Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days Q&A Feature

Kane and Lynch didn't get off to the best of starts, however as Burt Reynolds and Dom Deluise once sang, "you can't keep a good dog down".  Inspired by the criticism that faced the original title, IO Interactive recently gave us a first glimpse of the sequel, Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days.

TVG was left suitably impressed by the unique visual style and the improved mechanics in our first impressions.  We also had the opportunity to put a few questions to the game's producer Mads Prahm, speaking about the setting, the improvements, the return of Fragile Alliance and Bruce Willis starring in the movie.


TVG: Can you give us a bit of a background to the story and setting?

Lynch is in Shanghai, he's hiding from authorities and trying to create a life for himself.  He has a girlfriend and a sort of job, it's dodgy with the Shanghai criminal underworld.  He's not on the right side of the law but he's really trying to create a life for himself.  But then he lands an arms deal and it's too big for him, so he has to bring in somebody who knows about these deals and so he brings in Kane.  Kane is really reluctant to be back with Lynch but he wants to be part of the deal and that's when things begin to go downhill, when the two are back together again.

TVG: Why Shanghai?

Everything is based around us wanting to do Lynch's game this time around and he's a confused character, a schizophrenic.  We were in Shaghai by coincidence, we were collaborating with some studios out there and we felt that Shanghai was exactly that, a confused city that's trying to outgrow itself.  There's new and old, western and Asian culture mixed in this big confusion and we felt that would be a good setting to reflect Lynch's inner confusion.

TVG: There's a unique style to the visual appearance, what inspired you to go in this direction?

It was a desire to make the game feel and look real.  I think in the games industry we're constantly trying to make these interactive experiences that immerse you as a player that brings you into the game.  Something that we found that takes you out of that experience is if you feel that all of it has been staged for you; it's like a Hollywood movie, there's cut-scenes with the static camera, the lighting is perfect; it feels like it has been created for you, there's an author that's made this for you.

So we looked at documentaries and user generated content like videos uploaded to YouTube or Facebook where people film accidents or fights or their birthday party.  We looked at what makes that feel real, and a lot of that comes from it not being staged for you, so we tried to work with that a lot in the game, both on the visual style and also in the dialogue, camera movement, and even in the gameplay and characters; trying to make it feel a little less staged and more accidental.

TVG: There's a lot of shaky-cam, video artefacting; can you enlarge on the technical aspects of such a style?

What we wanted to do with it was to make our version of a next-gen look... instead of having high resolution bump maps and advanced light maps, we wanted to make it look like something new and unique.

Technically we have completely rewritten the rendering of the Glacier engine, we've worked a lot with the 2D post-filters that go into it, which is what you see with the grain, the artifacts, the blooming, the lens flares.  We have this effect that we call CCD Overdrive, which is when you get a bright light source onto a cheap CCD such as a cellphone camera, you get these vertical streaks of light.  We have dust specs on the lens, we've done everything we can to make it feel like a cheap video camera, while keeping the high definition image and making sure that it's still something you can enjoy looking at.  It's finding that balance so it looks rough and made in a rush, but still looks great.

TVG: The gunplay looks more solid than the original?

One thing I would like to say is that we got a lot of comments from that with the first game and that was really a blow to the studio, it was a blow to our self-esteem.  We made a lot of changes at the studio to try to work with that so instead of getting that feedback after the game has been released we wanted to get that feedback while we were making the game.  So we've received user research, every second week we bring in new people to play the game, we watch them play and we interview them, we do metrics with the game to see what weapons they're using, how they're using them.

So it's something that we've really, really worked on a lot to get a feedback loop where we can improve quality all the way throughout the production of the game; things like the cover system, and what you're talking about now, the gunplay, which were quite criticised in the first game.  We've tried to make the weapons very different but also work with what people expect from an accuracy of a weapon, camera shake, recoil, because it's a lot of different factors that play together to give you a good feeling of a weapon.

TVG: The sound also seems to be improved...

You'll have to talk to our sound designers but I know that sound is such a big part of how a weapon feels in the game, so that's also something we've really spent a lot of effort on.

TVG: It's great to see Fragile Alliance returning in the multiplayer, which was one of the standout parts of the last game; it was something different to the normal deathmatch and capture the flag variants.  Are you keeping it largely the same or tweaking anything?

