The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena Interview Preview
- February 02, 2009 10:54 AM PST
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The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena "Pitch Black" and "Butcher Bay Riot" multiplayer modes revealed in an interview session with Ian Stevens, head of Tigon Studios.
GamePro: What thoughts were behind the decision to revisit The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay?
Ian Stevens: Because of everything we did to the original Xbox hardware just to make Escape from Butcher Bay possible, making that game backwards compatible on the Xbox 360 was pretty much impossible. I think we plain broke the Xbox to get the visuals you saw. So that was certainly one big reason - we were just as disappointed as everybody else and we wanted Riddick playable on the Xbox 360. What we've got now is more than we'd ever hoped for.
Assault on Dark Athena is a brand new, full length, fully featured game, which just happens to include an extensive remake of Escape from Butcher Bay as an added bonus. Not to mention some really cool Multiplayer!
GP: What are some of the most significant changes over the original release?
IS: With the remake of Escape from Butcher Bay, we had a pretty interesting challenge. It still looks great as is, so to try and leapfrog that presentation meant literally going back to the drawing board and recreating every single part of that game in much greater detail and maximum resolution. Every single asset was redone from scratch. Characters, environments, animation, sound - the works. So while we've kept the storyline and actual gameplay true to the original, that game has received a gigantic visual upgrade to maintain parity with everything we're doing in Assault on Dark Athena - the new game included in the package.
GP: How does the new content tie into the original storyline?
IS: Assault on Dark Athena's storyline takes place immediately after the end of Escape from Butcher Bay. So Riddick and Johns - escaping the Bay - are caught by the Dark Athena. This leads us right into the new game.
GP: What can players expect from the new content? What changes have been made to the original campaign?
IS: With the new game (Assault on Dark Athena) we've kept those original gameplay mechanics that everybody liked so much - the stealth, fighting, adventure/exploration, and gunplay - and we've added to them. For example, with the "First-Person Fighting," we've added an absolute ton of new counter-moves, stealth kills, and combos, all unique to a bunch of new weapons (melee and guns), and all of those enhancements and additions are retroactively a part of the remake as well. So everything we're doing to push this new game forward is something that enhances the original also.
GP: What was it like implementing Xbox 360 achievements into a game that didn't originally have them?
IS: That was a lot of fun, actually! We have the benefit of knowing what people like about Escape from Butcher Bay so building achievements into that experience and having a sense that people will really enjoy going after them, makes it a much more playful process than it might normally be. It was also a bit nostalgic.
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