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Arkane Arkane Studios Austin working on a UE4 fantasy game

Wunderbar

Arcane
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Nov 15, 2015
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8,809
Harvey Smith is working on a new AAA game at Arkane Austin (studio behind the first Dishonored game and Prey 2017)

google translate said:
Interview Harvey Smith, creator of Deus Ex and Dishonored

We speak with this veteran designer, developer behind such legendary games as Deus Ex or Dishonored.

Harvey Smith, director of Arkane Austin, and designer of two such legendary games as Deus Ex and Dishonored, looks tired, like almost everyone. The nine-month pandemic takes its toll on body language and expression of exhaustion. He misses, he says, going out to eat with coworkers, going to exercise, entertaining friends at home "when you can do it, you don't realize how special it is and then something like this confinement comes along and then you realize how good your life was and that now you no longer have it."

Just before this interview, Harvey Smith just gave a talk at the Fun & Serious Games Festival in Bilbao. On this occasion, like other video game encounters, it has been a virtual edition. Although the speakers were of quality, the personal contact has been missed, "those social moments, you know, with people you meet only three times a year, is something that has a lot of strength", acknowledges Smith before starting. this interview by video call.

Different options for different types of players

Interviewer: - In his talk at the Fun & Serious Games Festival, Warren Spector commented on how much he liked Prey and Dishonored because he shares with you the importance of gamer freedom. In Dishonored, stealth prevailed, but there were different possibilities, was it just to give the player different options or thinking about different types of players?

HS: - A bit of both. We know that there are different types of players: there is the one who likes stealth, the one who likes history, there is the player who feels that they are represented and had never been ... When we took Emily out as the main character there weren't many strong female characters and interesting in front of the game, or a trans character in a positive and plausible way. There were people who were attracted to history, steampunk, others liked magic, we were aware that we had very different players and we wanted everyone to be satisfied if possible. That was one of the approaches.

The other is that Dishonored started a bit as a tribute to Thief. Raphaël Colantonio [founder and president of Arkane for 18 years who left the studio in 2017] and we sat down with Doug Church, one of our heroes, one of our mentors, and we said, "Doug, if you were to do Thief again What would you do differently? " And he replied: "I think it would not force the player to move slowly. This influenced us a lot because you can move slowly, you can go crouching and move and hide and be within the guards' cone of vision and all that. But you can also move very fast with the power of wink and with those who in one moment you are in one place and the next you have crossed half a yard. I think that is not something I have talked about many times but that little conversation with Doug influenced us both a lot [Colantonio and he co-directed Dishonored] and we tried not to force a stealth where we had to go very slowly.

One of the things that puts people behind stealth is because it feels like punishment, and it feels slow.


Distrust towards the possibilities of game development in the cloud

Interviewer: - For you, the decisions of the players are important and I have the feeling that artificial intelligence has been a hindrance in developing games that convey that feeling of freedom. Do you think that new platforms like Stadia, in which there are no such technical limits on the ability of AI, will open new paths for freedom in video games?

HS: - You mean does cloud computing mean we'll have better AI or something? Hmm, I think that would be nice, but these eyes have to see it. Raph told me about his new game, Weird West and said that, speaking with the programmers of the previous console cycle, he asked: "How many characters can we have on screen at once?" and they would answer: "five" and then the next generation would come, which was more powerful and all that and the question was: "can we now have 1,000?", "no, five", "how that five again?" . Well, because now you can pretend that the characters listen, that if a glass breaks somewhere, they can hear it, not that they run to where you are and attack you, but go to the place where something has been heard and investigate the area . That makes the player feel more like a part of the game, doesn't it?

The scenarios are cooler, the animations too, the modeling is more detailed, the player, the weapons…. Everything is more detailed. And all that adds up and in the end you end up with only five characters on the screen. I have high hopes but we will see. If what you want is to have a great artificial intelligence, you have to consider that this is the basis of your project, a responsive AI, and then you have to lower the bar on everything else, graphically, the size of the game, you have to lower everything.


Interviewer: - You worked Dishonored at Arkane Lyon and now you're at Arkane Austin, so you're not working Deathloop.

HS: - No, Dinga Bakaba [game director] and Sébastien Mitton [art director] are with him, but I worked with them on Dishonored 1 from Austin. We collaborated between Lyon and Austin for the first Dishonored and then for Dishonored 2 I moved to Lyon and was there for four years. Raph stayed in Austin and worked at Prey with Ricardo Bare and Susan Kath and the people I'm working with now. At the end of Dishonored 2 I went back to Austin. I'm not in Deathloop, I'm in something else, working with the guys who made Dishonored and Prey

Deathloop is going to be "fascinating"

Interviewer: - Would you like to be working on Deathloop?

HS: - I think it would be very exciting. I have played a fairly early version of the game and now I am hoping to play a more advanced one and give you some feedback but the spirit of those guys, their dedication to the gameplay and player movements, to art, to scenery… I think it's going to be something fascinating to watch.

