F.E.A.R 2: Project Origin Developer Interview

Alma's back!

We recently got the chance to ask developers of the upcoming F.E.A.R 2: Project Origin about the game.

Q: F.E.A.R, Project Origin, F.E.A.R 2... It’s all rather confusing. Care to explain the red tape behind the games name?

A: When we became a part of Warner Bros., we unfortunately couldn’t keep the title of the game. It was owned by Vivendi. However, that’s all they owned. Monolith retained the rights to all of the characters and story of the FEAR franchise. When we decided to do a sequel, the only thing needed was a new name. For that we turned to our extremely devoted and active community. You may remember a contest we had where we asked for submissions for a title of the new game, and Project Origin was what came out of that. It’s a great title that comes from the story and has a significant place in the mythology of Alma. When the merger happened and we brought the name FEAR 2 back to Monolith we didn’t want to lose our excellent home grown title. So the final title for the sequel to FEAR will be FEAR 2: Project Origin.

Q: For a lot of people F.E.A.R 2 will be their first taste of the series, will these gamers find Project Origin accessible or do you recommend a play-through of the original games first?

A: Great question! We have taken great pains to explain the back story. Since the story we really are telling is about Alma, we needed to push forward but for new players to the universe, we have to give incentive to understand the previous. Some of those incentives come in the form of collectables, but we wanted to make sure that the story was delivered via experiential means. So you will learn a lot of the story from interacting with NPCs throughout the game as well as discovery.

Q: As the expansions for F.E.A.R were not made by Monolith are they considered cannon to the F.E.A.R universe, or would it be wiser to pretend their events never happened?

A: We respect what the developer who worked on the expansions did; however, it wasn’t the direction we wanted to take for Project Origin and the story of Alma. We wanted to remain focused on telling the story of Alma and what happens to her at the end of F.E.A.R. With this game we are continuing the story exactly the way we feel it should be.

Q: There were some obvious homage’s to Japanese horror flicks in the original F.E.A.R, in F.E.A.R. 2 are these films getting the nod again or have you drawn inspiration from other films and perhaps games this time?

A: As a whole, Monolith and the FEAR2 team are huge movie fans. I’m sure you can see many influences in the game such as; John Woo’s over the top cinematic presentation of gunplay in films like The Killer and Hard Boiled. And I’m sure the Japanese horror, from films like Juon, and Ringu show their influence too...In FEAR2 we started looking to other influences as well, so you’ll start to see hints of ideas that came from the Russian films like Daywatch and Nightwatch, or some of the newer psychological/horror films out of the US. We really look for moments in films that create a emotional trigger, and then we try to recreate scenarios that will elicit that same trigger.

Q: With the mass of FPS titles on the market, what separates F.E.A.R 2: Project Origin from similar games?

A: I think the formula that we have created in FEAR2 is that kind of juxtaposition of terror and action is what separates us from the crowd. F.E.A.R. 2 is unique in the way it presents high intensity fast paced first person combat with tense horror elements. Ideally, the experience is very much like an emotional rollercoaster where one minute players are fighting apparitions in the hallways of an abandoned school and the next moment they’re laying waste to their landscape in an armored battle suit. By changing up the way they encounter enemies we constantly keep gamers on their toes and never let them get accustomed to what’s coming next. We’ve found that because of this, it actually heightens the horror elements of the game. People are in an agitated state to begin with after barely surviving an enemy encounter, so when we suddenly begin to screw with their heads, they are in the perfect state of mind to scare the hell out of them! In that way the horror and the action both play an important role in how we control and drive the player’s experience.

Q: Recently, a lot of first-person shooters have adopted regenerating health. Do you feel this differs in the survival horror genre, and what sort of health system can we expect to see in Project Origin?

A: Early in FEAR2, we did have a regenerative based system, but changed back to the traditional Medkit implementation because we found that players tended to use the same strategy when they regenerated health. They would take damage to a point and hide, waiting to get back to full health before attacking again. With Medkits players can control when they resupply their health, encouraging them to experiment with more combat strategies. It’s easier for them to adopt a more aggressive strategy when they control when they heal.

Q: It appears that large Mech units will be an important part of F.E.A.R 2. How will the use of these vehicles change the pace of the game?

