What's so special about HAZE? What does it have that we won't find anywhere else?
Well, regular readers of our website probably already know all there is to know about HAZE, so I won't bore them with talk of our four player online co-op, or the fact that you can drop in and out of those games at any time without messing around in menu screens or pre-game lobbies.
Nor will I waste their time chattering about our seamless, loading-screen-free campaign mode, telling the story of two days of Shane Carpenters life, or with talk of our fantastic multiplayer modes that offer truly asymmetric combat and scenarios that tie back into the narrative of the main campaign.
And I certainly won't bother to suggest to them they might be interested by our genuinely involving narrative that has managed to attract actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, because let's face it, who's going to be interested in that?
No, instead I will ask you this - when was the last time you played an FPS where you could jump into a dropship, fly to a completely different location without seeing a single loading screen, then jump out and carry on fighting? Or the last time you played an FPS where you can phone up a friend and get them to drop straight into your game and help you out with a section you've been struggling with? Or how about the last game that made you think about the consequences of your virtual actions in some meaningful way?
Was there one particular event or situation that inspired the idea?
Not one in particular, no - to me there were several factors that really formed the core of what HAZE is about. Firstly, there was a continuing feeling at the company that it'd be interesting to make a game where the enemy you face is much more than just a collection of two dimensional archetypal 'bad guys' - this was something we touched upon in Second Sight (see my comments on influences for HAZE below), but is a strong enough idea that we wanted to make it much more central to the premise of the game, our thinking being 'Wouldn't it be interesting if you started playing a game and then discovered you were fighting for the wrong side?', which is where the switching sides mechanic came from.
Secondly there was a general frustration with the way videogames traditionally present war and violence, and in particular the idea that censoring the player from the consequences of their actions somehow makes it more acceptable to be shooting people. Games have traditionally sidestepped the implications of your ingame violence but we really wanted to present this issue to the player, to ask them 'Well, how do you feel about this?', which is where the idea of seeing two very different sides of the same war - one an idealised, sanitised depiction of war, the other a more brutal, horrific depiction. In developing ideas to communicate this effectively we hit upon the idea of nectar, which together with the switching sides really sealed the core of the game, I think.
The narrative for the game definitely takes its cues from certain real-life events, however we'd prefer to let people draw their own conclusions about which ones...
What's your favourite aspect of the game?
It's just got to be the multiplayer. Every time I get to that team select screen, it's like "What mood am I in today? Am I in a Mantel mood or a Promise Hand mood?", and the different abilities available on each side mean that in addition to moving and shooting, like in any other FPS, you're constantly assessing the tactical options.
For instance, as a trooper, when's the best time to dose up with nectar? Sure, it's a great buzz and gives you a range of cool abilities, but you run the risk of rebels sending you into overdose, where you could end up shooting and killing my own squadmates!
And then when you're playing as a rebel, you're looking about for a trooper corpse so you can snatch the nectar administrator from it and make a nectar grenade, or you're trying to find the perfect spot to play dead, so you can watch your opponent turn and move towards his next target, before you leap to your feet and plant a knife in his back, or you're trying to flank a trooper so you can go for an administrator shot, or you're trying to get in close so you can steal their weapon, or, or, or...
All of this is on top of the options offered by other FPS games, which is why I think you'll find HAZE to be one of the most rewarding and deep multiplayer FPS games you've ever played.
What's your favourite section of the game? Describe what it's like to play through.
It's tricky but I'd have to say the section where you're fighting through the abandoned holiday resort. The idea for that level is that you're fighting your way to the roof of the resort so that a helicopter can come and extract your squad, but there's the small matter of a Mantel dropship and several Mantel heavy squads who've got other ideas!
The coolest thing about the level is something that it's got in common with TimeSplitters - having a very extraordinary firefight in a very ordinary location. There's something about that juxtaposition - the way that you're using leather-bound sofas and ornamental statues for cover as an enemy squad fires at you from behind a decorative fountain - that makes it feel more 'real' and thus much more compelling to me. Sure beats hiding behind a wooden crate in SomeGenericWarehouse™!
What games, or other media, have influenced HAZE?
Despite the visual differences, there's actually a lot of our previous games in HAZE. The similarity to TS is perhaps the easiest comparison to draw because they share the first person viewpoint but there's a lot of Second Sight in there too, not only in terms of having a very strong narrative but also in terms of the different play styles. One thing I thought worked really well in Second Sight was the way that you could choose to use the guns, or to use the psychic powers, or combine the two, and each had their own benefits and drawbacks. Particularly when playing as a Promise Hand rebel in HAZE, I think it has that same feeling, of having a lot of choice about how to tackle any individual combat scenario, which is cool.
A few people have noticed that there's a bit of a continuing theme between Second Sight and HAZE too, in terms of presenting the enemy as being more complex than two-dimensional 'evil henchmen' or bad guys. In Second Sight there were literally just a handful of places in the game where this happened, and were mostly just added in as little touches of detail by the design/programming team - for instance, on one of the earlier levels, when you kill a guard you can go over to the computer he was working at and read his chat room conversation with his girlfriend, and see her increasingly panicked comments when he stops responding to her. It was only designed to be a throwaway touch really, but I've been amazed by the number of people who have picked up on it and said how much it added to the game for them.
For HAZE, not only was this something we wanted to do again, but it's a much more central theme for the entire game, the idea of getting the player to ask 'Are these really the bad guys that I'm fighting?'.
