WZ – Nicole: How long is the game?
Sochan: The core game-playing experience is about probably somewhere about 20 hours? And then we have all sorts of additional side missions and cases and favors on top of that. So there’s no shortage of gameplay, and there’s also races you can be doing. So it’s a big game, it has a lot to offer.
And you know, it’s kind of cool too because staying true to Hong Kong where you’ve got some streets that are wider, and you get into these really narrow alleys, and that’s one of the strategies – if you’re trying to, you know, you’re being chased by the cops and lose them, going from a wide street to a quick hard turn slide down an alley, and much like you’ve sort of seen in films before, you kind of just get stuck, jammed up in the alley, so…
It’s funny, so this is a tutorial, so this guy will keep getting up no matter what until you finally throw him into the dumpster.
At various points in the demo, an enemy would have to be dispatched in a certain way to proceed. For example, at this point, I had to grab the enemy, pick him up, and toss him into the dumpster, after which I had to jump on top of the dumpster to climb the wall and keep chasing the original perp. It’s a fluid interaction – fight, grab, throw, jump, climb, run. One action flows smoothly into the next with no interruption.
WZ – Nicole: I have a feeling this game is going to do what InFamous did to me, which is, every time I was outside, I was like, I could climb that. I could climb that building. I could jump on that.
Sochan: I definitely have those moments, and then I run up, I jump up and I fall off, and I’m like OK, I’m clearly not as fit as Wei is.
WZ – Nicole: How did video games influence you? Well, this one time, the other day, I threw a guy in a dumpster and he didn’t even see it coming. By guy, I mean eight-year-old girl.
Sochan: And then I jumped on top of the dumpster.
WZ – Nicole: First I stole her Girl Scout cookies, then I threw her in the dumpster.
WZ – Anthony: Video games taught me how to get away.
WZ – Nicole: Video games taught me that I should run for my life. So, Dan, is there a multiplayer aspect to this game?
Sochan: We chose to really focus on the single-player aspect, but what we do have is a sort of extensive online leaderboard system. So we track all sorts of stats in the game, longest wheelie, longest cop chase, most consecutive head smashes, most consecutive hitting people with a pop can, like throwing a pop can…
WZ – Nicole: Are there any outfits set up in here right now? I went to the wardrobe and I didn’t want to take his pants off.
Sochan: Yeah, you can go in there, you can change different outfits…
WZ – Nicole: Yeah, I didn’t want to take his pants off. What’s the first thing I do in here? I take his pants off.
Sochan: It’s pretty funny, and some people I’ve seen, they do missions with him just in his boxer shorts, and it looks hilarious, but you’re like, nope, nope, fair enough, if that’s what you want to do, do it.
In this section, you leave your fancy apartment and go outside. You can go straight to the parking garage and have someone get your car for you, which is what I did. Or you can punch out the person in the first car you see and steal their car, which didn’t even dawn on me. It’s very Grand Theft Auto-esque in this way – you can just take any car you want and drive off with it. The driving itself is so smooth it’s almost graceful. It’s easy to weave between traffic – or to drive on the sidewalk, if that’s what you’d rather do.
WZ – Anthony: Just drive on the sidewalk. There’s no one there.
WZ – Nicole: The driving is actually pretty fun!
Sochan: Yeah, driving on the wrong side of the road, it was funny developing it at first. Like, constantly just driving on the wrong side of the road, you’re like oh! Right, right. I’m on the right-hand side of the road, which is wrong in Hong Kong.
WZ – Anthony: I like the weather effects [in this part].
WZ – Nicole: I know! The weather is really nice.
In this entire scene, there’s a dismal rain in the city. This is offset by the soft glow coming from the headlights of the cars as well as the streetlights and the neon signs on shops. But the rain doesn’t slow down anything in the scene – everything is still rendering perfectly, with no dips in framerate or random, out-of-place characters or afterimages appearing on the screen.
Sochan: Yeah, the rendering and tech art team on the game is so talented and so fantastic. To take an open-world game where you’re rendering eight million things at once, all of this signage, the challenge to an open-world game is you have no control. I can’t say “just look at this and just do this.” it’s like you want to all of a sudden take a hard right and go down that road? Well, we have to make sure that road is rendered and everything else is there in advance.
WZ – Anthony: Yeah, I mean look at that lighting, and to have the rain on top of it…
Sochan: Yeah, you know, it’s pretty impressive.
WZ – Nicole: And what about the sound? The sound is great in that first part, where you come out, and there’s like a festival going on? And I was like oh my god, this is amazing!
Sochan: Yeah, you know, and we really tried to stay sort of authentic. The majority of the ambient dialogue is actually in Cantonese, so it tries to, we wanted to make that immersive feel, and sort of make it a little bit of a culture shock. We’re dropping you into the game and we want you to be like, where am I?
WZ – Nicole: Yeah, it definitely made me feel like that!
Sochan: Which is kinda fun!
WZ – Nicole: And the guy who was yelling like “hey, you need a suit?”
Sochan: Yeah! [laughter]
WZ – Nicole: You want a suit?
Sochan: Great deal, great price!
WZ – Nicole: I was like you know, I kind of do want a suit. Can I stop here? Wait, I’m chasing someone!
Sochan: Yeah, exactly, I’ll be right back!
Come back for the suit later, because now you need to check out the rest of our interview with Dan Sochan of United Front Games.
