Portal / Artikel / Interview / Bulletstorm

Bulletstorm - Interview mit den Entwicklern

von Marc Friedrichs

06.02.2011, 14:08 Uhr

Der polnische Entwickler People Can Fly machte sich bislang hauptsächlich mit dem Shooter "Painkiller" einen Namen. Nachdem das Studio 2007 von Epic Games aufgekauft wurde und die PC-Version von "Gears of War" fertigstellte, kommt bald mit "Bulletstorm" der nächste potentielle Blockbuster in die Läden.

Das Xbox Community Network, dessen Mitglied wir sind, hatte jetzt die Möglichkeit, mit Adrian Chmielarz, Creative Director bei People Can Fly, über den Titel zu sprechen. Hier das englische Interview:

Is it possible to play the game in co-op (via Xbox LIVE)?
There's a special game mode for that, called Anarchy. It's our own twist on the Gears' Horde fun: just surviving the waves is not enough, you also have to score a certain minimum amount of Skill Points per wave. You can do that alone, or with up to three friends (so it's up to four players in total). There's a lot of new Skillshots in the Anarchy mode, unique to the co-op experience, unique to a map, etc. Also, the old favorites can be executed in a team form. For example, in Single Player you can kick a guy into an abyss, and score a Vertigo. In Anarchy mode, you can kick an enemy towards your friend, and then your friend kicks that unfortunate soul into the abyss – there we go, Team Vertigo – and everybody involved gets extra points!

Tell us something about the characters...
The game features six major characters: the Dead Echo commando and their leader Grayson Hunt, and, as their enemies, General Victor Sarrano and his best assassin, Trishka Novak. The beautiful twist is that Dead Echo worked for Sarrano for many years, were betrayed, went rogue, attacked Sarrano's ship, crashed on the nearby planet …and now have to work together with Sarrano and Trishka if they want to have any chance of making it out of the planet alive.

...and the Bulletstorm Universe
One layer of the story is Dead Echo's revenge, but the other is the mystery of the planet that the heroes crash on. It looks like it's a beautiful place, a tourist paradise, but it's completely abandoned. Well, if not for the mutant hordes roaming the streets. So something horribly wrong happened here, and it's up to us to solve that mystery.

Why isn't there any competitive multiplayer component in Bulletstorm? Is it because you tried it but the Skill Shot system didn't work very well in Deathmatch-like modes?
The Skillshot system works very well for all three major game modes: Single Player, Echo and Anarchy, but it would be a problem for Player versus Player MP. For example, one of our signature weapons is the Flail Gun. You wrap a chain with two grenades on each end around an enemy, and have six seconds to do whatever you want to him before the grenades auto-detonate. Very exciting for Single Player, but imagine YOU are the guy with the chain around you. Being helpless for six seconds would feel like an eternity in MP. We figured that if someone's soul is really competitive, they can play Echo mode, which focuses on high scores and in which you indirectly play against your friends and the entire world. Also, who are we to say you cannot be the best in your Anarchy team and have the coolest rewards to prove that?

How many weapons are in the game? Are they customizable?
We have not revealed the exact number yet, but the fun fact about our weapons is that no matter what is their number, we actually have twice as many. How is that possible? Well, every weapon features something we call a Charged Shot, which is not a simple alternate fire, but a completely new functionality. For example, the Screamer is a big ass colt with six bullets in the chamber, but when you charge it, you fire a flare that's able to either explode enemies or at least set them on fire. Every weapon – except the mini-gun – has something like this, and I hope people will enjoy the idea. Charged Ammo costs you points, but when you unleash the Charged Shot, enemies die aplenty and in the finest ways possible.

Will there be DLC for Bulletstorm and if yes what can we expect?
Let's release the game first, shall we?... But of course the idea is that we'll support the game in any way possible, so I don't think you'd be disappointed here.

