The latest saga in the Syphon Filter series is due to hit the PS2 shortly and TotalVideogames was lucky to get an extensive interview with the Creative Director on the game, John Garvin.

The latest chapter of the Syphon Filter storyline unfolds as you are chosen as one of the selected few to be a trained operative within Gabe Logan's new Agency. You will enter a world of intrigue and global espionage, battling lethal enemies through tough and challenging missions that span the globe from Yemen to Tokyo. With a deadly arsenal of all-new high tech weaponry and gadgets, you can take on commandos solo-style or go online and join up with three other agents for action-packed, strategic, team-based gameplay.

TVG: John, what would you put the popularity of the Syphon series down to and what was the main focus for The Omega Strain?

John Garvin: I think it’s a number of things. First, while Syphon 1-3 had stealth elements, we were first and foremost an action game. We wanted to get the player moving around the environment while they were engaging in intense gun battles. We have a strong main character, a good story line, and some great weapons. In the first three games, that all added up to some unique and fun gameplay.

In Omega Strain we kept this focus on the action, adding 100 weapons, a player career mode, and 4 player co-op play. Internally, our slogan was ‘blow shit up, together’.

TVG: This time around you have commented that you believe the storyline to be more immersive, so how do you pull the player into becoming more involved and are some of the locations full of the essence of the towns they are set in?

John Garvin: The story is pretty deep. We have hundreds of back story docs that you can read before you go into the mission, and unlock during the game. These give you background information, access to Gabe’s personal journal, Elsa’s deposition, etc. There are many elements that you can only experience if you are in the right place at the right time. In the Krivorozhstal Mill level, for example, you have to find and rescue the mill foreman, Dobransky. If you are stealthy, you can sneak into his office while he is being interrogated by the Chechen terrorists and gain information you might not otherwise have obtained. If you save his life, he’ll unlock the mill safe for you, giving you even more story elements, and a one of the key pieces of evidence you will need to help cure the Omega Strain.

Omega Strain has many moments like this in the game, but you have to look for them. We do not script a single path and force the player to follow a single path, and this is an important distinction between us and other games we are often compared to. Our levels are massive and are designed to be explored and played more than once.

TVG: How diverse will the missions be and perhaps you can highlight one event that you really feel takes the game ideas to a new level?

John Garvin:No one event defines how our game ideas are ‘next level’. Instead, you have to look at what we are trying to accomplish. We wanted to create a realistic covert agency that would totally immerse the player:

• Create your own agent: don’t be put off by the fact that you start with a crappy weapon and few clothing options. As you gain rank and Gabe’s respect, your arsenal will grow and you will unlock the ability to greatly change how you look.
• Follow your agent’s career: not only can you gain in rank, but you can earn medals, commendations, and combat ratings. Each of these awards comes with valuable game play items: new weapons, abilities, patches, clothing items.
• Help cure the Omega Strain: by completing specific objectives throughout the game, you can help stop the virus itself, while you help Gabe crack the conspiracy.
• 4 player co-op: this is not a ‘tacked on’ multiplayer mode, but is a mode that is integral to the game. Yes you can play the game offline, by yourself, but we have really focused on making the game a unique multiplayer experience.

TVG: High Tech weapons are an exciting aspect of the game. Are there many new additions and can you tell us about one that you are impressed with?

John Garvin: We have added many different weapon types to the game. My personal favourites are the different types of grenades. Of course you have the standard frag type, but more useful probably are the smoke grenades or the sarin gas grenades because they can help you win the missions in different ways. For example, in the Carthage Warehouse mission, you have to fight the ALA death squad. This is a squad of 4 elite, heavily armed terrorists who are on their way to take out a group of civilians. You only have a few minutes to find and eliminate them. Playing the first time, this is extremely difficult to do since you basically have to pull off 4 head shots. Once you unlock the sarin gas, however, the task becomes simple: you wait and ambush them when they come out of a building, lob the grenade, and all 4 die instantly.

You unlock weapons and abilities that open up this kind of game play throughout The Omega Strain.

TVG: What enhancements or new ideas have been added to the combat system?

John Garvin: We know that a bunch of games have come out in the past couple of years that have added a lot of stealth features, with new gadgets, moves, etc. We have added a few of these, like Stone’s ability to snap necks (a silent, lethal kill.) But our focus has been on aspects like the career mode and the 4 player co-op. Many players do not realize how much work it is to network 4 players together smoothly. Our goal was to take classic, Syphon action gun play, and allow you to do it online with friends.

Probably our biggest feature is the visible hard point system. In the past, Gabe could carry up to 20 weapons which he would pull out of his ‘back pack’. Now the player can only carry 3 weapons at a time: a rifle on his back, a pistol at his side, and a machine gun size weapon on the midriff. Each of these is always visible to you and the other players. This hard point system adds a lot of strategy to the game: do you bring in a weapon that is very powerful, but for which there is limited ammo? Or do you bring in a lessor weapon which shares the same ammo type as the ones the terrorists use in that location, ensuring a lot of ammo?

TVG: There is a lot of excitement pertaining to the online features for the game; will you expand on what will be on offer?

