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Interview: MotorStorm Apocalypse's Paul Rustchynsky
The Apocalypse is coming! We have a chat with MotorStorm: Apocalypse's Lead Designer Paul Rustchynsky to discuss 3D, rubber-band AI and the future of MotorStorm.
Written by David Scammell, 10 June 2010
GamerZines: MotorStorm's gone urban for Apocalypse - why take MotorStorm to a city?
Paul Rustchynsky, Lead Designer, Evolution Studios: We thought about where MotorStorm had been in the past and where we could take it next, and the only place that could really offer a stark contrast was a city. But we always felt that - because we're an off-road racer- a city didn't really offer us what we wanted it to, which is why the earthquake got introduced and allowed us to give our own unique take on it. It's not like your flat, smooth tarmac or simple right hand corners; we can carve the city to have it play exactly how we want. I think the city really allows us to do something completely different to what we've done before, not just in terms of setting the scene but also in our track design. What other location could you jump from skyscraper to skyscraper?
GZ: Well, quite. Is it based on any particular city, and if not, do you have a name for the city?
PR: Nope. At the moment it's just called 'The City'. It's a fictional, west coast American metropolis, and obviously we got influence from lots of cities on that coast but no, it's no city in particular.
GZ: During the presentation, MotorStorm Apocalypse's Game Director Matt Southern said that this was "MotorStorm reinvented". Do you think that the series needs reinventing?
PR: Well, I don't think it's MotorStorm that needs reinventing in isolation, I think it's more so the racing genre. Matt also mentioned how racing games haven't really evolved or changed much in the past ten years or so, and MotorStorm had fallen into that a little bit, where it was more about more vehicles and new environments but not much else. What we wanted to do this time was introduce whole new elements, things that haven't been done in racing games before. So we've got the earthquake, we've got the warring factions, we've got the story-driven campaign, and we've got this Recreation mode online which is inspired by all the biggest online games out there. You've got customisation, perks, a ranking system, betting.. It's the full package.
GZ: You touched on inspiration there. Apocalypse's destroyed city setting has parallels with Split/Second, while the perks system is similar to Call of Duty and obviously there's a hint of Carmageddon now you can run people over. Was there anything you turned to specifically for inspiration?
PR: We're all avid gamers at Evolution, especially in the design department - we love our games and sure, we're inspired by all forms of media; games, films, comics; there's a wide-range of sources. And we've been developing this for over two years now - we started this during the development of Pacific Rift. It's not like we finished Pacific Rift and went, oh, what's next. This has been a long time coming and it's good to see games like Split/Second doing something different, but we feel that we've got a complete package.
GZ: Apocalypse's tone seems a lot darker and a lot grittier than any other MotorStorm you've done before. You can run people over now, for example. Why take MotorStorm in that direction?
PR: We've only shown a very small slice of the game, and in terms of the chronology of the festival you're nearing the end in the demo. So this is actually one of the last races in the game where you're escaping the city. The whole thing is falling down around you - it's an apocalypse. On day one when you get there it'll be dawn, a lovely sunset and blue skies, and we'll have this contrast and shift as you play through the festival.
GZ: And you can race at day and night now?
PR: Yeah, night is new to the series. We didn't have dynamic lighting in previous MotorStorm games so we've never been able to take it to night time. Obviously without headlights in previous games it would have been difficult to see where you're going. The headlights weren't only introduced in Apocalypse so you could race at night time but so you can go underground as well. We'll have the car parks, sewers, subways, and it gives us more scope for what we can do with the levels by allowing dynamic lighting.
GZ: What sort of vehicles can players expect to see in Apocalypse? We've already spotted Sports Cars in the demo..
PR: That's right. What you can expect from Apocalypse is the full suite of vehicles that we had in Pacific Rift, so you've got Monster Trucks, Mudpluggers, Buggies, Big Rigs, Bikes, ATVs - they're all there. And then there are five new classes on top. You've got the Super Car, which we've shown today, you've got the Muscle Car, which is all about power, Chopper, which is an 'Easy Rider' sort of bike, Superbike, which is a performance bike, and Hot Hatch, which are like sporty Minis.
