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Stolen Interview

Friday, 20 March 2009 13:08

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Games Fusion interviews Jaid Mindang, Project Director for Hip Interactive's forth coming stealth themed game, Stolen.

Q. Can you tell us about the storyline for the game and where you got your inspiration for it?

A. Anya, the main character's background is that she grew up on the streets of Forge City, running with street gangs and stealing to survive. In partnership with Louie Palmer, who creates the top-of-the-line gadgets and tools of her trade, she has become an excellent thief. Initially she�s hired by an enigmatic client, but it later transpires that she�s being set up to take a fall in a dirty mayoral election campaign. The stakes are high and the players are ruthless
The Hollywood properties that served as inspiration for the game are movies like The Thomas Crown Affair, Mission: Impossible, Entrapment, Batman Returns and Blade Runner.

Q. What makes Stolen stand above the rest when it comes to similar stealth titles, such as Splinter Cell?

A. We�ve worked on broadening the whole spectrum of stealth and subterfuge to make it much more proactive than merely hiding behind a cupboard for a guard to pass

To add, we believe also that Stolen distinguishes itself by the absence of lethality in dealing with the enemies. You can destroy the drones, but you can�t kill any guards, only incapacitate them or knock them out temporarily. A large portion of the player�s abilities are geared around avoiding detection and actively evading capture

Q. Can you tell us about the main characters within the game and the different characteristics and features they will have?

A. Anya, being a professional thief has many attributes that you would associate with her profession and all that goes with it. Anya has a myriad of moves and actions and some as standard include the ability to choke guards and render them unconscious, stun them with a taser, or punch and knock them out but consider the fact also that they will eventually regain consciousness!

She�s backed up by Louie Palmer, as previously stated, who designs and builds the many high tech gadgets at her disposal.

Anay will come up against many foes in many forms all having their own traits and abilities and we don�t really want to spoil it by giving this away!

Q. What uniquely identifiable features will the graphics in the game provide?

A. As your readers will see from the screenshots, graphically the game is looking cool.

A great deal of time and effort has been spent on the real-time lighting since it has a direct affect on the game-play rather than just trying to make the game look good, but we hope we�ve done that too. As well as effects like specular surfaces, which creates a good sense of the difference between matt and shiny, lights can be shot out to create shadows where none existed and the visual acuity of enemies is directly affected by the light levels in the environments.

Q. What engine is the game developed on? And what sort of physic�s system can we expect to see in the game? For example, will there be rag doll and bullet penetration physics?

A. The engine is our own. We have a separate technology department, who have developed the engine and tools that we work. Although we have a very capable physics engine of our own, it is not a feature of Stolen. The lighting and shadowing aspects of Stolen are pushing the hardware as it is. For the modest benefit that having proper physics would have given us in Stolen, we felt that it was not worth the performance hit. We like to pick the right tools for the job, and for our stealth/action game, realistic physics wasn�t high on the list of required features.

Q. Can you give us an example of the advanced AI that will be featured in the game?

A. The enemy A.I. for instance has had to reciprocate quite complex methods of locating and tracking the player. If you can take out a guard then they�ll regain consciousness in suspicious mode and search about for you. If they see you before they get taken out, then they�ll come round alarmed and immediately radio their control booth for backup.

Q. Can you tell us a bit about the high-tech gadgets and weaponry that will be featured in the game? And will they be similar to real-life counterparts?

A. There are a number of gadgets there will be familiar to gamers and those that will not.

Night vision:
This is an integral function of Anya�s goggles. It uses passive light detection across a broader spectrum than just the normal visible frequencies combined with digital video signal enhancement for the best possible image fidelity.

Digital camera:
This is a function of Anya�s goggles. Although the ArmPad transmits a real-time live video feed from Anya�s goggles to Louie Palmer all of the time, this is necessarily a low-resolution image for purposes of the bandwidth. When Anya specifically takes digital photos with her goggles, these images are much higher resolution and can be useful for photographing maps, blueprints or guard duty rosters for example, so that the information contained therein is still legible. The camera also benefits from the integral telephoto zoom function of Anya�s goggles.

Q. When you started designing Stolen was there anything that you wanted in the game that we won't see in the final version?

A. As is usually the case, the design was more ambitious in the beginning than is actually the case now. I don�t think we would want any of the features that have been trimmed over the course of the development. They were trimmed for a good reason, and the game wouldn�t be what it is if we had retained them.