Too Human: In-Depth with Silicon Knights

Twelve years in the making, Too Human will finally land on Xbox 360 later this year. We spoke with Silicon Knights president Dennis Dyack to bring you a detailed look at the project and offer our thoughts on its progress.

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Silicon Knights has spent a lot of energy talking about its new camera system for Too Human. The camera basically controls itself and finds a position that gives players the best view of the action possible. Says D, "In Too Human, much like in Eternal Darkness, we control the camera for the player. We feel that by removing camera control, players can concentrate on the gameplay and not have to worry about all the complex motions of controlling the camera at the same time."

It's clear that a great deal of thought has gone into the camera as it adapts to targets and zooms around. And for the most part, we found the camera did a good job; when you pull your guns out and start firing, the camera will pull back, and if you start melee combat it will pull in. If there are two targets, the camera will pull back to make sure they're both in sight. It did have some moments of awkwardness, something that's obviously on the to-do-list for further tweaking before release.

"We've been working on the modified Unreal engine quite a bit, but the camera system we completely created by ourselves," says Dyack. "Personally, and a lot of us at Silicon Knights, we're really tired of the over-the-shoulder cameras; nobody would ever sit through a twenty hour movie with an over-the-shoulder camera. We've set ourselves up so that we can try to tell a story n videogames in a way that Hollywood tells it. We want to end that stigma of games that have, you know, 'cinema, gameplay, cinema, gameplay' - we're trying to mix it all into one."

"We've learned a lot in the history of Silicon Knights," he reflects. "When we did Legacy of Kain, we strongly honed our skills at writing stories. When we worked with Miyamoto-san on Eternal Darkness, we really tried to hone our gameplay. Working with Kojima-san, we honed our spectacle. And with Too Human, we're trying to combine all that into one. We want it to be very accessible and very fast-paced right away, but at the same time it's going to be cinematic and very much in the spirit of a Silicon Knights game. The script and story for Too Human is probably the biggest we've ever written."

The game's control system, in general, is surprisingly intuitive. Just by moving the stick you can engage in combat; all you need for melee combat is just the right stick - you don't need to tap it either, you can just hold it down in the direction you want to attack. The transition between melee and long distance combat is smooth, allowing players to launch an enemy into the air with a powerful melee attack, followed by a barrage of gunfire, destroying the enemy before it even hits the ground. "Some of the guys at Silicon Knights have gotten so good at air combat, that they can actually clear rooms without ever landing, which can be very fun," notes Dennis. There are also super moves that cause even greater devastation and visual flare, perhaps sucking an enemy up into a vortex.

Too Human's overall gameplay is pretty straightforward and is easy to pick up and play. Accessibility is key, according to Dennis. "We want people to find it very accessible in the first five minutes. With Eternal Darkness, if you sat down and played for two or three hours, you would really love it, but if you didn't, you might have been like, 'pah, it's not for me'. So this time we want gamers to sit down, pick up the controller, and say 'yes, this is what I want to do', and then we're going to hit you with all that content that Silicon Knights usually likes to do."

Even the screen layout is far from intimidating - virtually empty in fact. "It's not that we're trying to be HUD-free, we're just trying to make it as intuitive as possible," explains Dyack. "Depending on what sort of armour you have on, when you get hit, it will change colours for you to see what parts are being damaged, so it's all really there with the character."

And after twelve years, what exactly has motivated the team to keep at it? "I'm a big believer that technology is largely misunderstood by people, and a lot of people need to think about what the effects of technology are on our society. We wanted this game to make a statement that would say to people: 'if you could upgrade yourself cybernetically and replace your body parts with machine parts, what would that mean to you?', and you know, making those kinds of statements we think is important for the videogame industry, because we want it to be taken seriously as a medium. And that's probably one of the biggest reasons we've kept with this idea for so long."

He added: "Obviously the technology is totally different; the Unreal 3 engine was not available then, and this is the first time we've used a third party engine. We're using the technology to tell the story, so we feel that it's a very strong advantage."

If the colossal time and energy invested into Too Human pay off, it could be a huge hit for Microsoft, with two further games planned after the release of the first Too Human at the end of this year. "In the first in the trilogy, the theme is discovery. The second is revenge, and the third is enlightenment, "Dennis reveals. "We're really going to take gamers on a journey from beginning to end, and really explore Norse mythology on a very deep level."

We're eager to see how the finished product comes together for release in December. Stay tuned for updates.

Adam Doree & Rick Larson
Kikizo Games

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