To get the full story, IGN exchanged emails with Project Lead Derek Littlewood, Screenwriter Rob Yescombe, Free Radical Co-Founder Dave Doak, and Ubisoft Vice President of Marketing Tony Key. That's a whole lotta names and a whole lotta information...
IGN: There has been a ton of speculation about Haze becoming a PS3 exclusive. Now that it's official, can you talk a bit as to why you've decided to go "PS3 only?"
Dave Doak: PlayStation has always been something of a spiritual home for us, so we're delighted to be developing this game exclusively for PlayStation 3. The combination of its raw processing power and the versatility of the PlayStation Network make the PS3 the ideal platform for Haze.
Tony Key: Free Radical has an extraordinary history of developing on Sony consoles, and as their first offering in the next generation, it was a natural fit to launch Haze exclusively on the PS3 this holiday. This pedigree combined with Ubisoft's reputation for top quality FPS games and the power of the PS3 creates a recipe for success.
IGN: Is it a permanent exclusive or will it be timed, ala Oblivion?
Key: Haze will only be found on PS3 this holiday season, and will remain exclusive through the first quarter of the calendar year.
IGN: During the "Ubi Days" trailer, there were those weird black and white sequences. Now that E3 is here, what did all of that weirdness really mean?
Rob Yescombe: Alright, time to come clean: we just made it up on the day... or, if you don't believe that, it's about the censoring effect of Nectar. For anyone who doesn't know, Nectar is the 'nutritional supplement' that Mantel's private army takes in order to be as tough as humanly possible on the battlefield. What it does is make the soldier's experience of war more like a videogame: there's no blood, no screaming, when people get shot they just fade away and disappear. Of course, the human body doesn't like being messed with, so unfortunately for our protagonist, reality starts creeping through.
By the way, I love the phrasing of that question -- "now that E3 is here" -- like E3 is where people go to expunge their secrets. So, in keeping with that, we will also be revealing who shot JFK, what really happened as Roswell, and that Bruce Willis is a ghost.
Derek Littlewood: And also what exactly it is we feed Rob to keep him so peppy all the time...
IGN: So you can switch sides and play as a rebel or as a member of Mantel. Why the decision to make such a big story change?
Yescombe: It was always our intention. The big idea was to literally make "Two Games in One." Playing as a Mantel trooper is all high-tech and kind of Metroid-like, whereas on the side of The Promise Hand, things get more Call of Duty-ish and pared down. We didn't want to make a game that you would play once then stick on the shelf, or, God forbid, trade in for something else. So, replay value is a top priority. That's why we've got the two very different game styles, along with four player co-op and a healthy number of really solid multiplayer assault maps.
Littlewood: Yeah, right from the very start of the project we were keen to explore the idea of 'asymmetric conflict' -- i.e. A game where the two sides, rather than being very similar, both have distinct strengths that they use to fight, and weaknesses that the other side can exploit, and yet are both still very much in balance with one another. From a multiplayer point of view, this is obviously of interest because rather than simply selecting the side that has the most interesting looking avatar, you choose a side based on your individual play style, and strengths and weaknesses as a player. And this idea of having two distinct sides, two distinct points of view on a war, fed into our discussions of the narrative for the campaign mode of the game, eventually resulting in the side switching device.
IGN: How does the switch happen? Is there a particular event that forces this?
Yescombe: There is a particular event, well, sequence in fact, but I don't want to spoil it for you. In broad strokes, the switch is driven by a malfunction with your Nectar Administrator that slowly drip-feeds reality back into your brain. By the time you reach the point where you change sides, unless you're a uniquely immoral person, you'll have some pretty strong objections to what's happening around you.
IGN: So who are the Rebels anyway and what's their big motive?:
Yescombe: Not that I want to get all metaphorical on your ass, but in a videogame we never care about anyone's motive. We obey orders without question, because that's our only option anyway. There's a comparison that can be drawn between our experience as a player, and the experience of a real soldier: obey orders, that's the only option. That comparison is one of the key themes in the game. We want people to think about why they're doing things, without having the answer presented to them on a plate. In Haze, you're really just a pawn in a larger situation. You're not the superhero who's going to bring down Mr. Big. You're just a guy, trying to figure out what the hell is going on, and not get killed along the way.
Littlewood: The thing you discover is that not only is Mantel lying to you by feeding you nectar to alter your perception of the war, they're also lying to you about why you're there in the first place. The Promise Hand aren't a group of rebel insurgents - they're a group of people defending their homeland against a foreign aggressor - Mantel - who have invaded their country. Exactly why Mantel are there, well, that's something that gets explored later in the game - we're not saying for now!
IGN: Each side has its own abilities, the Rebels can play dead for example, how does that work in gameplay and what are some of the other differences between the sides?
Littlewood: Play dead is a pretty cool ability, and also highlights the core difference between the two sides -- nectar. So, playing as a trooper, you'll find that rebels you've killed fade away to invisible a few seconds after they fall to the ground -- an effect which is all due to Nectar's 'sanitising' of the brutalities of the war around you.
When you come to play as a rebel though, you realize you can use this to your advantage, by pretending to be dead on the floor to trick a trooper into turning his back on you - at which point you can obviously leap to your feet and finish him. Of course, you've got to be careful where you use it -- I was watching a guy playing the other day that was getting hammered by a remote gun and tried to play dead, and of course, got himself really dead as a result, because remote guns don't use nectar!
In general the rebel abilities are all about improvisation and intelligence, and using a wider range of tactics to eliminate the technologically superior Mantel forces. Whenever you play through any game, after a few hours of learning the basic mechanics of the game, you're always looking for ways to play a bit smarter, a way to improvise and do things your own way - in Haze, changing sides gives you an opportunity to do that.