We're definitely expanding upon it but we'll come back at a later date to go into more detail.  We've stuck with the original premise of Fragile Alliance, which was the betrayal and revenge, the co-op that turns into a versus.  We've created new modes based on that and we've also expanded upon the game mechanics and a lot of the things we've done in general: the reworked cover system, AI, shooting mechanics, have a huge impact on the multiplayer because that's where you really feel the frustration if those things aren't perfect.  You're fighting against somebody else and if the game gets in the way of that it's unfair, you feel it inside if it's being unfair to you.

TVG: Looking at those game improvements, the covering system appears to have changed from a sticky setup to a more traditional button press?

Yes, the last time was an auto-snap system so you couldn't really choose whether you wanted to use it or not.  This time around it's much more flexible, you can choose when you want to use it and how you want to use it.  You can do much more with it, you can move along cover, move from cover to cover, take position with different types of cover, rush into and out of cover.

I think the biggest thing is that the game works really well without the cover system.  We've looked at what you expect from a first-person shooter and we've tried to apply that to a third-person shooter, so when you're in the aim mode it feels really solid even though you're not using the cover system.  We found through testing the game that it's not so much about the system itself as it is about what people prefer; some people just don't like covering systems in general and we want to make the game great for them, some people like knowing that they're safe in cover, they can peek and shoot and so we want to make it great for them as well.  That's, relatively speaking, easy to do because we've made it a choice.

TVG: From what we've seen the first section shows that the player is constantly having to move to handle the aggressive AI; is this a conscious design choice?

We definitely want to make it a much more tense experience because you're playing as Lynch this time around and he's a very different character from Kane.  Kane is a military trained guy who plans things out, whereas this time we wanted to make a game that is much more improvised and more Lynch's game you could say, much more about reacting to stuff happening.  We really want to increase the intensity.

I don't know whether you noticed but we have this feature called Down Not Dead, which is a way of giving the player a second chance.  While cranking that intensity up we found that it could be frustrating, it can be punishing so we wanted to give the player a second chance, making it possible so once you're shot and thrown to the ground you can feel 'ouch, but I have a chance to fight back, crawl to cover and shoot back again'.  This also works with the destructible cover so if something gets destroyed you're thrown to the ground, but you can get back up and try a new strategy.  All of that helps to create the experience.

TVG: The AI seems to have been considerably improved with aggressive flanking techniques, can you elaborate on this?

I think that was one of the things that got some critique in the first game and I think we at IO feel that we're actually quite good at AI, so again that hurt our self-esteem.  So we really wanted to get back to it and do a fantastic, aggressive action AI; not the Hitman stealth AI, but the flanking AI and I think we've really achieved that.

It's definitely an advantage to be two people with that because even playing in single-player Kane will help you out, but it makes a lot of fun in co-op when you have to be constantly shouting at each other as the enemy flanks.

TVG: It's good to have co-op online this time around.

Yes that's definitely something that was missing in the first game.  We really want to have as many options to play the game with your friends as possible, so we're expanding Fragile Alliance and we're doing the online co-op.

TVG: Just moving away from Kane & Lynch, IO recently released Mini Ninjas, do you think there's a future for that franchise?

I'm not really allowed to talk about that.  But I can say a general thing is that what makes me happy about working at IO is that we've been allowed to, once in awhile, create new games, create new characters, create new genres to work within and I definitely expect we will keep doing that, expanding upon our character universe and also do sequels to the great games.

TVG: There's a movie deal surrounding the franchise, are you working with that in mind?

No not really, we're not making the game in collaboration with the movie.  We're really excited that they're might be a movie, we're really excited that it might be Bruce Willis because we've been inspired by the characters he's played, the John McClain character is pretty close in many ways to the Kane & Lynch characters so it's a great cast for that movie.

I think we can explore some story, character things in the movie that we can't in the games, which are an interactive experience first and foremost.  I think it will be a great addition to the Kane & Lynch universe if we could see more of: how do they think? how do they act? what do they do when they're not in a gunfight?  Whereas making a game that's not about gunfights can be much more challenging, so I think we can use the two forms of media to expand on that universe.