- We've talked about cloud gaming before with Stadia or Luna, but what can we expect from PS5 or Xbox Series X | S?

HS: - A new cycle of consoles is always exciting.

Interviewer: - How many characters will we have on screen?

HS: - LOL. Five. What they can do is, you know, pull the trigger and feel that haptic pressure, that's a cool thing. They will connect you more than ever with your friends, the graphic quality is also a little better, or a lot. Of course the PC is always a bit ahead, but it's another console cycle, it's exciting.

The importance of the quality department

Interviewer: - You started working in QA [quality control department] and then you jumped into game design and creative direction, but on some occasions he has returned to work in Q and that is something strange, why is this return?

HS: - Officially I have never worked as a tester again, but I do test the game, all developers constantly test games, and I still have friends in the QA department of various companies who either want to stay there forever and manage teams of quality and change games quite often, they are in a game one year and then they go to another, or they use it as a gateway to other areas of video game development.

It's an interesting field because you touch every part of the game you're playing, people would be surprised how well quality people know the game. Dishonored players might play it once and maybe play it again and then say, "wow, I didn't know you could possess the fish and swim in the river and go up a pipe and go out a one-way toilet. home, it blows me away. " And if they play it a third time they might say, "Oh god, I've never used this power, I didn't know it could be used with this or that. If we talk about the Clock Tower from Dishonored 2 and people can see a different way of looking at the building or whatever the architects and level designers have thought, but someone from QA who has played the game, literally at the end of the project, a thousand times, they see all that can be done and they know all the nooks and crannies.

I remember in the late 80s how I played games like Dungeon Master Eye of the Beholder 1 and 2, Bloodwych or Carrier Command, which at that time was something magical for me. Dungeon Master is one of my favorite games of all time and I came to dream that if you pressed forward, forward, forward, right arrow, forward, forward, forward, left arrow and then you pressed the button you could open a door, I dreamed of immersive prototypes in which you advance a screen with each touch, in the first person, like Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder.

When I was in Q&A the same thing happened to me, I went to sleep and dreamed of System Shock, because there I worked in the quality department for 10 months, I worked on the floppy version and the CD version, I lived the transition from floppy disk to CD ROM. This is an example of a technological platform change that really meant a major change. Because before we had no voices, only text, and as soon as we switched to CD ROM, everyone was talking, and it was magical. A gigantic change. Similarly I worked on one of the first games where players had voice chat, FireTeam, and it was also a game changer, hearing someone else's voice. Now it seems to us that all this is natural, but at that time it was the example of a tremendous change thanks to technology. Playing and commenting on games and criticizing them will always have a place in my heart, and I think that is the case with all good developers.


Interviewer: - Great developers like you often refer to the Dungeon & Dragons board game and how you try to convey the same sensations as that game but in a video game, it seems that it is something very important

HS: - It's funny what your lineage is as a gamer or as a creator of video games, do you come from that branch of RPGs or Japanese fighting games or do you come from Western RPGs and first person shooters? I have the feeling that I come from first person shooters and pencil and paper RPGs. Video games seen through the lens of Dungeons & Dragons. Part of this is because I have an insatiable thirst to be put in a situation and to be able to explore it at my own pace, see who lived there and what they thought and what the history of that place is. What happens if I go to the roof? Can you see the sunrise? You know, that nature simulation part, I think that's what you would do if you were there.

I still play D&D with three different groups of people, and the pandemic has made everything easier because we all play online. I'm on a campaign with Jordan Thomas who worked on the Bioshock games and he's a bit like Dishonored but a bit weirder; I'm in another one that my friend Kelly carries that is a bit like spy stuff in the modern world and then I direct another that is set in the 20s of the last century, with flappers and Jazz, all that, and these pencil RPGs and role offer many possibilities, for players to express themselves and exploration and combat and historical simulation. They offer a lot and the games are not quite there yet.


The relationship with Raphael Colantonio

Interviewer: - I suppose that after so many years working together you miss Colantonio, do you have some envy for him about going indie?

HS: - Yeah though, well, he lives in Austin. Before the pandemic, we had coffee once a week and had dinner once a month. [Sighs] Also, he is a great cook, I cook southern dishes and Mexican cuisine and we both like to eat on the grill. He is very good at Italian and French cuisine. However, he is one of the few people I have continued to see during the pandemic. He comes to the patio, the two of us with masks, and we have a cappuccino coffee, we sit on the patio, because outdoors he is safer. We are about six feet [almost two meters] away, with the mask.

I envy him in some things, because a team of 20 or 30 people is much less heavy, you can make decisions faster, experiment more, the budget is smaller, so you can try more crazy things. But I think he also envies my situation because he sometimes tells me that he misses having a team of 200 people and a huge budget and being able to create something of the highest quality, but everything has its pros and cons. And games can be interesting in one way or another.

