Mercenaries Q&A Feature

Representing an entirely original concept for LucasArts (ok so it does have Han Solo and Indiana Jones), Mercenaries comes from the top development team of the time, Pandemic Studios.

Offering an open-ended experience and taking Havok physics integration to the next-level for the home consoles, Mercenaries is both deep and enjoyable, and likely to continue its success across Europe that itâ??s recently enjoyed upon its American release.

TVG recently had the opportunity to chat with Chris Susen, LucasArts Product Manager, on all things Mercenaries along with the possibility of a sequel and naturally Star Wars: Episode III.

TVG: How hard is it to establish an original concept like Mercenaries?

Itâ??s ridiculously difficult to establish a new IP; you look at the best-selling games of last year, youâ??ve got San Andreas, Halo 2, Doom 3, Half Life 2, all these games are sequels and so here we are at LucasArts, weâ??re the â??Star Warsâ? company and weâ??re brining a game to you that allows you to control a Mercenary in North Korea, it seem ludicrous! But, what you have to do is find great characters, great story and phenomenal gameplay; once youâ??ve established that then I think it will gain momentum. People loose sight of the fact that with Grand Theft Auto there were two GTAâ??s that came out which werenâ??t as successful, before GTA3 which blew the scene up.

So I think what we want to do is put out the best possible game, get people excited about it, spend a lot of time with the press, spend a lot of time with the consumers, get it in front of people, play the game, play the game, and eventually word of mouth will hopefully let things catch on like that.

In the United States at the moment itâ??s doing incredibly well, if it does nearly as well in Europe then I think we have a franchise on our hands, so then we can take our customers opinions, we can grow the game, grow the brand, based on what they want; people want multiplayer, well definitely, if we were to do a sequel then it would be the first thing we put in there.

TVG: Action-orientated games usually suffer from the same problem of repetition; how have you gone about structuring Mercenaries to avoid this?

I think it goes into how you structure the missions; if you get enough diversity in the missions themselves and you encourage players to play them anyway they want and make it so they canâ??t play the same mission the same way twice, so if I play the â??2 of Clubsâ? mission and the â??3 of Clubsâ? theyâ??re going to be completely different. Itâ??s incumbent upon developers to realise that, and also to properly educate the player; what weâ??ve done so successfully in Mercenaries is that sure thereâ??s a lot to learn in the game, itâ??s a big, big game, so we take you through it by your hand especially in the first chapter, we teach you how to drive the different vehicles, we teach you how to fly the helicopters, we teach you how to control the character, we teach you how to call in the air-strikes, so that by the time you get to the fourth chapter and youâ??re taking down the â??Ace of Spadesâ? you have all the experience and itâ??s all second-nature.

What are the distinctions behind the three playable characters, obviously thereâ??s a difference between attributes and style, but is there anymore profound impact, perhaps in the storyline?

They all are taking this mission on for different reasons, they all have different back-stories: Jennifer Leeâ??s parents were both military personnel, she was MI6; the Swede, we donâ??t tell you a lot about his background until you start playing the game and start to realise â??this guyâ??s crazy,â? he obviously has some kind of military training but you donâ??t understand until you begin playing the game and finally the American Chris Jacob, in addition to being the most robust and taking the most damage he used to be a Black-Ops guy.

Each character has their own reason for taking this on and wanting the $100 million, and also each of the different characters take different missions, so Jennifer Lee is far more stealthy, the Swede is a little faster and better with explosives, while Chris Jacobs is a lot more healthy and can jump into a gun-fight, take a little damage and just waste them.

TVG: The factions within the game provide depth and variety, features not usually associated to run-and-gun games, whilst also providing a great sense of structure to the game; but how extensive is this, can you for example play one faction against another?

You certainly can, the South Koreans and North Koreans especially, they hate each other and so theyâ??re constantly in battles with one another and this is all randomly happening, so youâ??ll walk into an area or be driving on a Russian Mafia mission for example and youâ??ll see South Korean and Chinese forces shooting at one another. Every time you kill a faction member and somebody notices it, your level will drop with them. You can drive through an area and the Chinese will say â??we donâ??t like those South Koreans, why donâ??t you do a job for usâ? and you do it, then the South Koreans will say â??hey why donâ??t you do a job for usâ? and so you can play them off one another.

TVG: What are the journalists role within the game?

They provide a gameplay dynamic, in that when you take out a civilian theyâ??ll bust you for it and youâ??ll have to pay them off; in addition to that they also play a key part of the story, I donâ??t want to get too far into that and Iâ??ll let you see it for yourself and there are missions when you have to interact with them.

