Enter the Matrix: The Interviews [Part 1]
- February 07, 2003 16:12 PM PST
- Email this!
You know him as the man behind Earthworm Jim, but now he's all grow'd up and putting the finishing touches on the most highly anticipated movie tie-in of the year. Dave Perry takes some time out to clue us in on Enter the Matrix.
Shortly after the grand unveiling of Infogrames' Enter the Matrix earlier this week, GamePro had a chance to participate in a Q&A with Shiny front man Dave Perry. Known for his work on Earthworm Jim and (more recently) Sacrifice, Perry sheds light on this huge project that has already set new standards in the connection between a movie property and its gaming counterpart.
Question: How long have you been working on the game?
Dave Perry: We signed the deal with Warner on February 2001, but the Wachowskis already knew exactly what they wanted way before that. When we actually put pen to paper, they already had written the script. They basically had an arc for the story and knew exactly how it all fit together. They knew the beginning, the middle, and the end, and they had got it right down to the point where they would say to me "okay, you're in this situation and then you get this and you gotta head to the front door, but the front door is sealed and the police start closing in on you."
They describe things in terms of feeling, like we want you to feel this or we want you to feel that, and so ultimately they had a very clear vision of what they wanted to do. The interesting thing about the Wachowskis is that they seem to have watched every movie that's ever been made and they remember each scene. So they quote everything in scenes from other movies, so after every conversation I would go to Amazon.com and buy a bunch of random movies and fast forward to find the scene they wanted. They definitely knew what they wanted for sure.
Some of what Dave Perry's team built for Enter The Matrix is "just insane". What on earth does he have in mind for us poor gamers? |
DP: It's interesting. Normally, with the Hollywood directors?like when we did Aladdin, for example?you don't really get that much access. But with these guys, they decided to hire an interactive partner besides their own company, so they have access to an interactive staff that are there 24/7. When the movie was being shot in Australia, the interactive staff lived in Australia for a year and that meant we had access to everything all the time. In terms of photographs alone, we took 25,000.
We're still the game guys, so ultimately it's our job that the normal rules of gameplay exist within this. It's really a movie experience as a game, but on the other hand we have to make sure we have cool stuff... like, you want to be able to kick some major ass in the game. If you were to deal with directors that have no idea about games, it would have been a big long conversation all the time trying to explain how to control characters and all that kind of stuff. With the Wachowskis, they play games, they have an Xbox and a PlayStation 2. I saw Larry just recently and he was all talking about how cool Splinter Cell is.
Q: What was the biggest challenge or curveball the Wachowskis threw at you that you were able to overcome?
DP: Wow, that's a great question. Just the sheer scope of it?when you make a game, like you make a Metal Gear solid type of exploration game or you make a driving game. They basically wanted everything. Besides exploration, they wanted fighting, shooting, driving, flying and hacking, all in one game. We had to make a totally new engine, develop new technology. Interestingly enough, when we did a test with gamers?you know, with the mirrored glass room and everything?we asked the gamers to tell us everything you could possibly want in a Matrix game and they came up with a huge list. "You gotta have agents and lots of guns and cool fights," et cetera. We have absolutely everything they had on their list.
I thought it was fascinating that nobody suggested on their list that you have the story written by the directors, or you have new movie footage shot. They know not to ask for that; they've been trained not to expect it. So we said to them "What if we were to get the director types to work on the games, write these stories, and shoot new film?" You could see them having to think about it, and then they said "But that would be like George Lucas working on a Star Wars video game and writing stories just for the game; that would be like JRR Tolkien writing more Lord of the Rings books so EA can make another game." We said to them that that was what we intended to do. Over the two days, there was this one guy, this one doubting guy, who wouldn't believe or trust anything, and he said "The one thing that would sell it to me is if the Wachowskis put their name on the front of the box. If I saw that, I'd believe it and buy the game." So we're doing just that.
Q: You mentioned you were able to develop across all platforms at once. Did you have a lead platform, or were you aiming for the lowest common denominator?
DP: It's the exact opposite; we're looking to the future. I'm not thinking PlayStation 2; I'm thinking PlayStation 3 or 4. We're not developing for the lowest common denominator, but we design for a denominator that doesn't exist today and then we scale back. So we have assets that are just insane. I mean, just the movie footage alone is a terabyte, so we have to get a terabyte onto a DVD, which is pretty funny. Everything is so high quality and that's something we've been trying to maintain through all projects, then scaling to the best of what each machine can take. So whatever the best the Xbox can provide, is how the Xbox version is going to look. Don't think Microsoft and Sony aren't helping, because they're doing everything they can to try to get as much out of their machines as possible.
