The Rare Interview: Perfect Dark Zero

On the eve of the Xbox 360's US launch, we bring you this detailed interview with Rare's Duncan Botwood, for the PDZ data you need before release, including Live and even Perfect Dark 2 gossip. Awesome new trailer too!

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So what we're going to do is bring that into things post-launch, and bring it in as downloadable content, with a few other features, which only people on Xbox Live will benefit from. So if you're playing at home on four player split screen, you're not gonna notice on a four team game really. You'll be able to play with bots from day one, and that's pretty cool. But some things, like the larger scale maps, are really only suitable for 32 players or more, and again we'll open those up when it comes to DLC.

Kikizo: What are some of the differences in gameplay terms between 32 players, and the 50 player games - which you've obviously had a chance to play yourself - that we'll see at some stage in DLC?

Botwood: There is a lot more going on, and you really, really have to pay attention to the organisation of the teams, and you really have to use all of the tools we've put in there for the large scale matches, like the maps which are accurate to the battleground, and you can place waypoints on those maps; there's a personal waypoint you can place on yourself, so people can always know where you are and how to get you; there are two other waypoints per team, which can be placed on hotspots or places you need to defend, and it will say that, here's something you need to defend, so get over here.

Couple this with team chat channels - the four of you can drop on to a chat channel, so you can storm a base, without having to listen to the screams of the people you left behind. All these things are going to help you organise a better, more consistent experience, rather than just a general melee - which is what it would turn into otherwise.

Kikizo: It seems like there's tonnes more to the Multiplayer side of things. Enlighten us!

Botwood: There's tonnes, how much time do we have?! There are two main multiplayer modes, Deathmatch and Dark Ops. There's the Deathmatches created by dataDyne as a virtual sport. And as such, it's got more traditional modes that players would come to expect in other shooters, such as Free for All, Kill Count, Team Kill Count, Capture the Flag, and Territorial Gains.

Whereas Dark Ops, which is the other half of multiplayer, has got four different modes, based around the gameplay of the singleplayer story. So you have multiple rounds, much like Counter-Strike, where you have one life per round, and you buy your weapons at the start of it. And you'll have different objectives within these modes. Sabotage is one of the modes, and you have to take out the team's equipment, rather than the players themselves - and the longer you leave them alive, the more opportunity you have to take out equipment. This changes the dynamic of the game, and provides a different experience, which is really cool.

You also have things like Onslaught, where you have to hold a base for a particular time until you're wiped out, and the other team has to wipe you out in under that time - just to provide yet another different way to play the game. There is also a basic Dark Ops mode called Eradication, which is something pretty much based on Counter-Strike because the team really likes that. The two modes are very different themselves; Deathmatch is very fast-paced and people will re-spawn instantly, back in the action; Dark Ops is slower and more tactical, and your choice of weapon has a real, much greater effect on the game because you can choose from all of the weapons that you can afford at that point, whereas in Deathmatch, you only have the ones in that particular weapon set.

Kikizo: And what else can we look forward to on Xbox Live in PDZ?

Botwood: On Live, we have two different playing modes on top of that, with a higher level - and they're Ranked, and Unranked. In Unranked, basically, any set-up goes; you can set up anything you like, like, a one-hour game with unlimited kills, and you know, rockets only... if you can stand it - I probably couldn't! So you can do pretty much what you want - you can have bots in that mode - so if it's just you and your mate playing on split screen round at your house, you can stick twenty bots on, and you have quite a hectic match going on. But in Ranked mode, it's a lot more rigid - there are fewer options to choose from, and that's tailored more towards the pure matchmaking experience.

So the matchmaking system is like an advanced version of what you were playing in halo, so, it ranks you faster to your own level, and hopefully matches you more accurately and more consistently with your fellow players. You'll also be able to check all your singleplayer stats, and co-op stats, over Live against the best players in the world.

And you can see exactly how your stats break down to give you an idea of how they can challenge you in the future, maybe; if they haven't got a lot of exploration points but they do have a lot of combat points, then you know that they didn't hang around and check out that whole level, they just went straight through and they were probably gonna be found in certain populated areas, and that would give you sort of a tactical hint. So there's plenty we're doing with Live, with everything that's available to us, and as I mentioned, DLC is going to be big.

Kikizo: And with PDZ now done and these novels that take place between PDZ and PD1, presumably this is an IP that Rare will be working on more titles for pretty soon?

Botwood: Yes. You can probably expect to see another Perfect Dark game, but I can't say anything more, uh, because we've not started anything on it! We'll almost certainly be working on it.

Kikizo: And that would presumably be something set after the original game?

Botwood: Well, we think Joanna's First Day at School isn't really gonna work! We'll have to see. There's plenty for us to do, and the novels are an inspiration as well, I'm sure. But we'll have to see... it's something in the future, so we can't say anything now. But yes, we're looking to do something.

Perfect Dark Zero is released tonight at 12.01am in North America - excitingly, that's just a couple of hours away at the time of press - and will also be part of the European launch line-up on December 2. Our full review will follow in just a few days.

Adam Doree, Kikizo.com
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