TVG: They also update the progress of the players actions throughout the game, a nice little detail

Absolutely, itâ??s the little details like that, that also make a new game so amazing, things like when you fly a helicopter over a smouldering car, and the rotor-wash blows the smoke away. Itâ??s a touch that people may or may not notice, but if they do theyâ??re going to say â??thatâ??s such a great detailâ?; we didnâ??t need to put that in the game, but it just makes it feel a lot more alive and more vibrant.

TVG: What was the most important aspect for the developers?

We wanted it to be that when you picked up the controller it just felt good, when you got into a vehicle it just felt right, and youâ??re running around shooting stuff it just felt fun. We spent a lot of time consumer-testing the controller, putting it in front of consumers â??What do you think?â?; for example the helicopter controls were really complex at first, and itâ??s not like we dumbed them down, we just refined them and spent a lot of time on them so that when somebody picked up the controls it just felt right. But at the same time also adding enough depth, so that when somebody plays it enough they can master it; so you can easily pick it up and play, but by playing it a lot you can master it.

TVG: How hard was it to ensure the balance between fun and realism; the game is set in a semi-realistic setting, but the emphasis is very much on over-the-top fun?

Weâ??ve spent most of our development time making things enjoyable, I think that having a jeep that drives like a jeep is important, people expect certain aspects out of a jeep, but having a jeep that drives exactly like a jeep, travelling at exactly 50MPH, well I think that could get a little boring. So what weâ??ve done is use the core values of what makes a vehicle a vehicle, and then make that unique and fun within the world of Mercenaries; for example, the Chinese YW-534 tank has a rocket launcher on the top, itâ??s not guided in the real world, but for the game we made it guided because it was a little more fun that way; the Hummer H3 is the same thing, in reality itâ??s not an armoured car but in the game it has a little bit of light armour.

For us it was all about fun; I mean the balance needs to be there, because weâ??re in a near-term world, so it is loosely based on a world we live in, but I think ultimately what a game comes down to is gameplay in mind that need to be at the front, foremost is it fun.

TVG: After the success of GTA a lot of games are going down the open-ended design route, but what a lot forget is that itâ??s ok to have a huge environment, but you actually need to pack it full of interesting things for the player to do; how did you go about approaching this with Mercenaries?

Well what I think we drew from GTA is that sandbox experience; you can just not be on a mission and drive around, blowing stuff up and itâ??s a lot of fun. Where weâ??re different from GTA is that we allow you to play through the game anyway you want, you can take any mission you want, you just canâ??t do that in GTA. Not only that but when youâ??re on a mission thereâ??s not only one way to complete a mission, you can drop a car on someone, you can fly a helicopter, you can call in an air-strike, you can run in and subdue them, you can go about any mission in a hundred different ways.

So the way that I play the game is totally different to the way you play games, so the way we go about solving a mission is completely different. Inherent to that is the problem in designing such an open-ended game; for us we recognised that as a threat right away, if people can complete these missions in 150 different ways then we have to work on that, and thatâ??s where our QA test came in. We had an enormous QA team working around the clock, breaking the missions in 150 different ways, and as a result we have a relatively bug-free game.

TVG: Thatâ??s an important point; when the game does offer so much freedom to the player, you need to ensure a level of solidarity runs throughout the entire game. Mercenaries appears to be fairly robust in this area, although we did try blowing up the planes to no avail for the last month

Youâ??re one of the only few people who have actually tried to do that (laugh). Freedom is a very important part in videogames, itâ??s an expanding area and I think you need to offer enough so that the player feels as though theyâ??re progressing the story and making the decisions. Of course there are certain things you want them to accomplish and you can push them in that general direction, but I think if you push them too hard youâ??re going to divorce them somewhat from the game and from the experience and you definitely donâ??t want that. On the other hand you canâ??t make it too free so thereâ??s no continuity in the story, you want people going through and experiencing things the way you want, the story to flow.

Despite holding a close third position, why are many publishers shunning the GameCube?

LucasArts philosophy, and weâ??ve always been a friend of the GameCube (Rogue Leader series/Jedi Knight II/Jedi Outcast), is that when we decide about creating a game, we take a look at what platforms that game can best shine on. With Mercenaries we wanted to take advantage of certain things that the Playstation2 and Xbox can do, and certain things that the GameCube cannot. Also you take a look at types of games that generally sell on those machines and the demographics, and unfortunately the GameCube skews a lot younger. So when you take a game like Mercenaries, which is 16+ in the UK and T in the US, it skews a little older then the type of people playing the GameCube, so it just didnâ??t line-up for us.

