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Right, I'm here with Colin Graham.
Hi, how are you doing, Stuart?
Not so bad, thank you.
He's a man who knows a lot about Watch Dogs, I believe.
A little bit, yeah, a little bit.
Pleased to hear it!
Watch_Dogs is something that's generated a lot of interest, and it seems to be offering something that's actually a bit new and that people are excited about.
Well, at the end of the console generation, not a lot of people bring out a new I.P., so we took a risk.
We took a gamble, and now it's coming out now onto the next gen as well.
What we wanted to do when we started out was try to take something that you normally see in games, like free running, driving, shooting,
and combine them with hacking, to try and create new game play.
And to build a lot of systemic gameplay, so you have a lot of emerging systems and emerging gameplay opportunities.
I think that's what people are reacting to.
When I first saw the footage, it kind of looked, well you've obviously got the hacking aspects, but it looked a bit third-person-shooter-y.
But now I've seen more of it, it sort of goes beyond that, almost something with a hint of Assassin's Creed,
with the free-running and moving about. How open world is it?
Well, we've been demoing here today, at Gamescom, and we playing about a 30 minute demo, and we've never been inside a single mission the whole time.
We've been experiencing the big opportunites the world brings to us.
Players can play for hours without ever actually engaging with the missions.
You're going to want to play the missions, because it tells you what Watch_Dogs is about.
Who the characters are, and what the world is and it's going to give you some fresh opportunities.
but players are free to just explore the world, do side missions, and contracts.
Just take care of random criminal events that are happening on the street, and all this combines together with the systems and creates some very interesting gameplay opportunities.
A player if he wants to can just run around and be a vigilante, in the city of Chicago.
That sounds fun.
Since you've announced the game, and given us the basic information about it, we've had these things in the media about the NSA collecting information,
Edward Snowden, the Silver Skull, all these repeated things coming and coming in the mass media.
Do you think that's something that will help people bring the game to their attention, or do you think it will make no difference?
Well, it's an interesting question, it's like - were we influenced by it or was it always there? Maybe. And I'll say this.
When we started off, hacking was something we wanted to do, it was a way to modify the way we traditionally play a game,
but as we started looking at the types of systems we were hacking, we realised they're actually all part of these integrated SCADA systems.
They're vulnerable. People who are involved with these systems professionally, they have a real concern about that,
and what we saw when we started doing our research, has sort of become the extreme, because people are hacking stuff,
it was a big thing a few years ago, and it's the same kind of system that controls all the systems in our game.
I'm here with Julian Gerighty, who is going to tell us about The Crew,
a sort of online, collaborative racing experience.
That's right.
And in fact, almost not based around racing, but a full drive across America.
Well, when I talk about The Crew, I don't like saying racing,
because that's only one facet of the experience.
It's more of a driving game, where exploration is as important as collaboration, or competition.
And as you said, the whole of the playground is the entire USA.
It's one of the biggest game worlds ever created.
I've heard it actually takes about ninety minutes to drive from one side to the other?
About an hour an a half. If you're in a good car, driving coast to coast, staying on the roads. About an hour and a half.
If you're driving off-road, which is one of our big things as well, it'll take a little bit longer, about two hours and a half.
I've noticed we've got lots of missions you can do. Racing missions, ramming other cars etc,
but literally you could just team up with a friend, and just drive across the map.
Absolutely, yeah.
And exploring is a big part of it.
This is... I'm an explorer, so it's a game that speaks to me particularly.
Because I just like taking my time and doing things at my pace.
Unlocking, cleaning up the entire map, making sure that I've found everything, all of the collectibles and everything.
That's really what I'm going to do, but doing that with a friend is even better than by myself.
There's a lot of customisation, not only from the sort of guts of the car, but quite a lot of visual customisation.
Yeah, that's right.
So if I wanted a green car with flames up the side, a silver skull on front that would...
That's no problem. You can probably do that now with the limited content we have at Gamescom.
Fantastic!
Is there a maximum amount of people you will come across in a small area? Because obviously, you couldn't have hundreds and hundreds of other players,
at the same time, very close by you. You couldn't even get down the road.
Yeah, it would be very complex to manage, not fun, so what we found is, and this is something that we do particularly well,
the tech side of things does particualrly well, it creates a bubble around you of seven other players.
Eight cars in total.
And it keeps refreshing that bubble.
So it'll give you the impression of constantly meeting new people, and seeing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people every hour of gameplay.
When in fact, around you, there are eight people.
That's the right number to make it exciting, living, and surprising, and not chaotic or annoying or frustrating.
Hello, this is Julian Pirou, and he's going to tell us about Might & Magic X: Legacy.
Which is a game I hadn't heard of before I came here, and it looks like it was written specifically for me.
It's got a really sort of retro vibe.
Obviously the old Might & Magic games, Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, that kind of thing.
And you've kept the whole game on a grid, left and right rotation ninety degrees. Legend of Grimrock is the closest thing I've seen, but this seems to be on a much bigger scale.
So what sort of games did you have in your mind when you designed this one?
Basically, Might & Magic X was really meant as a love letter to that era of computer RPG games.
It's true, we don't see much of that kind of game any more.
The Japanese are still doing it, on DS with certain games, but apart from Grimrock, we haven't seen games like that for years.
And we were thinking a lot about how we could bring back the Might & Magic series,
The RPG series, as we've been doing Heroes of Might & Magic games and their spin-offs,
But none of them are RPG's.
We could have gone for the Elder Scrolls kind of game,
Like a first-person swordsman, like that, but we thought,
It would not have really been Might & Magic.
Not what it embodies. And we felt that
going back to the grid-based, turn-based game, makes the most sense when you are playing a party of characters.
Playing four characters in real time creates a lot of questions. How would the combat work? Like a pose system? We would have strayed from the rules of the series.
So we decided - Let's go old-school all the way. Grid-based, turn-based classical gameplay.
And actually, I think there is room for this kind of gameplay in video games today. We can't all be Skyrims.
We can do something else for other gamers. And I know I missed this kind of game, so hopefully there are more people like me.
Absolutely, it's so nice to see something that has a real retro design aesthetic. But also with modern graphics.
Everything looking 3D and beautiful, but with the core gameplay like in the past.
So are you bringing back any of the classic Might & Magic characters, like the Silver Skull or anyone?
No. The game is set in the Ashan universe,
Which is the same as Heroes V and VI, the Ubisoft games,
But we included a lot of nods and winks to the old games.
There are some characters coming back from the Ubisoft games,
But not only - so there are many things for the old fans to discover, and faces to meet,
we won't spoil all of it, because it's fun to actually say, "Didn't I meet this guy somewhere in a previous game?"
And I hope fans enjoy seeing the familiar faces.
So contrary to the old games,
There's no sci-fi element to the Ashan universe
It's entirely high fantasy?
Yeah. But because it's Might & Magic X and we wanted to also pay tribute to that aspect,
There are some secrets and mysterious stuff in the game,
That is a tribute to the old sci-fi universe.
So we leave that to the players to discover by exploring,
Going behind every rock to find the secrets.