Interviewer: - Now that Microsoft has bought Bethesda, have you noticed any changes in the study?

HS: - I think the process is still developing, I can't say much about it because I don't know much either. I would say there has been no change at Arkane so far, but if I were to imagine the ideal partner, thinking of all the publishers and the people I know who work for them, it would be very, very difficult to find a better partner for Bethesda than Microsoft. They fit perfectly.

https://vandal.elespanol.com/reportaje/entrevista-harvey-smith-creador-de-deus-ex-y-dishonored
 
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vortex

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Maybe they should just ask Todd ( or Spencer) to let them use brand new Creation engine for gigantic world. :cool:
Altough Doom Eternal proved that has capability of quite large world.
 

Cross

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An Arx Fatalis-style game with Dark Messiah's combat would be amazing. But if it's designed with consoles and controllers as the lead platform (like virtually all triple-A multiplatform games are), any version of 1st-person combat will almost certainly be heavily watered down.
 
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iZerw

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An Arx Fatalis-style game with Dark Messiah's combat would be amazing. But if it's designed with consoles and controllers as the lead platform (like virtually all triple-A multiplatform games are), any version of 1st-person combat will almost certainly be heavily watered down.
What do you mean if?
 

Nano

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Strap Yourselves In
Is there a reason they're not using the in-house engine they built for Dishonored 2?
 

Wunderbar

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Is there a reason they're not using the in-house engine they built for Dishonored 2?
void engine was an ID tech 5 fork. Something tells me it was very hard to design huge intricate levels while being constrained with megatexture BS.
 

Nano

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Strap Yourselves In
void engine was an ID tech 5 fork. Something tells me it was very hard to design huge intricate levels while being constrained with megatexture BS.
id Tech 7 removed the MegaTexture stuff, no? Why not use that as the engine?
 

Wunderbar

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void engine was an ID tech 5 fork. Something tells me it was very hard to design huge intricate levels while being constrained with megatexture BS.
id Tech 7 removed the MegaTexture stuff, no? Why not use that as the engine?
because it's fine-tuned for Doom?

I'm sure they did the math and realized that it would be cheaper and faster to license unreal than to turn Doom engine into something it wasn't programmed to be.
 

Nano

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Strap Yourselves In
because it's fine-tuned for Doom?

I'm sure they did the math and realized that it would be cheaper and faster to license unreal than to turn Doom engine into something it wasn't programmed to be.
Unreal almost has a monopoly on high-budget games now. It makes me uneasy.
 

Wunderbar

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Microsoft are a bunch of lazy hacks who sit on their money and do jack shit. They could've hired top programmers to make an engine for their first-party studios, but they prefer their own exclusive games to be built on unreal.
 

Burning Bridges

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For many years Microsoft had absolutely disastrous management, as if the company had a death wish. They are in a constant cycle if inventing technologies, forcing people to use them, then try to kill them.

The Xbox has achieved nothing but sabotage the complete success of their PC monopoly. Or call to memory the commercials spots against Windows XP users that MS paid for. This creates the imression of a schizophrenic company that must constantly destroy what it just built up, so they can pretend to create the same growth they had in their former years.
 

Kem0sabe

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Dishonored and prey had pretty big and complex level design, that engine would fit nicely with a sword and sorcery action adventure first person game if it followed a hub design.
 

Spukrian

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ADL

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There's no doubt in my mind that we'll get Prey 2 eventually now that Human Head is under Zenimax soon to be Microsoft, but it ain't gonna be called "Prey" anything. More people associate Prey with the 2017 game than the original... Unless it's some sort of collaboration with Arkane and it goes full immersive sim.
 
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Apperantly it's a fatasy game which can only mean:

Arx Fatalis 2
:happytrollboy:



I would love an Arx Fatalis 2 that is a sequel narratively and mechanically to Arx Fatalis.

This will not be that. Even if they call it Arx Fatalis 2 (I doubt this) it will be the same kind of pretend immersive sim as Dishonoured. Make it seem like there's multiple ways to complete an objective. But actually there's only two extremes and they're both heavily scripted.

A true immersive sim is a game that gives the player the building blocks to create unique solutions to a problem that even a dev doesn't anticipate. Using your telekinesis to create a platform, setting oil on fire with a torch to burn through a door. So on and so forth.

The only games I saw to actually succeed at being an immersive sim in the past 10 years was Half Life Alyx and Boneworks. Both VR games. Immersive sims would shine in VR. Being able to grab anything without restrictive animations holding your leash, supported by an indepth physics system. Do dumb shit like carry a bucket full of health packs you placed yourself throughout the game. Rip a door off it's hinges and use it as a shield. Push a nasty rat away in mid air with a chair, light your sword on fire or chill it down, dip it in acid, oil, or whatever to affect certain enemies with weaknesses to various substances. Brilliant dynamic actions like that.

Or you could just make it a normal game and push a button to do all that with canned animations if you're boring.
 

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