I have to say...I AM LOVING THIS IDEA.
- A Vampire/Demon Hunter that looks more badass than Dante, Nero, Angel and "new age" Van Helsing combined (no metrosexual pretty boy wimp here, this guy here looks more like the Clint Eastwood of Vampire Hunters, I mean the guy has super long sideburns and crow's feet for God's sakes)
- Very loosely based on Bram Stoker's mythology, seeing how we're seeing a very re-imagined Jonathan Harker.
- Badass fighting engine made by The Collective, taking advantage of the next-gen hardware.
- The ideas these guys have for the fighting/killing/maiming of Vampires....gold.
I don't know about you guys, but I am officially looking forward to this.
Preview.
Vancouver, Backbone Emeryville, and The Collective.
So a month ago, when we first heard rumblings about a new game from The Collective, our mind jumped back to the sword-wielding cybernetic ninja epic from that book: Silencers. Had Comic-Con crowds liked this concept enough to trigger it into development? Well, we can't be sure, but that was not the game we were hearing about. In fact, it's pretty much as different as you can get from The Collective's contribution to that comic. Harker is a new next-gen vampire based survival horror title.
Now, we know what you're thinking: "The Collective making an original game? That's like Blizzard shipping on time." (It's happened before, but just seems weird.) But with Marc Ecko graffiti on the walls, Dirty Harry posters on the floor, and The Da Vinci Code's Mona Lisa staring at us from across the receptionist's desk, we entered the studio's walls a few weeks ago to check out Harker, and were excited to find something that's both original and builds on the company's past.
"There's nothing wrong with licenses but we just wanted to say, 'You know what? We've been very successful as a studio. Let's experiment; let's try something new,'" says senior producer Nigel Cook.
Looking over the developer's history, it's a challenge to argue that 2002's Buffy the Vampire Slayer is not the best in show. For a short while there, it was the post-GoldenEye, pre-Riddick popular example of a licensed game done right, with great characters and story elements, solid puzzles, and some of the best hand-to-hand combat in existence at that point.
"The original two owners of The Collective... their heart is very close to Buffy the Vampire Slayer," says Cook. "They worked on the game themselves and [it was] very successful for the studio."
Harker is essentially what Buffy would have been in an alternate, more violent, universe. The heart of the game is split between survival horror adventuring and a unique combat system that puts a focus on intense individual battles. You may spend a few minutes tracking down a single enemy and using your various attacks to weaken and finish him off.
"This isn't about fighting hordes or big battles, Lord of the Rings style," says Cook. "It's about making pain personal, hunting that vampire down, taking the time to go to his lair... you get more satisfaction in my opinion [tracking] down one, two or three beasts at a time than you do 20, [where it would just be] 'bang,' 'bang,' 'bang' [and they're] dead."
The idea isn't to provide fewer enemies, but to make the encounters you have more intense and memorable. "If you're a vampire and I'm going to kill you and I get my stake out, you [won't] just stand there and let me plunge it in your heart," continues Cook. "There's going to be a struggle situation in gameplay and that's when the camera goes up super close and shows the next generation technology and modeling and more importantly the feeling of plunging it in... you're going to push back. You're going to rip it out slowly as I am pushing it in."
"Our game really focuses on making killing and pain personal," says Cook, "taking the ultimate revenge and vengeance against vampires by ripping off arms, breaking legs, gouging out eyes, opening up rib cages and ramming dynamite inside."
Harker isn't just one-on-one battles either. In many cases, there will be small groups of enemies surrounding you and each of them will require strategic decisions to defeat. You'll have to decide if you want to use a crossbow to keep certain enemies away while you finish off their friends, or use your cross as a defensive mechanism, or draw a rune in the air to create a shield. These types of strategies will be key for facing multiple enemies at once.
Adding to the drama of each fight, your attacks won't all be one-hit kills. If you pick up a crossbow in the game, it won't just act like a machine gun, taking out five guys in five seconds. Instead, as Cook explains, you have to take the time to load the ammunition before you can use it to nail an enemy into a wall. And that's only the beginning of the fight. "We've got vampires here, and they're not normal human beings; they are super human in that sense, so they have this way to dynamically heal," says Cook. "They'll pull themselves slowly off the wall, stand back up, heal up and suddenly they're back at 50% health. So you've got this dilemma... which one do I pin, which one do I use range on, and which one do I go in for an execution on?"
For Harker, "executions" can be set up with your weapon or via the environments -- pull out your fists, push someone slowly into a spike on the wall, throw someone into a spiked pit, etc. "It's not Buffy because she would just push them and walk away and they are dead," says Cook. "Harker -- no -- he goes up and looks in their face, grabs their hair and rips it out, and pushes them really slowly through this object."