John Garvin: We tried to make the same game for both offline and on. When you start the game, you are creating an agent who will join Gabe’s new agency. Once you have created that agent, you use him or her for the entire game, whether you are playing online or off. In multiplayer you can use the USB headset to communicate with your friends, and you will need to. Each mission has a solo and team ‘deadline’, a par time which defines how quickly the ‘elite’ can accomplish all of the needed objectives. If you beat the team par time, you earn team efficiency patches which will give you weapons that can only be unlocked online. Alternate paths through each mission are also available online. For example, in the Carthage quarantine mission, you can use a ‘buddy climb’ to gain C4, which you can use to blow open an alternate route into the subway system. Once you do this, a team of 4 players can split up into two groups of 2, take separate routes, and complete all of the objectives much faster.

TVG: What sort of villains will be on view and will they all have their own strategic and attacking methods and not merely be cannon fodder?

John Garvin: By the time you finish the first few missions you will wish they were cannon fodder. We have put a great deal of work into the AI in the game, and they terrorists can be ruthless. If you try to run away, they will track you down. If you dive for cover, they will come seek you out.

We also have many unique villains, like Ryusaki from the Tokyo mission: he is fully armoured and is equipped with a very large chain gun that will rip you apart if you are not careful. You can try him alone, but you will probably want to bring along a team to take him out.

TVG: You can play the game not merely as Gabe but someone else. Do you create your own character from a set of defaults? How do you set this up?

You create your own agent from scratch. You can choose sex, skin colour, height, weight, and all sorts of accessories like hair colour and style, make up, facial hair if you are male, clothing types, etc. At first, it will seem like you don’t have many options, but by the time the game is finished, you will have unlocked hundreds of options for customizing the look of your character.

Before each mission, your agent goes into a’ “weapon modification’ area where you get to select which weapons you want to bring into the mission. Remember you only get to bring in 3 so choose carefully. When playing online, you will see your team mates, and you will also see which weapons they are choosing. You can even use your headset to discuss weapon selection strategy.

TVG: What game modes are on offer and what other areas of interest would you like to talk about?

John Garvin: There are four bonus missions that you unlock by beating the preceding missions’ solo par times. In these missions you get to play Gabe, Lian, Lawrence, and one of the new characters, Stone. Stone’s mission is the first one you unlock (by beating the solo par times for Carthage 1, 2 and 3) and in it you get to uncover a lot of information on who this old friend of Gabe’s is.

Stone is only one of several new characters in the game and he is one of my favourites. Do not be fooled by his gruff “country bumpkin” façade: that is a mask he uses to put others off their guard. His records claim that he is ex military, but when you gain Stone’s trust, he will tell you his complete history and he has a lot to say. You will find some surprises.

Other things I am excited about:

Music:

Mark Snow wrote all the music for the game and it is top notch. He is the composer who wrote the X-files theme music, but if you look him up on www.IMDB.com you will see that he has written musical scores for many different movies and television programs. Mark wrote many songs for the game, including Gabe’s theme, Mara’s theme, and many others.

Story: Here is a small touch that you will probably not appreciate unless I point it out: when I was writing the Zeus files, those hundreds of back story files in the game, I wrote a series of files called Elsa’s deposition files, and Gabe’s case files. There is one of these for each mission in the game, plus a few that are unlocked only if you beat key objectives. Each type of file plays off against the other, and also attempts to comment on the specific level in which it was unlocked. For example, if you unlock Gabe’s conspiracy case file and Elsa’s deposition for Montenegro, you will get inside information on Mara from both Gabe’s perspective, and from Elsa’s, and there are some surprises in store. This is on top of the surprises you will learn just by playing that bonus mission, where you get to see the long awaited clash between Mara and Gabe. And did I mention that Mara is wearing only a night gown in that movie?

We don’t want to leave out players that are new to the franchise, but players who really know the story will find that a lot of questions, going all the way back to Syphon 1, are answered in the Omega Strain.

Multiplayer

I know I have hit on this a great deal, but I cannot emphasize it enough. Internally, we called ourselves “Syphon Filter Online” for a couple of years because that is what were focused on. Do not think of us as a traditional Syphon game with some multiplayer tacked on. Think of us as an evolution in the genre: a cooperative way to beat Syphon style missions.

Difficulty

The game is challenging. Do not be put off by how hard the game is at first. We looked at all the games that have come out in the past few years, and we really hate the way a lot of developers are coddling game players. We throw you into a harsh world and have faith that you are up to the challenge. If you are expecting us to hold your hand, and milk feed you one easy objective at a time, then you will be disappointed. We are a gamer’s game: dive in and become immersed in the world of Syphon Filter: it may be daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it, you won’t look back.

TVG: How technology based and focused is the team, could you tell us a little about the game engine?

John Garvin: We have completely rewritten our game engine for the PS2. While a lot of our technology went into network code and headset support, we also have done a lot with the game’s graphics. Something that most players don’t realize is that our worlds are huge and seamless: in other words, we don’t have “loads” in the middle of the mission. Most recent games have very small levels that offer only one path, one objective, one thing to do. We tried to make the game more wide open, and to do that, we had to write streaming technology that would allow us to have all the detail our player’s expect, without the load times. Also, there can be 4 players in the world at once, not just one, and each of these players can look however they want, and can have up to 3 completely different weapons.

At the same time we have things like radiosity so our worlds are lit in realistic ways; we have bump mapping and reflection mapping. We have advanced AI that lets our terrorists do everything the players can do, path finding their way around the mission.

Player’s who can go online, will discover just how smooth the game is, and how challenging.

TVG would like to thank John Garvin for taking the time to answer our questions; Syphon Filter: Omega Strain is scheduled for release on July 9th, we’ll have a review soon.