Free Radical Haze Interview

FR's Rob Yescombe drops hints about TimeSplitters 4 and tells us what makes Haze different from the other shooters out there.

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Kikizo: Timing wise, this was originally scheduled for March. What have you been able to achieve those extra two months?

Yescombe: I'll be honest with you, the reason why it's late is because we got locked out the office. We've been stuck outside until now and we've only just got back in, so now we've got to get it out there. [Laughs]

Kikizo: That's good, that's good. The game's not running at 60 frames per second, is that something you didn't set out with as a priority.

Yescombe: Well, again, it's one of those things. If we were doing Quake, then it's a cinch. But the fact of the matter is that it doesn't suffer from doing that, so that means we were able to add more stuff to keep it stable.

Kikizo: In the campaign mode, can you tell us about some of the variety that we'll see there?

Yescombe: There are 12 different environments. It's all streaming. Once you've loaded it up there will be no loading screens. So you can sit down on day one and play the entire singleplayer campaign. Once you've loaded it up, you'll never see another loading screen. That's about 10-12 hours. Early on people thought we were going to be a jungle shooter because we showed a jungle level, but the jungle is one of the 12 environments. We've got the beached container ship, the rebel village, going up the mountainside, we've got the observatory on top of the mountain.

Kikizo: You mentioned that you're working on TimeSplitters 4 already. I take it that's still quite secret.

Yescombe: Well it's not so much that it's a secret it's that right now it's a massive list of great ideas and we have no idea which ones we can legitimately cut in order to make it into a game before the year 10,000.

Kikizo: TimeSplitters is still a popular franchise. Do you think there's any chance that we'll see some of the earlier games in the series on Live?

Yescombe: We've been discussing it. I think it would be a nice idea. It's possible.

Kikizo: Is there anything that's in the Free Radical back catalogue that you're toying with the idea of re-releasing at some stage?

Yescombe: In terms of things I would like to see, and this is different from what the company is capable of doing right now, but Second Sight is still massively underrated. That game is fucking wicked. I'm going to stick my neck out and say I think Second Sight is better than TimeSplitters, in my professional opinion. But then that's because it's a much more story-based game. It has, I think, one of the best twists ever in a game. I'm not going to detail it because you can still go back and play it and, who knows, maybe one day we'll put it out on the Wii. Fingers crossed. I have no idea if that's going to happen. I'm not saying that it is going to happen, but I am saying that I personally think that would be a great idea.

Kikizo: Where do the rights to these games sit? Can you only work with those publishers again?

Yescombe: Oh no, we own the rights to TimeSplitters.They reverted back to us completely. It's our IP.

Kikizo: How about Haze?

Yescombe: Haze is a current IP with Ubisoft.

Kikizo: Looks like there's plenty left for you to do.

Yescombe: Well that's it. It's just the tip of the iceberg, my man.

Haze will be out only for PlayStation 3 on 23 May.

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