GZ: You mentioned the online betting system earlier. Can you explain how that works?
PR: Online we have the concept of experience which contributes towards your rank, and you can elect to bet on somebody pre-race. They're all seeded, so when you jump in a game lobby everyone's listed, like this guy is currently in his best form, this guy is currently in his worst form, and so on. Every person has an allocated amount of experience points next to their name. So I'll bet on player six say, and he might be worth 200 experience points, and at the end of the race, if I beat him I win those experience points. Now, at that point you can choose to cash in those points or you can gamble it by going to the next race and gambling again, of which you get a multiplier for doing so. So the more you bet, the higher the rewards, but potentially the more you can lose, too. It's a little bit of fun but it also gives players another goal to work towards, because a lot of the time in racing games you'll find that there's a couple of elite players who just shoot off, and yeah, you might not have the opportunity to beat them, but it's not all about just winning now, it's about beating a certain player. If you say you're going to beat player one, your whole race will be focussed on beating player one, so you've got a different short-time goal to work towards.
GZ: Something else new to MotorStorm's multiplayer is a Mode Creator. How does that work and what sort of modes will people be able to create?
PR: Hopefully a lot of it is going to be down to the user's imagination. What we're doing is using a very simple icon-based editor, and every icon has an event or an action associated with it, and all the player does is grab that action, pull out another action and then decide the event from the combination of those actions. So it could be something as simple as, if player one comes into contact with player two this happens, ie. they both explode, or you could have really elaborate setups where you set up a number of rules and collaborations. Like you could have one vehicle which has a set number of lives and everyone else's objective is to take each other out, while that vehicle has to lap them a certain number of times to win. What we're trying to do is similar to LittleBigPlanet's approach where the tools that we use to make the game modes are exactly the same as what the player is going to get. So every game mode that's going to ship on disc, we would have used the same toolset that the player will be using. It's exciting because people could come up with some great stuff, but then they'll also come up with stuff that we should have thought of as well!
GZ: Will there be any new multiplayer modes shipping on disc?
P3Zine Issue 49
For our latest MotorStorm Apocalypse coverage, click here to download P3Zine Issue 49 for free.PR: Absolutely. I can't talk about specifics, but we are going to have at least four or five game modes available on disc, if not more. It depends on how many game modes we feel we can get balanced and that play well online.
GZ: You've lifted the perks system from some of the more popular online shooters. Are you able to give us an example of some of the perks available?
PR: We've got three broad categories: handling, boost and combat. The reason why we broke them down is because you can only have one perk from each category activated at one time, so you can't have three handling perks at once, for example. The idea is that you choose the ones that compliment your gameplay style. Obviously they give you a little bit of an advantage but not too much because we're obviously trying to make sure that the balancing is right. But yeah, in the handling one we'll have simple things like tyres having more grip or the vehicle has more downforce. In boost we'll have boost lasting for longer or it's more powerful, or the critical phase inside boost is longer, and in combat your vehicle might have more hit points or rams against other vehicles are more powerful.
GZ: Presumably you unlock more as you rank up your experience?
PR: Yeah, this time around with experience it isn't just the question of 'you win, you earn experience'. Every action you do as you race earns you experience. So if you're drifting you're earning experience, if you're getting air time you're earning experience, wrecking somebody, experience; every action you do earns you experience. Also we have accolades and badges which are also like mini-challenges, and as you complete each challenge they also give you more experience. So we've got all these different streams for experience that contribute towards your rank, and your rank is the primary way to unlock all of the other stuff.
GZ: Rubberband AI has often been one of the most criticised mechanics found in the racing genre, and it was used fairly heavily in the single-player components of the last couple of MotorStorm games. How are you approaching the AI in Apocalypse?
