Luckee was able to recently sit down with members of the Giants: Citizen Kabuto development team for an interview while on his trip to Comdex. the following is a transcript from that interview.

Luckee:   Who came up with the idea?

Tim: Actually this was started by Planet Moon, the original developer of MDK, who was started by our subsidiary company Shining.  They are the guys doing Sacrifice right now.  But the original MDK team went off and started their own company called the Planet Moon Studios, which are the developers of Giants.  It really started with Nick Brudy and Bob ??, sorry I can’t remember Bob’s last name.

The story takes place on this planet that the guys crash land on.  As soon as they are on this planet they realize there is all of this politicking going on.  The smarties are kind of a mix between your B sources and your peasants from your normal strategy games.  You use your smarties who are like the oppressed-race in Giants.  So the Mech got there and they try to liberate the smarties.  When they liberate the smarties they find out that other people live on this planet as well.  These people are called Seareapers, whose people are more or less evil.   One of the Seareapers, named Delphi, doesn’t go around listening to the same dogma that most of the Seareapers are making her prescribe to.  Because of this she ends up fighting her mom who is another Seareaper. 

They have created this big construct called Kabuto.  Kabuto ends up defying everyone and goes on this murderous rampage throughout the whole island.  So this is basically where it ends.  You go around destroying everything you can get your hands on and you are really seeing the story from three different perspectives, which hopefully expands the depth of the game.

Luckee:  Yesterday was the first time I saw the demo and I haven’t seen anything like this before.  I’ve seen the Quake graphics and the Soldier of Fortune Unreal graphics but this is something new in the industry.  What engine are you using?

Tim: This is something made especially for Giants.  It has been in development for a while now.

Luckee: So it is not something that you’re using to copy, it is brand new?

Tim:  Yes it is brand new, it is not like a Quake or Unreal engine product, it is 100% Giants work.

Luckee:  The main focus, theme and characters of Giants is the setting which is back in…..

Tim:  The setting is very sci-fi, very chic.  Most of the development team is British so it really smacks you with the British humor.  If you’ve looked at a lot of Shining games, you can tell just by looking at it what kind of product or game it is.  Sure there is a lot of violence, but it is the cartoon-like violence.  The main point here is to have fun playing Giants, but it is also supposed to be funny.

Luckee: How did you incorporate textures into this game and will it really take advantage of the new Geforce 2 cards and the future Geforce 2 cards?

Tim: Yes. Nvidia has been taking care of the Planet Moon guys.  I believe that they got one of the first Geforce cards that came out so they have been able to take advantage of everything it has to offer.  Which is great and it has been nice.  At one point Giants was very VooDoo specific and it is no longer solely dependent on it now. so companies like Nvidia benefit from this because there technology is on most cards out today.

Luckee:  So it brings the graphical detail, like falling stones…..

Tim:  Yes, we are doing different things like transformant lighting, we are going the DX 8 route.

Luckee: Does this incorporate all that DirectX 8 can do?

Tim:  Yes it should be fully compatible with DX8.

Luckee:  What about sound?

Tim:  They are using EAX, Environmental Audio Extension, so people who have the Sound Blaster Live! cards should really be impressed with what they hear. 

Luckee:  Is this one of those games that because of the graphics you can’t get up from it?  You just want to sit there playing level after level?

Tim:  Yes and it’s funny because I still enjoy playing it.  That doesn’t happen often in game development because you have to play and play the game and it gets to a point where you want to be done with it.  You have this type of mentality where you don’t want to play anymore.  But this game, I still play.  I think it is because of all of the mayhem you can cause.  Everything in Giants has massive potential for wholesale destruction.  There’s nothing better than causing that kind of damage all over the place.

Luckee:  Would you say that this kind of hits three different genres, first person, third person and RPG?

Tim:  Actually if I had to say it hit three genres, it would definitely hit third person action, first person action and probably realtime strategy because you have to go out and get the resources, the smarties, and you have to put them to work.  So there’s a lot of that strategic kind of element that is in it.

Luckee:  Does it have multi-player capabilities?

Tim:  Yes there are multi-player capabilities but it is going to be a little unconventional.  People are used to playing one on one, which is generally not the way it works in Giants.  You can’t have two Kabutos, there’s only one, and since there is only one you can have a game where one person plays the big giant Kabuto and everyone else plays the Mechs.

Luckee:  Is it a “come and get me” kind of thing?

Tim:  Exactly.  There are already nice little tactics that people have developed like Kabuto’s weak spot, which is right around his groin.  The only way you can hit the weak spot or the only way he becomes vulnerable is by getting close to him.  As you get closer to him his weak spot opens up.  So what people have noticed is that they can attack Kabuto as a team.  One guy gets really close and the weak spot opens up.  Then he runs around Kabuto in a circle while everyone else takes pop shots from far away.  Strategies open up like that.  Or you could be a group of Mechicans or Seareapers.

Luckee:  Can you have up to 16 playing?

Tim:  It really depends on your server speed.  Right now we’ve been playing with about eight.

Luckee:  Your main job title is Senior Producer, what does that entail?

Tim:  Everything my Director tells me to do.  When you are a producer you have a lot more to do with management and budget concerns.  You have to watch your artists, designers, and musicians, making sure everyone is licensed just fine.  And if you clean out the nasty refrigerator, well then that’s your job too.  So basically my job is making sure everything goes down fine.

Luckee:  As far as making this game, what is the best thing you worked on?

Tim:  I can’t speak for the development team, only for what I have experienced as I have been at Interplay.  I would say the hardest part about a game like Giants is that you have a team that is very talented that always have cool ideas.  So what you have to do is decide for yourself when enough is enough.  I call it the “wouldn’t it be cool” phase.  That’s how game design is, a bunch of guys sitting around saying this will enhance game play or that will enhance game play so you get to a place where you go “hey that would all be cool” but if we do that we’ll never ship on time.

Luckee:  Too many ideas slow the process and you never get anywhere because you can’t ever finalize one idea?

Tim:   Yes. So it is really hard to cut it or to say, “after this we’re done.”

Luckee:   Do you expect the PC version to be released first and do you expect the Playstation 2 version to be graphically similar?

Tim: The PC version should be out next month.  The Playstation 2 version will emphasize different things.  Will it look better? Maybe, because we can use more polys on the characters, but it won’t be so obvious that people will find the PC version vastly inferior.  We are just trying to take advantage of everything the different platforms have to offer.

Luckee:  In that platform can they also have multiplayer?

Tim:  Yes the features will be very similar.

Luckee:   Well I’d like to thank you for your time in sitting down to do this inverview with me.

Part 2

Luckee:  When you have a project there are artists and level designers worrying about the job and working on that particular project, but your job is to work with Travis?

Chuck: Yes because one manager can’t oversee 25 guys, you’re just not capable of doing it. It is more than just 25 guys though, because Travis takes care of three different titles, one out-of-house and two in-house.I am helping him with the in-house versions, Giants and Run Like Hell.

Luckee:  In your opinion did having you help Travis make the project run smooth?

Chuck: Yeah.  It was definitely a learning experience for me and I don’t expect to be his AP forever, much to his chagrin.

Travis:  If he was my AP forever, it would shock him.

Luckee:  What is your full name and title?

Chuck:   Chuck Waveson, I’m the Associate Producer.

Luckee:   Travis’ sidekick … hehehehe.

Chuck:   On Giants Playstation and Run Like Hell, yes.

Luckee:  Thanks again to you both for your time.