What is your favourite Skillshot? How many are in the game?
There are at least 135 Skillshots in the game. My favorite has to BURN. It doesn't have a flashy name, but it's extremely satisfying. You achieve it with the Charged Shot from the Boneduster, our four-barrel shotgun, and the more enemies you kill with it, the more points you accumulate. It's a great feeling when you take down four enemies with one shot and score tons of points at the same time.

Many developers speak about Xbox 360 GPU and RAM combination as a more powerful group as PS3 equivalent. Do you have the same impression?
A couple of years ago, I would have given you a different answer to that question, but nowadays most developers have figured out both consoles and can get similar results on either one. Have you noticed that we have more and more games that look identical no matter what the platform is? For me, currently the strength of the console is not judged by its theoretical processing power or such, but by the answers to a few much simpler questions. Which service do you prefer: Xbox Live or PSN? Which controller do you prefer? Are the games you like available on the console you've chosen? Is your console giving you something you feel is very important to you, but the other console doesn't have? These kinds of things.

Five years since Xbox 360 appeared on the market... do you feel that the hardware is stopping you from doing what you'd like?
Yes, but any developer in the world will ALWAYS say that, no matter what. We could have 128 GB of RAM and it still won't be enough. Seriously, though, it feels pretty good making games on Xbox 360. As you can see with the exclusive titles like Halo and Gears or multiplatform titles like Bulletstorm, the quality is high enough not to feel any pressure for the next generation. People like the current gen, and I think we still have a lot of room for exploration.

Give us some numbers: weapons? multiplayer maps? skillshots? hours of gameplay in the campaign?
No, no, 135+, a bit more than you'd expect from a shooter.

Are there any extras in Gears of War 3 for Bulletstorm?
There are extras in Gears 3 if you've played Bulletstorm – but I cannot reveal the details for now.

What was the inspiration behind Bulletstorm's emphasis on skill kills?
I blame gamers. The thing is, initially the system was never planned. We just knew we wanted to have what someone described as sandbox combat, where the sand is the enemies and the buckets and spades are your guns. Once this was in, we noticed that people take more time with their enemies than necessary. Instead of just killing a guy and moving forward, they kicked him, then leashed him back, kicked again, leashed, and only then killed. A human yo-yo. And we thought "Wait a minute... What if we gave names to such crazy kills and rewarded the players with access to cool upgrades and unlocks?" And that's how the system was born.

What can gamers expect from the single player aspects, and will there be bots for offline play?
The Single Player a big, rollercoaster adventure from start to finish. In the first 15 minutes alone you change locations more than three times. We tried to do it like a game equivalent of a summer blockbuster movie. I think the campaign will surprise quite a few people. It's so much more than "dicktits." As for the bots, well, you could argue that Echo mode does feature them.

How many multiplayer game types will there be and can we expect any original ideas?
Bulletstorm is a three legged monster: SP Campaign, Echo and Anarchy. We could go for more modes, but we felt these are the most fun ones and wanted to focus on them. There's so much you can do within any mode… If someone is serious about scoring high in Echo, that's weeks, or even months of gameplay alone.

How can we spend the points earned from doing Skill Shots?
Every now and then you'll connect to something we call a Dropkit. You can buy stuff, check your Skillshot progress or distract yourself with some fun stats there. The buying part is the most important one. You spend your hard earned points of ammo, charged ammo, weapons – and upgrades and unlocks to these weapons. It's a place where you prepare your strategy for the next few minutes of the game: Do I spend everything on ammo, or do I unlock something cool?

Zu den Kommentaren (0)

Detailseite Forum Amazon* Xbox Store*

Wie bewertest du das Spiel?

Dieses Rating für registrierte Benutzer lebt von der Qualität der verteilten Sterne. Seid bei eurer Bewertung also fair... [+]: Nur selten hat ein gutes Spiel die Höchstnote verdient und natürlich muss auch ein schwächeres Spiel nicht gleich immer komplett abgestraft werden. Je objektiver ihr eure Sterne vergebt, desto aussagekräftiger ist am Ende die Gesamtwertung. [–]