Singularity Q&A Feature

2009 is shaping up to become one of the most prolific years in Raven Software's long history.  Having wrapped its claws into X-Men: Wolverine Unleashed earlier in the year, the Wisconsin based shooter-house is returning to familiar territory with Wolfenstein and the original IP, Singularity.

TVG recently had the chance to discuss whether they'll release the game before its 2010 setting; whether you'll be able to shoot time-reverted babies, and much more with the game's producer Kekoa Lee-Creel.

Singularity features an original setting, how did that come about?

A couple of different things.  Raven's been around for a long time, seen tonnes of WWII games, they're doing one already so we figured let's try something a little different and again it was that Cold War setting which they had grown up with.  The TMD (Time Manipulation Device) kind of stemmed from that abandoned place and it just rolled together in that way.

Can you explain the time system; it's not time-travelling per-se?

We've seen other time games and they've done, you almost want to call it a VCR styled function, rewind, fast-forward, record, that sort of thing.  So instead of doing that, the direction was what if you could actually see what a physical item looked like 50 years forward, 50 years back, and play with that notion. 

That stemmed in to the eras, spanning the Cold War all the way to more or less the present day.  When they did that they found there were a couple of ways to approach it.  One thing is in other games players often get control of time, they wanted the player to feel a little more alarmed by the situation, be a little more concerned, so they took that out of the player's hands and made you, I don't want to say the victim of time, but certainly more susceptible to what time is doing around you.  You don't have control over that, it's way too much power.  So it's localised for a reason, you can adjust things with immense pace; you're thrown back and forth into 1950 and 2010. 

In addition there are localised spaces where there are tears, which we call rifts that let you walk between a space in 1950 and 2010, there's puzzle solving and also some combat involved going back and forth between the two areas.

In terms of the back-story; Soviets in the 50's have the Element-99, they do stuff with it and it screws around with time; can you enlarge on this and how it affects 2010?

There's a time-fiction.  In 1950 when they were doing it, [Element-99] it's a great source of power, when they charged it, it produced a hundred-fold the energy, unleashing a great unlimited source of power.  It's going to bring the Soviet Union into power and they're going to win the Cold War.  Unfortunately, things started getting messed up around it and that's when they discovered the time power of it.  Enter - I don't want to say a mad scientist - but our scientist who experiments with that aspect of its power.  He does it and then it explodes, and he is trapped in this space because he was a little too close to the reactor. 

When you cut to 2010 you find that somebody who has come to power in recent years has gone back to the island to reinstate the experiment, because he's confident that he won't get it wrong.  Which is of course wrong.  That causes a catastrophic accident, which is where you're dropped in, because there's some readings from the island that are a little strange and you're thrust into the storyline.  The consequences are that you can move back and forwards between the two areas, and clearly you're going to have a role in preventing the attack from happening.

In terms of the story, how much will be forced upon you with cut-scenes or will there be other plot devices to explore?

We have a pretty small amount of cut-scenes; one of the things we don't want to do is shout in the player's face and beat them over the heads with it.  Plus Raven's a shooter house and they like shooting things; the longer you're in a cut-scene you can't shoot things. 

We have the most critical points in cinematics, we also pull the camera view so it's a combination of cut-scenes that are third-person and first-person driven scripted scenes.  Then for the exploratory player, there are a combination of tapes, video reels that you age backwards and project onto walls so you get propaganda films, there's hand written notes, and echo events which you can blatantly walk right through and blatantly ignore although right now they tell a bit of a story as well.  The player will also encounter NPCs who provide a bit of back-story as well. 

If you want the full deal you can look for it, but if you don't you can just keep moving and shooting things.

Who are you fighting against?

There's a combination actually.  In 2010 the island is secured by a private army of Specnaz soldiers that are hired by the main antagonist, so those guys are actively patrolling, looking for your crashed plane and therefore you.  In 1950 it's an active military installation, a war camp, and also a scientific lab so there are guards present that you'll be combating there and they're just alarmed to see anybody that doesn't look like them. 

There are also the creatures that spawned out of the tear and they are both sort of parasitic and there are also creatures that exist on their own, but they're out of time.  They come out of that space in between and they interact with you in a different way, sometimes they're after you, but other times they're just after anything that moves.

In terms of influences, the colour schemes with its oranges looks a little like KillZone 2 and the looking down the scope, the time dilation is reminiscent of the plasmid powers in Bioshock; not bad company to keep, but did you look at anything particular during development?

