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Justice League Heroes Q&A Feature
Chris Leyton
19/10/2006
Ryan Giggs, he's a league hero - but does he stand for justice? TVG speaks to Snowblind Studios Product Manager about the guys (and girls) that do...
The ensemble of Marvel superheroes have a little competition this time around with Eidos' take on the Justice League nearing completion for the Playstation2, Xbox, PSP and Nintendo DS. Following a similar blueprint, Justice League Heroes presents an Action/RPG experience with a focus on multiplayer and outlandish special abilities.
TVG recently had the opportunity to sit down with the game's Product Manager Loren Bryant, who evidently was considerably enthusiastic about the title.
Justice League Heroes is a great license to present as a videogame. What were some of the prime objectives to ensure the game fulfils its potential and how different did you try to make it from other superhero games presently available?
Justice League is definitely a great license to bring to videogames. However, when I first heard that we had the opportunity to work with the IP, I had a few misgivings about it being too "kiddie." I actually remember seeing the Super Friends on Saturday morning cartoons way back in the 70's so I was a bit tainted by that (not that there is anything wrong with the Super Friends).
After a few minutes of thinking about it though, I thought, 'wait, this is Superman, Batman, Flash, Wonder Woman, these are great iconic characters', and realized that if we could simply make a game that was the equal of all its parts we would have something good, and if we could include teamwork, solid story and a real feel of playing a comic book we would have something great.
The primary goal of the game design wasn't to simply provide a game system that a player would interact with, but actually have a compelling story that would drive the gameplay forward. Again, the idea of playing a comic book was very important.
At first we wanted to have all the characters chosen by the game on each of the levels, but after discussions with WB, we decided to open it up and allow players to choose who is played on about half the missions.
It may seem a bit harsh to limit the choices of the players, but we felt strongly that the players should experience each of the main seven characters in the game. It also allows us to personalize many of the cut-scenes - instead of Brainiac staring into the camera saying something generic like, "Justice Leaguers, I will defeat you!", we are able to personalize the interaction between the characters and the bosses.
Dwayne McDuffie, animator and comic-strip writer, has created the story for the game. There is a big difference between an inanimate comic and that of a vibrant action packed game, so what kind of interaction and feedback has he had with the development team and publisher to ensure the perfect blend of action and story?
It was great to work with Dwayne. Early on in the project he came up to Seattle and we had a face to face meeting with him to discuss the barebones outline of a story which we had written. It was immediately very clear at that meeting that he really knows the material. This was Dwayne's first time writing for a game and we did our best to explain the game making process to him.
Our first pass story was just a framework written with the DC Encyclopedia as the main source of knowledge. Dwayne really helped us fill out some of the poorly conceived missions and give motivations to the enemies. In our first attempt, Brainiac was the main boss and he was motivated by gaining immortality. Dwayne corrected us by saying that Brainiac was already immortal; he needs another motivation.
In other missions we knew we wanted an enemy who could control many weird creatures, but we didn't know who that could be. Dwayne suggested we use The Key and have him open dimensional doorways to summon bizarre creatures - a great idea.
After the first meeting, we corresponded via email by sending script revisions. These would go back and forth until the story outline was nailed, and then Dwayne started on the dialog. During the story period everyone - Snowblind, WB, DC and Dwayne - got a chance to give feedback and make sure their points of view were heard.
As the project manager, it was very important to me that we set the story in stone and start working on the art assets for the game as soon as possible. Actually, some environments were required for the story since we had already started work on them - Metropolis, Mars and an Arctic Base - Metropolis because we knew we could probably need a city. Mars since we thought the White Martians are cool. And you just can't go wrong with a high tech Arctic Base.
With so many superheroes to choose from will you ensure an equal billing to all of them or will it be more about who the player chooses to assume; additionally which characters didn't make the cut that the team would have liked to have seen included?
For the first part of the game, the player is required to play each of the main characters. After that, the game opens up and allows players the ability to select characters. They may not be able to select their favorite character for every mission though. Many of the missions occur simultaneously, or a character simply cannot do the mission because they don't have a special ability - like being able to fly. For example, we have one mission that takes place in outer-space, so choosing Batman and Flash just isn't an option.
Since we haven't revealed all of our unlockable characters yet, I will just discuss those that didn't make it into the final seven. Your readers shouldn't assume that since I am saying so and so didn't make it, they didn't make it as an unlockable.
A couple of characters didn't make it into the game because of technical reasons. While our Snowblind engine is really great at some things - water, capes, drawing lots and lots of polygons - it can't do other things very well. Because of this Plastic Man or any other deformable character did not make the cut.
Also, there are some characters that are very similar to characters that already made the cut. Not necessarily similar in personality, but in powers - at least in powers that we could do in our game engine. Huntress is similar to Batman for example.
Can you tell us more about the RPG aspects of the game; each superhero has their own unique powers, so how can these be improved and what rewards are on offer?
Each of the heroes has 9 abilities that can be increased. 5 of them are unique to the character and the other 4 are passive skills: combat, health, energy and regeneration.