A: One of the things that made combat in FEAR so satisfying was seeing things go flying as your bullets tore through helpless objects caught between you and your foes. That kind of interactivity is something you’ll see a lot more of that this time out and it can be used to change the pacing throughout the game. The EPA is a great example of the interactive nature of the environment. Its chain guns and rocket launchers will pulverize anything it hits. When the wall enemies were using as cover gets destroyed they have to find a new way to survive and their strategies change. This type of reversal of combat screnarios complete changes the dynamic or pacing of the experience at that time and when exiting the PEA, people will feel that the pacing changes once again. There is also the addition of interactive cover objects which are everyday objects in the combat space which you can flip or slide and turn into cover. Enemies use them, and we encourage the player to use them as well. You’re going to find yourself surrounded without a place to hide, and flipping a table or a bench to create cover where there was none before gets the player to think strategically about the battle field and look for ways to get the advantage. All these things add to how the player is capable of changing the pacing and resolution of combat.

Q: What will players be able to expect from the multiplayer modes this time around? Is it difficult getting a good balance between survival horror and traditional first-person shooter when it comes to creating multiplayer modes?

A: Since Multiplayer is focuses on the player’s experience with regards to the rest of the active players, Horror starts to pull away from that experience. And because FEAR’s combat is so well crafted, we really focused on that aspect in Multiplayer. One of the features we are most excited about, and something that we get asked more than anything else about regarding multiplayer is the EPA. We’ve developed a mode called Armoured Front, where players try to take and maintain possession of several control points scattered throughout the selected map. Each team will have an EPA at their disposal to help them execute on those objectives. I don’t think I can effectively describe how incredibly cool it is to hop into an EPA for the first time and just lay waste to your opponents. The thing that is so impressive about the mode though is how well the multiplayer guys have balanced and tuned the EPA so even though you are incredibly powerful, players will not be indestructible. We really can’t wait for gamers to get their hands on this one.

Q: How have you kept the environments fresh and to a certain extent, vibrant, in the setting of a destroyed city?

A: When gamers play FEAR 2, they are going to see very quickly how much work went into expanding the game world both in theme and in size. The designers also laid out a color map of each of the game’s chapters, with the intention of using a color palette that evoked the moods they wanted to illicit. If they wanted players to feel uneasy, they would use one palette, aggression, another, feelings of familiarity, yet another. It’s a subtle detail and we hope players notice and enjoy it as much as we do.

Q: What new challenges have you faced in bringing F.E.A.R into the world of high-definition gaming?

A: One of the comments we got after FEAR launched was that while the graphics were incredible, it got tedious to navigate the same spaces repeatedly. Players suffered from office fatigue by the end of the game. When the designers sat down and began thinking about the sequel one the first things they wanted to address was the variety of environments. We wanted to create a much more diverse palette of locations for the player to see and experience. In so doing, the expectations that we carried from FEAR’s close quarters combat differed from what actually happened. One of the blessings of the close quarter combat was the way it created moments of incredibly high intensity, fast encounters. It was just the nature of the space and how players ended up utilizing it. When we opened the world up we found that encounters changed as a result. They weren’t the same frenetic combat experience as before. That’s not to say it wasn’t fun, it just means that players were forced to change their strategies and find new ways of overcoming foes who aren’t as easy to flank due to the space. This variation of combat styles, afforded by the different environments, gave us the opportunity to change the pacing of the game more dramatically and incorporate opportunities for AI advancement like object interaction, environmental hazards and taking advantage of world based combat opportunities. All of these things became necessary when started to broaden that scope of our visual experience.

Q: Downloadable content is pretty much a given for most all major releases these days. Can you shed some light on what we should expect to see and whether or not platforms will receive exclusive content?

A: We understand how important DLC is these days, so keep on the lookout for some announcements.

Q: The original F.E.A.R hit PC's first, then consoles much later. With F.E.A.R 2 we're seeing a simultaneous launch on PS3, 360 and PC, should PC gamers fear a compromise in the attention to their version?

A: We restructured our pipelines for FEAR2. The first game PC was the lead and the ports happened later(and not by us). After the dust settled, we went back and changed our pipelines so that we build for all three platforms simultaneously. Its great. It affords us the opportunity to tune the exact feel and vibe of an asset and verify it across all three simultaneously. Its has helped the process so much and now we don’t feel like we have a lead skew with others to follow that might not be exactly what we intended.

Q: What were some of your most memorable moments from the development of F.E.A.R 2?

A: Wow there are some great moments that just throw themselves at me. Let me just list them. Engaging our community for a new name. Getting the name FEAR back. Getting the EPA experience to feel right. Remnant fights and the blue sky that created them. Getting it out the door. Doing the press tours and sharing my excitement with the press. Meeting the community and seeing how passionate they are about the game and universe…The list goes on and on.

Be sure to check out our full Preview of Project Origin, and keep an eye out for our review closer to the game's release on 13th February.