New Brink Video Interviews Surface

(badman) #1

A new story entry has been added:
[drupal=487]New Brink Video Interviews Surface[/drupal]

Flying in the face of rumors that E3 2009 is so two months ago, we’ve got a pair of previously unseen (by us, anyway) video interviews recorded at the show. First up is GameReactor TV, where Brink’s Senior Game Designer Ed ‘BongoBoy’ Stern is most definitely ready for his close-up and chats about the game for some 12 minutes. Meanwhile, E3’s Most Enthusiastic Developer and Splash Damage Creative Director Richard ‘Rahdo’ Ham is video-quizzed by Bobby Blackwolf on the rather appropriately titled E3Coverage.com, shedding some more light on How It All Works (and revealing some new information in the process).

(DarkangelUK) #2

I especially liked the part about there being routes available that the SMART button won’t cover… eeeeeenteresting!

(tokamak) #3

Rahdo finally got a question I couldn’t quite formulate myself. The way the narrative works in multiplayer. It was what I already expected though. I guess the Brink story will be like the movie Resevoir Dogs.

(Rahdo) #4

Wait, why am I Mr. Pink?

(iwound) #5

I think thats the first time ive seen Ed Stern talk. man that guy could sell oil to the arabs.
If he told me smelly underpants were great, i’d buy 'em. no question.

I like his thinking on what games should be. Its starting to get me interested.
Or maybe it was the fact that someone polished him before the interview.

(DarkangelUK) #6

I like how in all the interviews the SD guys always include their online names as well… a sign of true gamers :slight_smile:

Is it just me or does Bongoboys t-shirt say BRNK??

(SockDog) #7

I thought that too then realised it must be his studly toned chest.

(tokamak) #8

It still doesn’t make sense to me.

Does the outcome of one ‘level’ influence the rest of the game (something that would be impossible considering Brink’s multi-singleplayer) or are the maps linked like in ETQW but with a more thorough narrative between the subsequent maps.

A reservoir style narrative I understand, but Tarantino didn’t have to deal with his scenes having two potential outcomes. And what about maps being played twice?

Take that cliffhanger example of the preview all these journo’s were going on about. I don’t need (nor want) to know the outcome of that cliffhanger, but suppose the resistance won from security in that level, then the security player wouldn’t get to the cut-scene with the cliffhanger.

What it boils down to is, SD’s signature objective based maps are always about the attacker trying to get something done and the defender trying to prevent it. Sure, a defender can try to get something done as well, like ‘Salvage’ where the stroggs need to prevent the train from taking off. But it always comes down to one team trying to stop the other team from fulfilling their agenda. How does a story develop if one team stops the other team from seeing trough their plans?

Then again maybe I’m asking too much stuff that is still ‘confidential’.

(Anti) #9

I’m going to start pushing for the use of the word ‘mingleplayer’ :slight_smile:

(SockDog) #10

Okay I can see it working like this:

Each map is a progression of the story in the same way that ETQW was a progressive story told through different maps. Now instead of having just text displayed during the map load to tell the story they use the actual map, objectives and other effects to let you know what’s going on.

This is much the same way that Reservoir Dogs jumped back and forth to tell a simple story. If each chunk is self contained enough then the order isn’t entirely important.

Biggest problem I guess is the same as ETQW. What if you play the rebels but security hold you off of destroying security air support. Then the next map ignores this and continues as if you had destroyed it. That would be a big withdrawal on the credibility budget.

The problem them becomes. If you distance the active players enough then your main story isn’t as influenced by their actions and so can progress regardless. However this clearly then pushes all the players away from engaging in the story directly. It would also be cheap to just whip out a “You failed but luckily your other rebel team succeeded in the objective”

Mmmmm. Now I’m totally confused and sober. I must address one or the other. To the offy! :stroggtapir:

(Nail) #11

an excellent idea considering the game structure, but it kinda makes it sound a little too metrosexual for a blood and guts FPS imho, kinda sounds like a Sims project

:stroggtapir:

(DarkangelUK) #12

Mungleplayer?

