Inside Legendary: The Box

Get inside The Box as Lead Producer John Garcia-Shelton talks about Legendary and the story behind it.

What's the back story of this game?

John Garcia-Shelton: You play as Charles Deckard, an art thief, hired by a Professor Reinhardt LeFey to steal the contents of a newly discovered antiquity which is about to be part of an exhibit opening at a New York art museum. What you don't know, and Lefey does know, is that the box you are opening is Pandora's Box and by opening it you unleash creatures of myth and legend into the modern world. This catastrophic event wrecks New York City and is felt around the world as the creatures return to reclaim what was once theirs.

You, bonded with the Signet, the key that was used to lock the creatures inside the box eons ago, are the only person who can return the creatures to Pandora's Box.

How did Spark and Legendary: The Box land at Gamecock?

JS: Spark was founded by a group of talented individuals who left a big publisher with a dream of starting a creative community where folks could make more unique games. When we met up with Gamecock at last year's Game Developer's Conference we found we had a lot in common - but it was their desire to support innovative risk-taking and talent that made them an ideal fit for our group and the right home for our LEGENDARY passion project.

What did you learn from working on the Medal of Honor titles that helped to shape Legendary: The Box as a game that pushes the boundaries of the FPS genre?

JS:We learned how to create authentic environments that looked and felt like real places in our world, and how to script emotional intensity into player experience. What we have done for Legendary is push the bounds of the AI to create deep behaviors and motives for the creatures that adds a lot of depth to the experience. We then take what we have always done well, the scripted moments to drive emotion, and follow through with the intense AI.

What are some points that Legendary: The Box binds both authenticity with mythology?

JS:The conflict of mythical creatures in the modern world is our strongest thematic element in the game. By making the places you play through places we know and recognize, New York City and London and a small town in England, it gives the creatures a bigger impact when they make their way through our world destroying it.

How does the AI fit into this? Can you also talk about the enemy's object recognition system and what that means?

JS:We wanted to impart in our creatures a strong sense of place in the world. What you see are creatures trashing the world, objects flying everywhere, real chaos and intense action. But there is a lot under the hood. To do this we created a dynamic object tagging system that allows us to tag objects as throwable, smashable, movable, scatterable, burnable, etc.. Each creature has its own behavior tied to the objects. In the case of a werewolf, he is going to seek out a computer monitor to throw it at me because, for him, that object is throwable and smashable. If it was a griffon he would just run through the monitor and the desk and the chair because he has those objects as scatterable. By using the objects to accomplish their goals the creatures feel more real in the world we've created.


John Garcia-Shelton talks about monsters, mythology, and heroes...

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