It kills me because I was the producer on Gladius in the United States, and we thought it was the best platform for the game.

18 million units isnâ??t a bad figure however

People have them, people have GameCubeâ??s, but what it comes down to for LucasArts is, does it make sense to make a game on that platform, the Xbox skews a lot higher and more to people that have PCâ??s, whereas the PS2 is mainly the mass-consumer and also goes a little older, and then the GameCube has Mario and Donkey Kong; donâ??t get me wrong, thatâ??s not to say thatâ??s a bad thing.

But they donâ??t hold the same prestige that they once did.

They definitely donâ??t, but I donâ??t think that plays much of a factor in our decision not to develop games for the system or not; I absolutely adore Nintendo.

So itâ??s on a title-by-title basis for LucasArts?

Thatâ??s exactly what it is. We go into every game development thinking what platform does it makes sense to release this game on, and once weâ??ve made that decision we can commence with development full steam ahead. We also come up with different ways to use the hardware, for example in Mercenaries thereâ??s certain things that we wanted to do on the Xbox that the PS2 couldnâ??t support, things like Specular-Mapping, Bump-Mapping and Dynamic Lighting, things like that that the PS2 just couldnâ??t do. So we developed them in layers instead of developing for the Xbox and stripping that out for the PS2, we just developed simultaneously for both.

The main character cannot swim within the game and instantly dies when they come into contact with large expanses of water ala GTA3 and Vice City; surely this is a little dated now and gamers demand more?

Itâ??s tough because Havok physics inherently supports buoyancy. By designing the maps to allow people to swim was going to tie our hands a little bit, and we couldnâ??t make the game world as open as we wanted to make it. We needed to put borders on the world and I think water presents this natural border.

The use of physics within videogames is becoming increasingly interesting, particularly as games like Half Life 2 take the concept and fundamentally include it within the game; whereas something like Mercenaries takes it for the visceral, in-your-face effect, the first time you set off a chain-reaction and watch a jeep whizzing over your head is quite a gaming moment

I totally agree, itâ??s something that we at LucasArts call â??Mercenary Momentsâ?; I had a situation the other day when Iâ??m playing the game and I land a helicopter on top of a building, and thought great now I can snipe everybody in the area and theyâ??re never going to have a clue. So I got out of the helicopter and had just enough time to turn around and watch it get blown up by a missile and blown of the top of the building, which left me thinking â??Iâ??m on the top of a building and I canâ??t get down, Iâ??m going to have to restart the mission.â? But then I though â??waitâ?, I planted C4 on the four corners of the roof, stood in the middle, exploded the C4, surfed the building as it fell to the ground and jumped off just before it completely collapsed â?“ and lived!

Itâ??s things like that, we allow the player a new level of freedom, things that Havok and real-world physics can offer the player, so they get to solve problems in the game as they might do in real-life.

Itâ??s an exciting time and with the release of the next-gen consoles and future technological advancements it can only get better.

Oh for sure, Havok have already released Havok 2.0 and weâ??ve definitely taken a good, long, hard look at that 

If one thing Mercenaries misses, then itâ??s certainly multiplayer features; however bringing across that freedom, open-endedness, the sheer carnage, the fun, must be hard but at the same time seems ideally suited?

It is, it definitely is. To get multiplayer in the original version we would have had to cut a feature and we werenâ??t willing to do that. When launching an original IP you want the diversity of gameplay to be there, you want people to do whatever they want, you want people to have a really amazing time with the game on a single-player level.

Now if we were to do a sequel the first thing we would put in is multiplayer.

TVG: I look forward to it

Me as well because I think that as you say it is ideally suited to multiplayer.

TVG: So what next for LucasArts?

Well weâ??ve recently announced a new Star Wars RTS, Star Wars: Empire at War, which is in the hands of former Westwood guys and itâ??s looking awesome. Iâ??ve also just come away from a new Star Wars: Episode III title that we havenâ??t announced yet.

TVG: Not Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith ?

Nope a completely different title. Iâ??ve also seen the movie in full, and itâ??s fair to say that it will blow you away.

TVG: Tell us something about it (please)?

The light-sabre battles are awesome, seeing Yoda and Palpatine fight is just something out of this world.

TVG would like to thank Chris for taking the time to answer our questions and chat endlessly about videogames.

Mercenaries is scheduled for a UK release on February 18th, weâ??ll have a review of the title soon and will hopefully bring you more information on the possible sequel and mysterious Episode III title soon.