The game has been in development for quite some time actually, so those games have come out post beginning of our development cycle.  But like you said there's nothing wrong with keeping that company, all of those games are fantastic and we appreciate any comparison that we draw. 

The idea was fundamentally unique to Raven, so in terms of colour palettes those were conscious choices.  In 1950's they really wanted a de-saturated palette with strong reds to represent the Soviet colour scheme.  The modern stuff, the blues and oranges, creates an eeriness and weirdness.  The line of sight you see in a lot of games, that's traditional FPS. 

As for the TMD being on the wrist, that actually harkens back to Heretic, which was an old Raven game way back in the day when you actually had magical powers from your hand.  It's been an amalgamation of all the things we've seen done well certainly, but the particular titles that you mentioned are not related to what we're doing.

With some of the powers and scenarios, are they scripted or procedural?

Actually they're all scripted, and the advantage that gives us is that the player will begin to identify things that may or may not be likely targets for that type of thing.  It benefits us in two ways: one they're localised to very specific places which allows us to pay off the player more, because if you've got something procedural it can all go horribly wrong.  So we script these types of events to allow the player a bigger reward; if they want to drop a wall on someone there's a special animation that comes with that, or we put guys there to draw your eyes to it.  Same thing with the cover, we've got certain scripted cover items that will be breakable, so you can break down the cover like that.  There are certain objects that are obvious and less obvious; it's for the type of player who wants to delve into that combat style.  If you want to play through that area straight through with normal combat, you can do that as well.

How do you know what you can use the TMD on; is it visual clues or trial-and-error?

It's visual clues definitely.  We have a system called the Ping, which the player gets.  The Ping shoots out from the player, it's a big dome of light, and the light illuminates anything that's been touched with Element-99 and that's our fiction for what things can be manipulated. 

So you can manipulate other humans?

Yes...

To what extent, can you turn somebody into a child?

You can't do that, I did ask for that but that's why they stopped me.  You can age forwards and burn away enemies; if you go backwards there's actually different results.  With the Zeks, for example, when you age them back they turn into soldiers which are what they were before they became parasitic.  For humans when you age them backwards, a guy turns into a gelatinous mass, a jelly zombie which vomits at you and is really gross.  So that's a revert humans, that's the replacement for ageing babies.  When you revert them back to that form they'll run around and attack anything near them; it's another tool for the player.

In terms of multiplayer; I heard you speaking about it previously...

I'm not answering it clearly.  There is absolutely multiplayer in the game, which I cannot divulge too many details.  It is time based we do have some of the time stuff integrated in there; there's some cool stuff that we're doing right now.  I can't share any details, but I can say that I've played it and it's a lot of fun, it's coming along pretty well.

What stage are you in development?

We're approaching Alpha right now, but we're on a slightly different development schedule.  It's kinda weird to date it because we're moving in a slightly different way in terms of deliverables, it's hard to explain.

Have you confirmed a release date?

No it's just 2009, some time this year.

Because with the storyline being in 2010 you need to get it out this year...

Certainly seems that way, either that or the storyline will completely change.

Can you talk about the weapons we'll get our hands on; how the time dynamic affects these?

We've got the standard conventional weapons for a shooter, which Raven always delivers on, so there's the shotgun, the machine gun, a sniper rifle.  Then we've got the future weapons which revolve around Element-99, like the E99 Revolver, we've got a couple of others that play off the notion of playing with time and how it would get tweaked by the weapons. 

The player will have the option to carry all weapons at all times; we do want the player to feel as though they're getting stronger and more technologically advanced as they move through the storyline.

How frequent are the weapon upgrades?

That's a little bit influx; we're currently play-testing and figuring out what works best for the player.  It's about the journey, so the player stars out with basic functions.  The biggest challenge we're facing is trying to make sure the player can take a new function and understand the mechanic before we throw another one at them.  It's actually not that overwhelming, but we want the player to take that mechanic, learn about it for a little bit and then get another one. 

It will probably span pretty deep into the single-player campaign before you have everything, and then even when you get everything there will probably be an opportunity to beef up those powers a little bit.  We want the single-player journey to span getting new weapons and technologies as well as TMD upgrades.  I think that will go pretty deep so the last level of the game is the only one where you're fully in power.

How many hours of gameplay?

We're between 8 and 10 right now, a standard FPS length.

TVG would like to thank Kekoa Lee-Creel for taking the time to answer our questions and providing a look at Singularity.