Of course, it's not just our own games that have been an influence. There have been a number of games that have acted as inspiration in different ways, for instance Half Life 2's perfectly scripted set pieces and use of the first person viewpoint for narrative as well as action, really increasing the player's sense of immersion. Also Call of Duty 2 was a big inspiration for it's razor-sharp balance and incredibly tense, bombastic combat.
From a higher level perspective, I think games like the Metal Gear Series and Shadow of the Colossus were also influences, for their hugely effective communication of a message through the experience of playing the game.
What kind of weapons do you have in the game?
We've got a pretty diverse selection of guns but really, the coolest thing about them isn't what they are, it's how you use them. Troopers have a few neat abilities, like being able to regenerate ammo over time, but it's when you start playing as a rebel that the options really open up. First up, you can steal an enemy's gun - now, this isn't quite as simple as just running straight at a trooper and hitting a button, because if you try that you'll probably find yourself on the receiving end of a very painful melee blast. You need to use a bit of cunning, and get the jump on them. My favourite technique is lurking on a rooftop waiting for your enemy to pass by, then dropping down, whipping his gun out of his hand and blowing him away - and if you think that sounds cool against NPC's, against other players it's absolutely awesome!
Next up is the ability to scavenge ammo. It might not sound like much, but when your minigun runs empty (which can happen a lot, the bullet-hungry monster that it is), you'll be thanking Merino himself for the ability to pick up the clip from a normal rifle and convert it into minigun ammo instead!
I've got to give a special mention to the knives - something people probably don't know about Second Sight is that knives were a playable weapon in that game for most of the development period (in the end they were canned due to ratings issues), and they were always enormous fun to use. So when we came to make HAZE, we made them the first weapon on the list to go into the game, and when you manage to get a perfect knife throw at a trooper so that the knife embeds in his helmet and shatters his visor to pieces, you'll be glad we did!
All of that and I haven't even mentioned nectar yet! One thing that's been really interesting as we've been gradually revealing more and more about the game has been to watch people's changing attitudes to nectar. I think when we first announced it, people were like "Okay, that's cool, but it's just a powerup, right?", and my response was - yes! Yes it is, but there's more to it than that. And now we've announced the fact that the player changes sides in the game and fights as part of the Promise Hand against Mantel, and that they can use nectar against the troopers, people have been like "Ohhh...", which has been great to see. I mean, how many games do you get to use your enemy's dependency on a powerup against them? That's like playing as Bowser and feeding Mario poison mushrooms! It's cool!
What has been the most challenging aspect of development?
You know, sometimes I think we're terminally stupid here at FRD as we seem to create work for ourselves at every opportunity! So, of course, it wasn't enough for us to develop our first game on next-gen consoles - certainly not! No, we had to add a whole host of ludicrously complicated features like four player online co-op, continuous streaming throughout the whole campaign mode, and 12 completely unique environments that all tie coherently into one another.
Early on in the project, the challenge was definitely engine and tools development. With HAZE we took the opportunity to throw away our previous gen engine and start completely from scratch, which has definitely been worthwhile - you only need to look at the stunning visuals in HAZE to see that - but required an enormous investment of time and effort. It's the same story with the tools chain, which needed to be completely rewritten to handle the sort of scale and detail that next gen environments require. The technical details are terminally dull but put it this way; as Dave said about it, 'It's a bit like trying to cook your dinner while you're still making the pots and pans'.
HAZE itself was a tricky game to completely nail down in terms of the precise design of the thing, mainly because nectar and the idea of playing on two completely different sides of the same war are two concepts that are just rich with possibilities. The biggest difficulty was in knowing when to say no to an idea, to be honest - you have to cut off somewhere otherwise you just swamp the player with abilities and it's impossible to balance. I think now we have a good range of abilities but not too many to be confusing, but I've got to say there were a few ideas it was really hard to let go of! Of course, that might not be the last we see of them...
The challenge then was to really nail those abilities within the control system, so that they felt natural and didn't confuse the player. For the rebel abilities in particular, this was an incredibly long process - in fact, we're still tweaking them now!
From a technical point of view, it's was the continuous streaming that presented us with the most problems - I mean, there's a reason most games don't do it, and that's because it's bloody difficult! I'd hope that in the final game, most gamers will simply not notice it at all, and will just think of the game as one continuous world, but the reality is that as you're playing through the game, it's constantly grabbing textures and objects from off the disk and dropping them in just round the next corner in front of you. The moment you'll probably first see the game doing this is when you take off from the deck of the Mantel Land Carrier and moments later are dropping right onto the front line in dense, lush jungle, with bullets whizzing by your ears! It's a truly jaw-dropping experience and genuinely makes HAZE feel unlike any game I've ever played before.
What has been the easiest part of development?
I've been pleased with how well the rebel and trooper play styles balance out in multiplayer. With such diverse abilities and differing strengths and weaknesses it could have been a balancing nightmare but it's all fallen into place surprisingly well. Don't get me wrong - there's still issues to be ironed out (rebel players are currently having a blast with diving at troopers and melee kicking them in the head for a one-hit kill - it's a bit too powerful at the moment!), but overall it's settled into place very well.
Are there any secrets still to be revealed?
It's been funny to see people going 'You've told us you change sides! What's the point in playing the game now?', when really, if that was the only twist in the game, do you really think we'd have told you about it!?
