Above:
A screenshot from the Reality demo, in which players
can experience a true 3D environment.
God is lead designer and co-founder of Heaven, one of the
most highly respected and cutting edge creation houses. With the
superlative Afterlife already under his belt, God is currently
overseeing development on Reality, the multiplayer prequel-to-Afterlife
flagship first-person launch title. We caught up with him at Gamestock
2001 for an exclusive interview to see how things are progressing.
4BG:Reality's looking
absolutely marvellous, you must be pleased with your progress?
God:
Absolutely, it's been really fun in the last 15 billion years
to perfect the Reality platform and get the game up and actually
see what it's going to be like. Our AI programmers have been breaking
new ground lately, but it's still going to be a long way before
NPCs act sensibly. Just look at the whole Osama thing in the demo
- christ, are we embarassed.
4BG: Did you just commit blasphemy?
God: Uhh, yes. But I'm allowed to - It's like "nigger".
4BG: The universe on display
in the demo looks great with some excellent effects including dynamic
texturing and fractal landscapes. The lip syncing of players is
fantastic also, but what we want really want to know is what else
have you got in store for FPS fans weapons-wise?
God: We've got a bunch more
up our sleeves, but most of them haven't appeared yet because we
wanted to establish some continuity to the game. Currently, AK47s
are quite popular after the Cold War, but yeah, about half the weapons
in the game are going to come from the aliens you encounter as you
get through the game. They're set to come in around 2100. They're
pretty cool and we've got some of the standards like beam shooting
energy weapons to some fancier stuff. Then on the human side...well
I won't give away too much but we've got your standard FPS favourites
like the rocket launcher and cool stuff on top of that, but yeah
absolutely many more than just this, with some real fun to come.
4BG: Is the average player going
to see many of these weapons?
God: Well, it depends what
they want their character to be. If they decide to further their
education and play the "honest" middle class working type,
then no, they probably won't. Actually, they might get mugged. But
if they decide to join the army, they'll probably get a fair bit
of action.
4BG: One of the most impressive
things about Reality is the variety of vehicles, can we expect
more than are available in the demo?
Above:
A wide range of vehicles are available for the player to use.
This "helicopter" elevates the player by rotating
its blades at a high velocity, creating an overall upward
lift. Reality uses a real physics engine.
God: Again there are human vehicles and the alien vehicles
and you're going to be stealing a lot of alien shit as you go through
your life in the game. A lot of the human stuff will be standard
like cars - we've got sponsorship deals with, well, every car manufacturer.
Of course, you can mount weapons on the vehicles too. All the vehicles
handle completely differently, they're all cool in very different
ways like that flying vehicle you saw in the demo, that's a "helicopter".
The aliens have really cool stuff like flying discs, it's like a
really big fat cigar that can shoots green bolts and has a tractor
beam. If your player joins the military, you're going to get a much
wider range than, say, a player who joins a circus.
4BG: What about the actual gameplay
- will it be more open ended and go where you like, do what you
like, or will it have more of a structure and be mission based?
Above:
Players are able to form alliances and enemies - alliances
can group together to form "friends" - a similar
concept to Quake's "clans". Players have a limited
degree of control over their appearance - clothes and hair
can be changed. Bodies and faces are selected at the beginning
of the game.
God: You know what we've found a lot recently, is that people
want structure. It's like when you're reading a book, you want chapters
right? You don't want to read a book without chapters, you want
to get that like two or three or maybe even 15 minutes of entertainment
and then you want to go onto something new. So there are going to
be really specific missions that you can succeed at, work through,
like, going on a date, or applying for a job, you finally win and
then you move onto something new. What we're really trying to avoid
is distinct levels, in that disjointed, irrelevant to the storyline
kind of way. We've tried to integrate them seamlessly - most people
can't even tell where they begin and end.
4BG: How has Reality's
focus changed since Gamestock 2000?
God: For a long time we were actually very focused on a
puzzle game, where you move little blocks around and try to arrange
them into shapes so that they disappear. There were going to be
cute little cartoon bears, and love hearts and stuff. But the multiplayer
aspect really wasn't there. What we boiled it down to sometime after
last Gamestock was a much more first-person experience because we're
primarily interested in the action and a little bit less in the
strategy. We've really got down to work on the AI, not only how
you'd play against it, but how it would assist you too. It's really
fun to drive around with "friends" in the game and "see
movies" and "go out to dinner". The friends will
sometimes even pay for the meal.
Above:
The game goes into a great level of detail - "relationships"
may be formed between players. Each player has a "love"
value for other players they are in a relationship with. In
this shot, Margo doesn't know it, but Dennis has a low love
score for Margo and a high love score for Margo's sister -
he's been sleeping with Margo's sister for 2 years behind
her back. Note the subtle expression on his face.
4BG: What can you tell us about
multiplayer?
God: We have great plans but we're not really talking about
that yet. Split screen is something we were toying with but can't
quite work out the technicalities of it. Multiplayer is where we
came from, all of our games have been multiplayer. We're going to
implement things so that you won't even be able to tell who in Reality
is a real player, and who is computer controlled. This still
has a long way to go - look at Al Gore.
4BG: How far away do you think
you are from completion?
God: It's hard to put numbers on it, it's sort of been in
development for millenias of millenias, but we've gotten to that
stage in the solo player game where things are starting to look
really, really exciting. Thank god it's not crashing anymore. Players
were getting real pissed off when their human had reached an age
of, say, 24, and all of a sudden - poof - they're firing down the
birth canal again, and lost all their weapons and experience.
4BG: So what's next for Heaven?
Can we expect to see a release of Reality for the Macintosh?
God: (gags)
4BG: Thanks for your time, good
luck with the game!
God: Thank you.
If the thought of growing old bothers you, consider the alternative.