As I said earlier, the intention has always been to create to different, but balanced sides, and I think both the rebels and the troopers will draw their fans in multiplayer, but for me, returning to play as a trooper after the possibilities offered as a rebel always feels a bit like going back to having my training wheels on, y'know!?
IGN: Since Mantel and the Rebels have their own vehicles and weapons, can you elaborate on what each side has?
Littlewood: Well, again, I think the vehicles and weapons each side uses reflects their own particular strengths and weaknesses. So while Mantel has a lumbering great tank, which is highly powerful but slow and somewhat inflexible, the rebels prefer to use a small and nimble ATV to dodge around in the undergrowth where the tank cannot follow. Similarly with the guns -- the Mantel rocket launcher is a powerful tool at long range, but up close the Promise Hand flamethrower is lethal.
IGN: How different weapons and vehicles are we looking at total and are they customizable? Is there primary and alternate fire modes as well?
Littlewood: There's 10 guns in total and a few grenade types -- something we've always intended to do with the game was to keep the gun set small and well balanced, rather than having 30 guns of which people only ever use about three. There's no secondary fire but as a rebel you do have certain customization options available - for instance, the scavenge ability enables you to refit ammo from a different gun to your own, something that sounds minor but when it means being able to squeeze a few more kills out of that sniper rifle you love using, suddenly becomes a lot more important! You'll also be able to add a nectar element to certain weapons, so for instance you can strap the nectar pack (from the back of a dead trooper) onto a grenade to create the overdose-inducing nectar grenade.
There's a few other cool abilities the rebels have in the way they use guns -- we'll be showing them soon enough!
IGN: What about technology? We'd imagine rendering the same game from two different points of view is demanding...
Littlewood: Built into the very core of the HAaze engine is something called the Disparity Rendering System. This is a combination of engine features which, rather than having a single setting, exist on a slider that we can drag back and forth anywhere between 'reality' (i.e. A rebel's view of the world) and 'nectar' (i.e. A trooper's view of the world) on the fly anytime in the game. This governs things like whether you see blood when you shoot a character (or not), or whether, when characters die, they fade out or instead stay writhing and screaming horribly. It even affects things as far reaching as the weather - what appears to be a bright, sunny day to a trooper (together with butterflies coming to rest on their gun) could actually be a torrential rainstorm to a rebel!
The idea of confronting the player with two very different perspectives on the same set of events is obviously key to the narrative of the game, and the disparity rendering system is what allows us to do that.
IGN: In one video clip, it appeared as though a Mantel soldier snapped someone's neck. Are there melee finishing moves?
Littlewood: Yes, there are melee finishing moves in the game. At the moment they're AI only but we're hoping to allow players to use them too!
IGN: How many different environments will you travel through or fight across in Haze? We've seen cityscapes and jungles in previous videos.
Yescombe: All in all, there are 12 different environments. One of the things we carried over from TimeSplitters was the value of variety. That's why we've been shouting 'til we're blue in the face that Haze isn't a "jungle shooter" -- it just happens to have a jungle section at the start. You'll be at the top of a mountain one minute, then on an all-terrain Aircraft carrier the next, and of course it's all seamless. Once you've loaded the game up, you won't see another loading screen until the end of the game. All the environments lead on from one another. And then there's downloadable content, of course.
IGN: Can you talk a little about the co-op play? Is it online or on a local machine? Can you go through the story mode with a friend or are there only multiplayer situations? If you don't have a friend playing with you, will the computer be able to jump in for co-op play?
Littlewood: Haze supports four player co-op throughout the main campaign narrative, and we're supporting online, LAN and split-screen play, or any combination of those (split-screen up to two players only). So, for instance, you can have two players split-screen on one PS3, with another split-screen game in another country making up the four man squad.
Even when playing single-player though, you'll always be part of a four man squad, with three AI squadmates accompanying you through the game. This also enables us to have a quick 'drop in-drop out' system, so players can join the game dynamically simply by replacing one of your AI squadmates, and similarly when a player leaves the game, an AI squadmate will just appear in their place, meaning you can carry on playing just fine.
IGN: What Sixaxis functionality will be featured in Haze?
Littlewood: We're keeping our Sixaxis functionality under wraps for now -- there's some very cool ideas but we're still play-testing to see what does and doesn't make the cut, feature-wise. I think the key for us is to make use of the unique potential Sixaxis offers without compromising the controls -- you don't want people to be thinking 'I wish this had a normal control scheme', yknow?
IGN: How many multiplayer modes will be in Haze? How many players will be supported in multiplayer?
Littlewood: We're supporting up to 24 players online, with a variety of modes including team assault and deathmatch. The multiplayer mode will allow players to really explore the differences between the rebels and the troopers in detail, and will also fill in little gaps in the narrative that the campaign mode touches upon. We'll be revealing more on the multiplayer modes at a later date!
IGN: Can you tell us more about the Conspire AI system in the game?
Littlewood: One of our goals with Haze was to create an AI system that was driven less by the sort of heavily scripted approach we've used in our previous games and instead to make something more dynamic and goal oriented. The result is that the vast majority of AI behavior in Haze is unscripted, and you can get very different results playing through a firefight more than once. Because Conspire is completely unscripted we can also run it, completely unmodified, in the multiplayer modes, so the bots you fight in multiplayer will be as smart and cunning as the enemies you encounter in the campaign mode.
IGN: Anything else you'd like to add that we haven't covered?
Yescombe: Yes. Not only is Bruce Willis a ghost, but when Mel Gibson's wife said "Swing away", she meant for Joaquin Phoenix to smack an alien in the head with a baseball bat.