(tokamak) #13

Yeah I like that allot!

[QUOTE=SockDog;194486]Okay I can see it working like this:

Each map is a progression of the story in the same way that ETQW was a progressive story told through different maps. Now instead of having just text displayed during the map load to tell the story they use the actual map, objectives and other effects to let you know what’s going on.

This is much the same way that Reservoir Dogs jumped back and forth to tell a simple story. If each chunk is self contained enough then the order isn’t entirely important.

Biggest problem I guess is the same as ETQW. What if you play the rebels but security hold you off of destroying security air support. Then the next map ignores this and continues as if you had destroyed it. That would be a big withdrawal on the credibility budget.

The problem them becomes. If you distance the active players enough then your main story isn’t as influenced by their actions and so can progress regardless. However this clearly then pushes all the players away from engaging in the story directly. It would also be cheap to just whip out a “You failed but luckily your other rebel team succeeded in the objective”

Mmmmm. Now I’m totally confused and sober. I must address one or the other. To the offy! :stroggtapir:[/QUOTE]

Yes Sockdog, that was exactly the thought pattern I went trough.

(Rahdo) #14

:slight_smile: I’m pretty sure I talked about this in at least a couple of E3 interviews, but I can’t seem to find them at the moment, so basically, we’ve got two campaigns that you can play through, one for each faction. The story lines of these two will diverge a fair bit, because for example, if you’d chosen to play as resistance, at one point you ensure the success of the kidnapping of a high ranking member of security. This in turn means you get information that leads to an inevitable outcome of the resistance campaign. But if you’d chosen to play security, that kidnapping is foiled, and as a result, the storyline of Ark goes a different direction.

So our storyline is basically like those old ‘choose your own adventures’ books, in that there’s these two different threads, and we expect players will want to go through them ‘correctly’, but if they choose, they can just jump to any page they like and pick up from there (which we expect will usually only happen because they want to join friends in already running online matches).

(Rahdo) #15

BTW, it just now occurs to me, that as a caveat to a lot of posts I make on here, I really should be adding “if all goes according to plan” at the end. We’ve still got a long way to go, and I expect it’ll all zip by in a flash of frenzied development, so some things are likely to change. :eek: But I’m pretty confident it’ll all work out in the end :smiley:

(tokamak) #16

Okay, now I’m even more confused but it certainly sounds better then what I had in mind :smiley:

(shirosae) #17

Okay, so I’m playing resistance, and we have an objective. The security players are there trying to stop us. If we win, we get some sort of story progression along the resistance campaign.

What happens if we lose? Do we get the story advancement which assumes we won anyway? Do we need to play that mission over and over until we win?

If the two campaigns diverge, how are you going to get security players to populate the maps later on in the resistance campaign?

Presumably the two campaigns will intertwine somehow and share the same locations, but doesn’t that imply that half of each campaign will just be defence objectives? If that is the case, how do you reconcile the differences between the two storylines in later maps?

Or is there some sort of ‘other’ mode aside from the campaigns, where all you do is defend against the other side’s campaign?

(kamikazee) #18

[QUOTE=Rahdo;194503]BTW, it just now occurs to me, that as a caveat to a lot of posts I make on here, I really should be adding “if all goes according to plan” at the end. We’ve still got a long way to go, and I expect it’ll all zip by in a flash of frenzied development, so some things are likely to change. :eek: But I’m pretty confident it’ll all work out in the end :D[/QUOTE]Maybe you should copy Bongoboy’s quote from my sig. He sure said it in a short and effictive way.

(tokamak) #19

That’s easy, just let the two campaigns run into each other. The first resistance level is defending the final objective the security need to attack and the other way around.

Resistance is defending map A which is attacking map Z for the security.

It’s just that I don’t understand how the outcomes work.

(deadlights) #20

Nice interview…