After the results of the Game Critics Awards were announced two weeks ago, we reached out to several winners for their reactions and some updates about their games in progress. In the portable category, Resistance: Retribution won the award for Best Handheld Game. We emailed some questions to John Garvin, director of development at Sony Bend. Here's what he wrote back:
Resistance: Retribution was up against some distinguished franchises in Castlevania, Chrono Trigger and Puzzle Quest, not to mention a cult favorite in Rhythm Heaven. Did you expect to win?
I did expect to win, actually, mostly because our two previous Syphon PSP games had won so many awards, and we had not shown a game at E3 since The Omega Strain. All those DS franchises are great, but we're pretty unique, I think, in that what we attempt to do, against all odds, and maybe against common sense even, is to create a full-blown AAA console "character action" experience on a handheld. To me, the console experience is all about production values, variety of gameplay, length of game, and just the depth of the experience. It means spending the money on detail, using full, SAG acted voice, high quality rendered sequences; it means having a full size team of engineers working on a large variety of gameplay features so the designers can mix it up each level; it means a schedule with enough time in it to polish everything. Other handhelds tend to go for a more "mini game" experience that can be done with smaller teams, less time, less money.
What do you make of the fact that all of your fellow nominees were on DS, and none on PSP?
I attribute our ability to build this kind of game to Sony's dedication and support for the PSP. As a first party developer, our goal is to showcase what the PSP can do. Sony also makes "handheld style" games like Patapon and Loco Roco, but our studio's job is to push [PlayStation founder Ken] Kutaragi's original vision for the platform: creating games for a console in your hand. Resistance: Retribution could not be done on the DS, just like Dark Mirror and Logan's Shadow could not have been done on the DS. So to get back to your question, I think critics respond to Resistance: Retribution because it is a unique experience on the handheld, something that can't be done on the others--and our game shows a commitment to quality with high production values and polished gameplay.
Describe the aiming/camera system for Resistance: Retribution, and explain the process by which you arrived at it.
Resistance: Retribution uses an "aim assist" mechanic that builds on what we had done in Logan's Shadow and Dark Mirror. It's no secret that the press--and gamers--like to complain about the lack of a second analog stick on the PSP. At Bend Studio, we never really understood what the complaining was all about. Yes, all console shooters now use to sticks to emulate the PC keyboard and mouse experience. But if you think about it, PCs don't have two analog sticks, they use a mouse and four keys...not dissimilar to what the PSP can do. And our favorite shooters of all time, like Syphon on PS1, only had one stick. Our real inspiration for our aiming scheme on the Syphon titles was Golden Eye on the Nintendo 64, which also used a stick and four buttons. To us, it seemed perfectly feasible to craft a solid shooter without two sticks. Having said that, we did realize that shooters have evolved to the point where, on consoles at least, gamers felt they needed two sticks to succeed. So what we came up with is a system that attempts to keep as much of the action on the stick, without having a full target lock that would remove most of the challenge.
Partly this system evolved during our evaluation of the Resistance: Fall of Man style of gameplay, which was all about strafing back and forth behind cover. We wanted to keep that, but also incorporate the cover-based combat system we had developed especially for the PSP. Our first step was to automate the way the character would grab low cover if the player ran up to a wall, or would grab a corner if they ran up to the side of a doorway. The PSP doesn't have many buttons, and to simplify the controls, we wanted to make sure that these types of actions would happen intuitively but without a button press. If the player wants to just run around and strafe, RFOM style, they can certainly do that; but if they want to grab cover, all they have to do is run up to the cover object, and the character automatically does the right thing. If the player fires a weapon while in cover, the character pops up and fires off the rounds. If the player wants to break cover, they just use the stick to pull away.
We spent months making movement and cover smooth and natural to the player. So once the core movement and cover mechanics were in, we began to realize that we could improve the aiming in the same way. I always played Syphon with standard controls, which used the face buttons to aim. Resistance: Retribution uses an extension of this: we draw an "aiming box" that fills the center third of the screen. The player can still use the face buttons to move the camera in order to place enemies within that box, but here's the improvement: so long as an enemy is inside the aiming box, the aiming reticule will "lock" onto him. If there are multiple enemies on screen, the player can use the face buttons to "tap" the reticule in different directions to select new targets.
It's an elegant solution because it takes some of the pain out of of having to move the camera with buttons (especially diagonal movement, which can be frustrating and imprecise), without removing the challenge. The player still has to move tactically, find cover, still has to time shots, still has to be smart about picking targets and switching weapons, but without having to fight the camera as much.
How popular has online multiplayer been on the Syphon Filter PSP games? What have you learned from them that will be applicable to Resistance: Retribution?
Resistance: Retribution will have an awesome multiplayer mode, but details have not yet been announced.
How would you describe your working relationship with Insomniac Games in developing Resistance: Retribution?
It's both formal and informal. For example, early on I pitched a story idea that no one liked, including Insomniac, so I shelved it. Then I thought of a few key ways to tie into RFOM and pitched those to Ted [Price, founder and president of Insomniac Games], and he liked them--as did everyone else--so we went with those ideas. Another example is weapons: Our very first creative meeting with Insom was all about weapons...what did we plan to do, here's what we're doing on R2, and so on. Over the course of development, Insom has looked at all of our key weapon and enemy designs, but they're not actively involved in any part of our game.
Do they have approval over the choices that you're making, or is the process more informal?
I think the best way to think of our process is that Insom is the "shepherd" of the franchise...it's their baby; they created the universe, the Chimera, the core game play concepts. Fortunately for us, Insom created a very rich universe and alternate history which hinted at a ton of backstory and side story, enough material for dozens of games. I picked a few things from that rich backdrop, and we've crafted an entire experience which further enriches that universe. Some examples: what the heck are the Cloven? We see them woven into the back story of RFOM, but they are never explained. Another example: why do we never see any female Chimera? And: what were the Chimera doing in occupied Europe for the past two years pre-RFOM?
So Insom approved the key ideas, but they left us alone to make the game. Mostly I attribute our autonomy to the amount of faith they have in us to stay within the established parameters of the franchise, and in our track record for developing AAA games on the PSP.
The Syphon Filter franchise was popular on the original PlayStation, but struggled to make the transition to PlayStation 2 before finding a new home on PSP. Now Sony Bend is working on Resistance for PSP. Do you feel marginalized by not developing for the Playstation 3, which is Sony's flagship platform?
Not at all. Any one of us could go and work on PS3 if we wanted to. In fact, many of our studio left to do just that when we made the decision to focus on PSP. The reason we work on PSP is because our core team has always been more interested in the gameplay than the tech. Tech, for us, is interesting only so long as it helps us craft a better player experience. I'm not interested in having 2000 bones for character animation, if 25 bones is enough to make the game we want to make.
The other thing, for us, was team size. It takes a big team to make the kind of AAA character action games we like, at a PS3 level of detail. We like Bend Studio at the size it currently is--about 40 people, give or take. Everyone knows everyone, we don't need a lot of (or any) middle management, and we're a pretty tight-knit team. And I don't agree that the PS3 is more important than the PSP for Sony's long term plans. Looking at the market globally, which is the way we approach all of our platforms and products, the PSP is huge. Sony isn't going to surrender the handheld war in any way...the fact that Sony Bend is here and making AAA games like Resistance: Retribution is proof of that.