When a character goes up in levels they get a point to allocate to their powers. As they unlock new powers or add a point to an existing power they actually open up a new slot in which they can place a Boost.
What's a boost you ask? Well, Boosts are one of the items found in the game. They can be found in 6 different varieties and in 4 different levels of power. In addition, in the character's inventory is a Combiner which the player can use to mix Boosts to make better ones, up to level 6. In general, Boosts will be a little enhancement to a power, but at the higher levels they can really impact the play.
The other day I was playing the game and decided to concentrate on Batman's combat skill. For the first few levels, I put point after point into combat, and then added Luck Boosts. Adding the points to combat increased his hitting power dramatically and then tossing in the Luck Boosts upped his critical hit chance. True, his Batarang was still at Level 1, but he turned into a hand-to-hand powerhouse.
Teamwork and co-op play seem the main features of game, though Justice League Heroes restricts the play to only two characters per stage; why was this decision made compared to the likes of X-Men: Legends and Marvel Ultimate Alliance?
This was one of the first decisions we made. We felt strongly that moving the game from 4 players to 2 would give us room to do more with the environments and keep the playfield clean. With the PS2, Xbox, and PSP we are always running up against the constraints of the systems; freeing up a few extra megabytes of memory by restricting the players to 2 pays dividends in the end by having more stuff and more enemies in the environment.
In addition, having 4 characters on the screen at all times clutters up the playfield. We would have had to resort to colored rings at the character's feet to show who is who. We understood from the beginning that we may be loosing the back of the box bullet-point battle, but we are hoping to win the war.
How hard is it to determine which powers are available to the cast of superheroes and ensuring these are balanced out against each other; on a level platform which of the Justice League Heroes is your favorite?
For some of the heroes choosing powers is easy: Batman and Zatanna both come to mind as characters who could have had several more powers. Superman, surprisingly, was a bit difficult to fill out with powers. Remember, this is an action / rpg game so powers like Super Hearing or X-ray Vision really don't do much in this genre.
It was also somewhat difficult to come up with powers for martial arts moves. They just didn't seem as satisfying as powers where the enemies turned into rabbits, for instance.
We have tried hard to balance all the characters. Obviously, in a game where Superman fights alongside Batman balancing is tricky, but in our previous games we had big tough warriors fighting alongside weaker wizards. We took this approach with the Superman / Batman problem.
Batman is more of a range and gadget guy, so his skills in general cost a less than Superman's powers and they tend to have additional side effects like stunning or critical hits. Superman in contrast is a classic slugger who dishes out damage and is able to withstand tremendous blows. When he uses powers, they cost a bit, but are devastating.
How do you feel the game shapes up to the X-Men: Legends series and who do you think will win the showdown between Justice League Heroes and Marvel Ultimate Alliance later in the year?
I am very glad we didn't try to make a Justice League simply a clone of the X-men games. We tried to make JLH the best game we could based on our experience as game makers.
I'm not looking forward to this as a showdown between the two games. Think of this Fall being a great time for video game players in general and comic book fans in particular.
With the cancellation of Justice League Unlimited earlier in the year, and characters less well-known (beyond Superman and Batman), do you foresee any struggles with Justice League Heroes being less recognized compared to other superhero videogames?
In terms of general public awareness of the lesser characters I don't think we have a problem. Of the 7 main members of the JLH, the only ones that don't really have much presence in the public are Martian Manhunter and Zatanna. I mean really, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and The Flash are pretty well known.
Martian Manhunter has turned out to be one of my favorite characters. His powers in the game are psychic and phase based which makes him quite unique. He can also transform himself into a beast form and tear apart nearby enemies.
Zatanna is the most eye catching of all our characters. I am, of course, referring to her spell abilities. I'm proud to say that we were really able to do her right using our game engine. We have a ton of experience in previous game with spell effects, so she really shines in JLH.
What is the current state of code and do you have any considerations to take the game to next-generation formats?
The code is shaping up nicely. This is the stage of the project that is most exciting and most stressful. Balancing and stabilizing are the key things we are working on at the moment.
We have started to think about what we could do on the next-gen consoles and it's pretty exciting. I will leave the rest for another interview though. Feel free to speculate...
TVG would like to thank Loren Bryant and the superheroes for this insight and answering our questions. Justice League Heroes is scheduled for a European release on November 24th; look out for more on the title soon...
Anonymous
Date Added:Mon 13th Nov 2006 19:41
BTW - If you're here trying to tell us that we need to get a life, then it just goes to show that you need one too. Insulting people is no way to convert them. Oh... [ Read full comment... ]
Anonymous
Date Added:Fri 3rd Nov 2006 15:11
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Date Added:Wed 1st Nov 2006 23:55
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Date Added:Sun 22nd Oct 2006 20:33
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Date Added:Wed 27th Sep 2006 21:13
Anonymous
Date Added:Wed 27th Sep 2006 02:16
C'mon DC will always live in the shadow of Marvel - there's no competition.
Anonymous
Date Added:Wed 27th Sep 2006 00:55
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Date Added:Wed 27th Sep 2006 00:51
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Date Added:Tue 26th Sep 2006 10:39