"In Buffy it was really satisfying to throw a stake at a vampire, [or] to throw a vampire into a stake in the environment," says Harker lead programmer David Byttow. "These were really satisfying moments and we're just taking that a step further -- drawing it out. Making it more gruesome, more fun, more brutal."
One of these executions in Harker involves sticking an enemy into a wine press, an idea that Cook says originated from location scouting. "That really was an original wine press right there," he says, pointing at concept art of one of the locations for the game. "Can you believe that happened? I don't think they were crushing vampires with it though. I think they were actually making wine."
For those familiar with Dracula's legacy, the story and setting for the game won't be a huge stretch from what you already know. "We start with Bram Stoker's novels, obviously, given Harker is a character," says lead designer Jason Allen. "But [that] doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to follow the story line. We don't necessarily mean that Harker's going start out in castle Dracula or hunt down and kill one of the brides... but we're using that as inspiration."
One idea being considered for the story is the concept of "purging the bloodlines," where various enemies you come across could be descendents of Dracula and you have to hunt them down over the course of the game. "The blood from a victim mixed in with a powdered potion [may] take you on a hallucinogenic journey where you uncover the information, where they've been and where they are going," says Allen.
But this -- like many of Harker's less conceptual details -- has yet to be locked down. The game is only about five months into development at this point and does not have a publisher yet, so some of what's in the design plans may change before release. For example, the developers aren't locked in to a specific system at this point, with the demo we saw running on an Xbox 360 but the door open for PS3 and Wii versions. "We're actually considering all platforms at this stage," says Cook. "It doesn't mean we're going to develop on all. Any developer would like to say that they'd prefer to focus on one or two maximum and that will probably be the case." And then there are plans for multiplayer and all kinds of other ideas that are yet to be sorted out.
But what is set at this point looks extremely promising, and probably not quite as similar to Buffy as we've led on. It may run on the next-gen version of the "Slayer Engine" (which originally was created for Buffy, and today powers all of The Collective's games) and feature some surface level similarities, but if the combat system ends up as elaborate as it sounds at this point, it's easy to see these ideas turning into something pretty great.
And perhaps more importantly, something unique, which is always appreciated in a genre that has become stale over the years. "All the shooters, all the sci-fi games you saw at E3 -- you know all those types of games," asks Cook. "We're just trying something a bit different."
Video: Mov and Wmv (Right click to save)
Pictures:
- A Vampire/Demon Hunter that looks more badass than Dante, Nero, Angel and "new age" Van Helsing combined (no metrosexual pretty boy wimp here, this guy here looks more like the Clint Eastwood of Vampire Hunters, I mean the guy has super long sideburns and crow's feet for God's sakes)
- Very loosely based on Bram Stoker's mythology, seeing how we're seeing a very re-imagined Jonathan Harker.
- Badass fighting engine made by The Collective, taking advantage of the next-gen hardware.
- The ideas these guys have for the fighting/killing/maiming of Vampires....gold.
I don't know about you guys, but I am officially looking forward to this.
Preview.
Vancouver, Backbone Emeryville, and The Collective.
So a month ago, when we first heard rumblings about a new game from The Collective, our mind jumped back to the sword-wielding cybernetic ninja epic from that book: Silencers. Had Comic-Con crowds liked this concept enough to trigger it into development? Well, we can't be sure, but that was not the game we were hearing about. In fact, it's pretty much as different as you can get from The Collective's contribution to that comic. Harker is a new next-gen vampire based survival horror title.
Now, we know what you're thinking: "The Collective making an original game? That's like Blizzard shipping on time." (It's happened before, but just seems weird.) But with Marc Ecko graffiti on the walls, Dirty Harry posters on the floor, and The Da Vinci Code's Mona Lisa staring at us from across the receptionist's desk, we entered the studio's walls a few weeks ago to check out Harker, and were excited to find something that's both original and builds on the company's past.
"There's nothing wrong with licenses but we just wanted to say, 'You know what? We've been very successful as a studio. Let's experiment; let's try something new,'" says senior producer Nigel Cook.
Looking over the developer's history, it's a challenge to argue that 2002's Buffy the Vampire Slayer is not the best in show. For a short while there, it was the post-GoldenEye, pre-Riddick popular example of a licensed game done right, with great characters and story elements, solid puzzles, and some of the best hand-to-hand combat in existence at that point.
"The original two owners of The Collective... their heart is very close to Buffy the Vampire Slayer," says Cook. "They worked on the game themselves and [it was] very successful for the studio."
Harker is essentially what Buffy would have been in an alternate, more violent, universe. The heart of the game is split between survival horror adventuring and a unique combat system that puts a focus on intense individual battles. You may spend a few minutes tracking down a single enemy and using your various attacks to weaken and finish him off.
