Nuts & Bolts DLC “definitely possible”
Miller and Harrison reiterate reason for sequel-making.
A few days after another interview with the dynamic duo, Elissa Miller and Neill Harrison were the spokesperson of another interview, this time with Videogamer.com. And as we always do, we find ways of dissecting what was already said in order to find the new info. Onwards we go!
In regards to the whole creationist concept going around in other games such as Spore and LittleBigPlanet, Harrison specified: “It’s interesting that a lot of developers have simultaneously done this. Certainly on our part we started the development before we knew about those games, and I’m sure they started before they knew about us. So it’s strange that we all started to go down this route at the same time. I don’t know why it happened, but it is interesting!”
Testing for games like these always take a while, due to the fact that you have to find every possible action that a gamer can do once the game is released in the public. “Every time someone plays a challenge they’ll do it differently, whereas in previous games you’d have 50 testers playing the levels and it’d be the same each time – jump here, grab this. It’s much harder to test a game like this, but it’s been testing for a long time now and we’ve certainly fixed an awful lot of bugs,” comments Harrison.
Of course, you can see how the vehicle editor was the biggest challenge of testing “trying to make it functional and very powerful but also easy to use.” Harrison thinks that “the whole concept of being able to build things in 3D, being able to move components in three dimensions and rotate them about every axis is something that could be quite complicated for the average person,” and that’s why the vehicle editor “went through a lot of changes to get it as simple as possible.” So, the team feels “quite proud of that now” and they believe that “there’s not much more” they “could have done to make it easy to build vehicles.” What’s of interest is a little pre-development info on how the vehicle editor previously was: “We’ve always had the grid, but in older versions you had to keep all the components attached at all times, otherwise they would fall and drop to the bottom of the screen. I remember this massive moment at some point during last year where I thought, “I don’t want to play it like this.” I wanted it to be like my Lego, where I’d be able to lay out the blocks in front of me on the floor, or wherever, and then decide where they went.”
As for DLC through Xbox Live Arcade, there are no current plans for it, yet it’s “definitely possible”, according to Harrison. “People always assume we’re not allowed to say, but actually most of the time we don’t even know! But yeah, we’ll finish this and then we’ll think about what’s next,” he explains.
For those excited of what else is there to see, better keep your eyes and ears on the internet close to the Tokyo Game Show: “There are two entire game worlds that nobody has seen yet – we might be revealing those at Tokyo. The thing is, it’s such a massive game that what we’ve shown so far is barely a quarter of the actual experience,” said Miller. Also, Harrison states that “there are lots of components” they haven’t shown off yet: “There are over 100 challenges – we’ve only ever shown off a handful of them.”
You can’t end interviews (or articles) like these without a mention of possible sequels. In the past we’ve been told that a sequel to N&B would expand on the concept that this game is trying to establish. Miller explains in a rather simple way why there aren’t sequels made out the wazoo over there at Rare: “It’s not like we just say, “Let’s do another Perfect Dark.” There has to be a reason: the right team, the right resources, the right concept.”
To check out the entire interview, this link to the interview should come in handy. MundoRare will keep you updated on the latest Nuts & Bolts developments even through our horrible Piñata addictions.
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2 Comments
Downloadable content.
Comment by teditor — 26.Sep.08 @ 4:27 am
What’s DLC?
Comment by Hamilton — 26.Sep.08 @ 1:08 am