Just this past Friday, we had a major coup. We just got 1,300 sentinels onscreen at once, and it just looks phenomenal, like in the big chase sequence you saw in the anime [the Last Flight of the Osiris CG short]. That was another one of the challenges we had encountered at first?"You're going to have how many sentinels? Like, how the hell are you going to get that many sentinels in a game?" (laughs)
Q: Was it challenging to get each platform's controls to feel the same?
DP: Control testing is the biggest challenge. We really need about 70 keys, because we want to give you so much control, but on the other hand we want to make the game easy to pick up. There're a lot of people that love The Matrix that we think will buy PS2s or Xboxes or GameCubes when they hear about what the Wachowskis have done.
Did you notice there was a distinct lack of footage last night? The reason for that is some of the footage they've done is really quite controversial. I'm sure there will be some people uploading clips to the Web. I'm kind of fascinated to see how this plays out. We're not able to send anyone copies of the game. We got a request from Sony to send one for testing, but we had to take out all the story scenes. Then we got a comment back saying "The story doesn't make any sense; you're going to have to work on that." (laughs)
We want people who can't play video games to pick up the controller and press the buttons and feel really good. On the other hand, we don't want it to just be a button masher, so we've been working even harder so that somebody who's a good gamer can pull off much cooler moves. If you're like Spock and you can do a Spock-grip on your controller, then you can do the coolest moves of all, which are really quite tough. There are over 2000 moves in that build you saw last night. We got a little too focused on the fighting and got it to do really interesting things, but the feedback from Matrix fans was "I just want to pull my gun and shoot the guy," and we were like "Oh, crap, we forgot about that." So then we had to change the button configuration for when you need to go "Woo pow!" and shoot the guy right in the middle of a fight.
Q: Describe the hacking portion of the gameplay.
DP: The hacking part is something that I've really been pushing because I think it's fun. Some people will love it, but others will just be confused by it, and that's okay because you don't need to do any hacking to enjoy the game. If you get good at it, you'll be able to hack weapons into locations in the game?if I'm going to the airport, I can place weapons that are ready for myself when I get there?or you can download fight styles into yourself. The hacking window lets you communicate with other characters like Trinity. To that end, I've looked into all kinds of artificial intelligence programs to see if I can get coherent conversation going between the player and game characters, but they all suck. I went through every single one and they all suck, so I'm doing an absolute brute force technique where I tried to think of everything you could possibly type and have Trinity have a proper response.
Q: Describe the hovercraft portion of the game.
DP: The tunnels have become very dangerous places to be, but that's the only way to get around. In the game, you can either be the pilot, who is Niobe, or Ghost, who is the gunner. When they're looking for a great pilot in the movie, it's "Niobe, get over here," but then you have Ghost, who the Wachowskis describe as a Zen Buddhist Apache assassin. So you really have to decide which you'd rather be?the best pilot in the fleet, or this assassin. He normally has a gun in his hand, so his combat involves that, too. He can punch your stomach with his fist and shoot you at the same time, sort of like a bullet punch. (laughs) Crazy things like that.
Q: Was the idea to have both characters playable something the Wachowskis had planned?
DP: Yeah, that was another thing they brought up right away. Also, another thing they wanted was to have you miss big pieces of the game if you don't do things right. As game developers, we didn't want anyone to miss anything, but they absolutely insisted on it. There'll be little clue messages that will hint that you may have missed something in the game.
Q: Can you give an example?
DP: Yeah; there's a scene where you actually get to fight Trinity in the game. It's possible that if you're not doing the right stuff, you won't even know that exists.
Q: How different are the routes each character takes through the game?
DP: Obviously we can't make two very separate games, but in some levels they'll take quite a different route. The airport is all different. There are other places where they criss-cross and help each other in key sections of an area. We tend not to have them battle side-by-side very much, though.
Q: Are there any DVD-esque extras that will be included in the game?
DP:We're going to be looking at the DVD when we're done and see if there's any space left. If there's enough room for a little movie, we have the footage ready. We just have to find a way to sneak it in.
