WZ – Anthony: Is it in Cantonese with subtitles?
Sochan: Yeah, so, most of the main story characters speak predominantly English, but they throw in bits of Cantonese. Like in “Firefly,” you’ll hear some of those ways that they incorporate, you know, throwing in some swear words and then whatever else. But probably 70% of the ambient characters in the world will speak Cantonese, and then throw in some English as well.
WZ – Anthony: They speak English when it’s something you have to actually understand.
Sochan: Yeah, yeah. You know, some of them, like Mrs. Chu, you know, the sort of sub-boss who you’re working for in the first part of the game, his mother is the one you maybe saw in the kitchen at the beginning in that scene. She is a major story character but never speaks English, which I really like. She only ever speaks in Cantonese.
WZ – Nicole: I like this part right here, I like how you have to…
Here, Wei has been captured and is tied up on a chair. He’s trying to escape his captors. You have to spin the analog sticks to get to something sharp and have it cut through the rope binding him. He’s lost a lot of blood and is very woozy, so most of what you do here is based around Quick Time Events. This is a nice variation, keeping things interesting in a game that already seems like it would be hard pressed to have boring moments.
Sochan: Yeah, we’ve got sort of a few Quick Time Events, scattered throughout the game, again, we didn’t want it to be a fundamental aspect…
WZ – Nicole: It’s not annoying, but it definitely ramps up the tension.
Sochan: Exactly, it changes things up a little bit. Instead of you’re just automatically cutting your restraints, it kind of changes up gameplay a bit. You know, it helps sell that he’s got to escape.
WZ – Nicole: I didn’t realize that it was a staple of the Chinese mafia to also be covered in tattoos. I thought that was a Japanese mafia thing – I thought that was a Yakuza thing.
Sochan: No, yeah, nope, very much so. It’s –
WZ – Anthony: I want to see a hierarchy of tattoo – the higher you get in the game, the more tattoos start appearing on you.
Sochan: You know, something we actually did consider doing, think about like, oh that would be really cool if you could customize your tattoos. But as soon as we did that, it meant that you could have less effects in the world, and less variety, and we were like OK, what matters more? So… you know. Next generation of consoles.
WZ – Nicole: So this part’s really fun because there’s lots of stuff you can slam them into.
Sochan: Yeah, so anytime you grapple someone, you’ll see objects in the world highlight red, and then you can take them and kind of throw them into it.
WZ – Nicole: Yeah, which is awesome! I like that there’s like a pole that you can –
Sochan: Yeah, the rebar sticking out –
In this section, Wei has just escaped his bonds, and is fighting for his life single-handedly against a group of thugs. There’s a lot to interact with here – the room seems to be in a building that must be under construction, or just being built. One of those things is a piece of rebar sticking out from the floor. You can take a bad guy and brutally impale him on the rebar, making for a surprisingly violent, groan-worthy kill.
Another option in this section is to grapple with the thugs and slam their heads down on a moving table saw, causing the unfortunate victim to die as a Mortal Kombat-like level of blood pours out of the wound.
WZ – Nicole: What happens if you, the only thing I didn’t do was hold B while standing over a guy who was on the ground…
Sochan: So you pick them up. From there you can pick them up, and you can sort of, you know, punch away at them while they’re on the ground.
WZ – Nicole: Got it, got it.
Sochan: Or you can kick guys while they’re down as well.
WZ – Anthony: Can you gorilla press them into another guy?
Sochan: No, but that would be awesome.
WZ – Nicole: That would be awesome.
Sochan: That’s a great idea…
WZ – Nicole: What other games have you worked on?
Sochan: I’ve been in games since ’99. I’ve worked on a bunch of sports titles, so like, say, Soccer Slam, NASCAR, NHL Hitz, several years of NHL at EA, I’ve worked on…
WZ – Nicole: So you’ve worked at EA?
Sochan: Yeah, I’ve worked at EA, I worked at Black Box and we were bought by EA. And then, so, Need For Speed games, and then I did some family-oriented games for the Wii, like Monster Lab, Shadowborne, and then ModNation Racers, most recently…
WZ – Nicole: ModNation Racers? That’s awesome! That’s a really good game.
WZ – Nicole: Well, Dan, thank you so much for sitting down with us! We can’t wait to play more of the game.
Sochan: No problem!