PR: We listen to everything the community says. We have a dedicated community manager now and we're taking on board all the community feedback. And yeah, pack management, or as people call it 'rubber band AI', we're not necessarily doing it from scratch, but we are taking on all the criticisms and concerns of the users from past games and we're looking to make sure that this time around it's as fun and as fair as possible. The last thing we want to do is frustrate the player. Plus the whole concept of breaking up the festival into the three distinct difficulties also helps with that as well. We've got the shorter, easier campaign to just help everyone get on board, for veterans it's all about earning experience and for newcomers it's about learning the ropes. The medium campaign is the bulk of things where we're aiming for the sweet spot of difficulty all the way throughout. Then we've got the Veteran, which does have some more challenging races, but never to the point where it's unfair. In the past, yeah, the AI did cheat, but the important thing this time is that we never let them do anything impossible.
GZ: How does the progression and difficulty system actually work? Is it three sub-campaigns that you progress through linearly, or can you pick and choose where to start?
PR: It's a completely linear experience, so you play as the Rookie character first, then the Survivor and then the Veteran. You play through the same timeline effectively three times but you're playing in different races at different points throughout the day. So it's the same 48-hour festival, but you play through it one by one. The reason why we force it is so you get to see glimpses of the other characters doing different things and it ties the story together. It's a story-driven game.
GZ: Why opt for a narrative this time around?
PR: This actually came from something during development of Pacific Rift. We noticed on the forums that people were saying that there was no context to what was going on, and the format was simply race, go back to menu, and then pick another race. There was no reason, no rhyme, no championship; there was nothing behind it. This story allows us to build a background and give each race a context. Also we've been influenced by games like Uncharted 2 where it's about pushing you through the experience of the story, and that's what we want to do. We don't want players to be replaying the same race over and over again just to earn an extra few points. It's not about that, it's about experiencing the race and then moving on. We have the Challenge Mode, which I don't think was mentioned during the presentation, to facilitate that sort of perfection; getting the best time and getting the best score on each track, and that can all be done in isolation outside of the festival.
GZ: So there's a completely separate Challenge Mode?
PR: Yeah. The story is just about experiencing all the events, all the tracks and everything that MotorStorm has to offer. The whole meta-game side of things where you want to perfect everything, that's what Challenge Mode is for, or Recreation online against real opponents.
GZ: A 3D demo of Pacific Rift is due to be released on PSN fairly soon. Will Apocalypse support 3DTV out of the box?
PR: We haven't announced anything yet about 3D.
GZ: Is 3D something that excites you as a developer?
PR: I think anyone working on the PS3 platform is going to be interested in it. Hopefully it's something we can talk about at a later date, but at the moment, no, no 3D right now.
GZ: Have you shared tech with any of the other first-party studios for Apocalypse?
PR: Absolutely. After the original MotorStorm Sony acquired us and since then we've talked with the guys at Naughty Dog, Guerrilla, Santa Monica.. It's like LittleBigPlanet 2, they've got the God of War III anti-aliasing, and yeah, we're collaborating with them all to make sure we can push PlayStation 3. Everyone knows PlayStation 3 takes a while; it's got a learning curve. We're a studio of 100 people, but if we've got the whole Sony network to utilise we can push it so much further, which is great for us. We're all really excited about it because we're really pushing it.
GZ: When are you targeting for release? Will we be able to get our hands on Apocalypse this year?
PR: Certainly not this year. We're targeting 2011. At the moment we're pre-alpha and we're not going to be hitting alpha for a while yet and so we've still got a long way to go. We're not feature complete; we've still got a lot to go in and a lot of improvements to make, and until we get to beta the visuals won't be finalised. But Apocalypse is going to look great because in terms of development and where we've been in the past, we're so much further along because we've been able to develop this in conjunction with Pacific Rift. Obviously developing this game at the same time as the last one has meant that we've been able to do so much more with Apocalypse. We've pushed the engine so much further and we haven't cut anything back. It's sixteen-player racing in massive environments, but we've got the earthquake on top of that and we've got the warring factions in there as well, so we're just layering more and more on top.
MotorStorm Apocalypse coverage available in P3Zine Issue 49 - click here to download it for free!
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