a point where triggering Carnal powers will become easier. You're almost dying because it's too difficult to overcome, and 'Bam!' you trigger this thing and you become a killing machine.

TVG: The tactical gameplay of Heroic morality and the Carnal powers offer a very different experience. There was mention that Carnal powers could be upgraded during the course of the game; will players also unlock additional attack combos for the Heroic gameplay too?

No you pretty much have all the combos at the start, but every combo changes depending on the weapon you use, whether that's a battle hammer, axe, or your bare hands. You have different categories of combos for each weapons, but the idea is that it's intuitive so that players don't have to go back to a combo book every time. We want there to be a variety of moves but triggered by the same inputs that you can learn very fast from the very first maps.

TVG: During the demo you showed how Beowulf can trigger a 'morale boost' for the rest of the soldiers - how does this affect the gameplay?

Basically the team is by default going to defend or attack occurring to your orders. When you give them the boost, you give them extra damage and defensive points that for a small amount of time gives them more power of the battlefield. They'll also move faster and become efficient.

TVG: One last quick one - what do you think makes a good adaptation of a movie?

I think it's when you have a game that can standalone from the movie. Right from the beginning we took it [Beowulf] as the opportunity to develop our game within a storyline and universe and characters given to us, but with much more freedom in terms of creativity. I think we're going to be deliver a game that's, I hope, largely above the average movie license stuff. Beowulf gives more - if I see the movie then play the game you'll get so much more. But if you don't want to see the movie, then it can still stand alone, I think it's solid enough in many different ways that you'll enjoy playing it from A to Z.

TVG would like to thank Alex Remy from Ubisoft Tiwak for discussing the game with us. Beowulf is due for release on Xbox 360 and PC from November 9th, with PlayStation 3 and PSP editions arriving on November 23rd.