"This isn't about fighting hordes or big battles, Lord of the Rings style," says Cook. "It's about making pain personal, hunting that vampire down, taking the time to go to his lair... you get more satisfaction in my opinion [tracking] down one, two or three beasts at a time than you do 20, [where it would just be] 'bang,' 'bang,' 'bang' [and they're] dead."
The idea isn't to provide fewer enemies, but to make the encounters you have more intense and memorable. "If you're a vampire and I'm going to kill you and I get my stake out, you [won't] just stand there and let me plunge it in your heart," continues Cook. "There's going to be a struggle situation in gameplay and that's when the camera goes up super close and shows the next generation technology and modeling and more importantly the feeling of plunging it in... you're going to push back. You're going to rip it out slowly as I am pushing it in."
"Our game really focuses on making killing and pain personal," says Cook, "taking the ultimate revenge and vengeance against vampires by ripping off arms, breaking legs, gouging out eyes, opening up rib cages and ramming dynamite inside."
Harker isn't just one-on-one battles either. In many cases, there will be small groups of enemies surrounding you and each of them will require strategic decisions to defeat. You'll have to decide if you want to use a crossbow to keep certain enemies away while you finish off their friends, or use your cross as a defensive mechanism, or draw a rune in the air to create a shield. These types of strategies will be key for facing multiple enemies at once.
Adding to the drama of each fight, your attacks won't all be one-hit kills. If you pick up a crossbow in the game, it won't just act like a machine gun, taking out five guys in five seconds. Instead, as Cook explains, you have to take the time to load the ammunition before you can use it to nail an enemy into a wall. And that's only the beginning of the fight. "We've got vampires here, and they're not normal human beings; they are super human in that sense, so they have this way to dynamically heal," says Cook. "They'll pull themselves slowly off the wall, stand back up, heal up and suddenly they're back at 50% health. So you've got this dilemma... which one do I pin, which one do I use range on, and which one do I go in for an execution on?"
For Harker, "executions" can be set up with your weapon or via the environments -- pull out your fists, push someone slowly into a spike on the wall, throw someone into a spiked pit, etc. "It's not Buffy because she would just push them and walk away and they are dead," says Cook. "Harker -- no -- he goes up and looks in their face, grabs their hair and rips it out, and pushes them really slowly through this object."
"In Buffy it was really satisfying to throw a stake at a vampire, [or] to throw a vampire into a stake in the environment," says Harker lead programmer David Byttow. "These were really satisfying moments and we're just taking that a step further -- drawing it out. Making it more gruesome, more fun, more brutal."
One of these executions in Harker involves sticking an enemy into a wine press, an idea that Cook says originated from location scouting. "That really was an original wine press right there," he says, pointing at concept art of one of the locations for the game. "Can you believe that happened? I don't think they were crushing vampires with it though. I think they were actually making wine."
For those familiar with Dracula's legacy, the story and setting for the game won't be a huge stretch from what you already know. "We start with Bram Stoker's novels, obviously, given Harker is a character," says lead designer Jason Allen. "But [that] doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to follow the story line. We don't necessarily mean that Harker's going start out in castle Dracula or hunt down and kill one of the brides... but we're using that as inspiration."
One idea being considered for the story is the concept of "purging the bloodlines," where various enemies you come across could be descendents of Dracula and you have to hunt them down over the course of the game. "The blood from a victim mixed in with a powdered potion [may] take you on a hallucinogenic journey where you uncover the information, where they've been and where they are going," says Allen.
But this -- like many of Harker's less conceptual details -- has yet to be locked down. The game is only about five months into development at this point and does not have a publisher yet, so some of what's in the design plans may change before release. For example, the developers aren't locked in to a specific system at this point, with the demo we saw running on an Xbox 360 but the door open for PS3 and Wii versions. "We're actually considering all platforms at this stage," says Cook. "It doesn't mean we're going to develop on all. Any developer would like to say that they'd prefer to focus on one or two maximum and that will probably be the case." And then there are plans for multiplayer and all kinds of other ideas that are yet to be sorted out.
But what is set at this point looks extremely promising, and probably not quite as similar to Buffy as we've led on. It may run on the next-gen version of the "Slayer Engine" (which originally was created for Buffy, and today powers all of The Collective's games) and feature some surface level similarities, but if the combat system ends up as elaborate as it sounds at this point, it's easy to see these ideas turning into something pretty great.
And perhaps more importantly, something unique, which is always appreciated in a genre that has become stale over the years. "All the shooters, all the sci-fi games you saw at E3 -- you know all those types of games," asks Cook. "We're just trying something a bit different."
Video: Mov and Wmv (Right click to save)
Pictures:
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