Bounty
رحمه الله
IGNPC: The end is nigh! Episode One focuses on City 17's imminent destruction following Gordon's assault on The Citadel in Half-Life 2. Is this the final goodbye for this now famous video game city?
Erik Johnson: Much of Episode One deals with the aftermath of your actions in Half-Life 2. As you and Alyx battle through City 17, you'll be forced to deal with the Combine reaction. Episode One will change the face of City 17, but that's not to say you won't be returning.
IGNPC: You would think that The Citadel being destroyed would be a good thing for all, but it's causing some other problems (aside from the whole shadow of death thing) for people fleeing the city. What are some of these new gameplay challenges?
Erik Johnson: The Citadel being destroyed is a good thing overall, but the specific way it is coming apart is the real problem for Gordon and Alyx. Breen's failure in the citadel has disappointed the Combine, and their response isn't good news for the resistance. The chaos within City 17 has turned their attention inwards, so they're not doing as good a job keeping some of the more unfriendly monsters out of the City.
IGNPC: Was the decision to help the city pass on partly motivated by a desire to move the action to a new locale?
Erik Johnson: One of the things we love to do is to change the world in large ways as a result of Gordon's actions. In Half-Life 1, he caused the resonance cascade that opened the portal to Xen, ultimately leading to the Combine invasion of Earth. In Half-Life 2, he sparked the resistance movement and overthrew Dr Breen. In Episode One, Gordon's actions are going to have far reaching repercussions, affecting much more than just City 17.
IGNPC: In the last little audio clip in the recently released trailer the G-Man seems a little… upset. What's going on with him? Is he losing his grip on Gordon?
Erik Johnson: The G-Man used the events of Black Mesa to transform Gordon into a powerful tool, and he used that tool to overthrow Dr Breen. In Episode One, the G-Man loses control of Gordon due to the rise of a third power. Clearly, he's not very happy about this.
IGNPC: What's up with the other characters? How the hell did Alyx survive that final assault on The Citadel? Has the G-Man taken an interest in her as well?
Erik Johnson: We'll be answering these questions directly in Episode One. The relationship between the G-Man and other characters will be one of the central themes of the episodes.
IGNPC: We've seen some screenshots with different types of creatures and the Episode One trailer mentioned stalkers a bit. What are these guys? Can we expect to see new enemy types in most of the episodes in the future?
Erik Johnson: Stalkers are the result of how the Combine dealt with the residents of City 17 that resisted them. Each Episode will be introducing you to more of the Combine.
IGNPC: Has it been difficult to create new and interesting gameplay designs when you're following up the widely varied gameplay of Half-Life 2?
Erik Johnson: Absolutely not. One of the design philosophies we have is a concept of design economy. This is a belief that the more individual design elements interconnect, the better the game. This belief led to design elements like the gravity gun. For example, you can use it to upright your car, pull an item from a distance, throw enemy grenades back, launch saw blades into zombies, and so on. Half-Life 2 was a dense game, with many elements, so while we did strive to connect as many of its elements as we could, we feel we left a lot of opportunities on the table. At the point we started Episode One, we had a much larger set of gameplay ideas than we did at the start of Half-Life 2, and we were able to prototype them in weeks instead of years.
IGNPC: Are you hoping to stick to roughly the same balance of puzzle and gameplay that was in Half-Life 2 in each of the episodes or are you going to be mixing it up a bit and focusing on different types of play in each individual episode?
Erik Johnson: To us, pacing is about ensuring players are having fun without ever getting fatigued. Fatigue can be felt for a variety of reasons, but it's often a result of being in a repetitive experience for too long. We use constant playtesting throughout the production process as a method of evaluating player fatigue, and use tools such as combat, puzzles, visual rewards, and environmental changes as ways to reduce that fatigue. So while there may be a similar balance between those elements as there was in Half-Life 2, the individual elements are new and different.
IGNPC: What does having an episodic structure open up for you from both the story and gameplay perspective? Has it been easier working on a smaller experience or is the prospect of chaining smaller pieces together from a much larger project daunting?
Erik Johnson: Yes, and I would think the team at Ritual would tell you the same thing. During the six years of Half-Life 2 development, we realized - from working on more iteratively developed projects such as TFC, CS, and DOD - that we could make better Half-Life game experiences via an episodic approach. Allowing the team to concentrate on a specific episode has allowed them to live and breathe just that area and not three parts of a game that need to be stitched together with two or three other parts built by someone else. From our customer's perspective, this means they should be getting content more regularly, and of higher quality.
IGNPC: Have you been able to accomplish what you wanted to with Episode One? Are you on track for including all you want in Episode Two?
Erik Johnson: Whenever we finish a project we always have a bunch of things we wish we could have worked on just a little bit longer, but that's just the reality of shipping. The final days of a project are always a mix of excited anticipation of our customer's reactions, and fear that we've made some decisions during the project that will hurt us. Actually, Episode One is definitely a lot less scary than Half-Life 2, because it's only been over a year or so since we shipped Half-Life 2. When we shipped Half-Life 2 we'd been away for almost six years. That's plenty of time to torpedo a project with an upfront decision, and only find out about it when it's too late to change it.
IGNPC: Was the recently announced Episode Two originally a part of the Aftermath expansion pack or were these games always conceived as smaller episodes?
Erik Johnson: They've always been thought of as Episodes.
IGNPC: Do you already have a structure of where the story is going with these episodes? Are these episodes planned to eventually lead into a Half-Life 3?
Erik Johnson: Part of the strength of episodic production is being fluid and responding to how customers react to previous episodes. With the Episodes, we're working towards a specific event, and we have a plan for how we get there. Some of the details may change along the way, but the core is etched in stone.
IGNPC: Since the Half-Life 2 episodes don't actually require Half-Life 2 to play them, will there be some sort of "previously on" type of recap for players that might not have played through the previous Half-Life games?
Erik Johnson: We'll be addressing this inside of the Episodes, but not necessarily going back into the Half-Life 1 or Half-Life 2 storylines given their size. At the end of the Episode One there will be a short teaser for Episode Two.
IGNPC: How often are you hoping to have new episodes for gamers to play through?
Erik Johnson: Episode Two has been in production for some time, and we'll be talking about it in more detail immediately after Episode One is made available.
IGNPC: Anything else you'd like the readers to know about Episode One specifically or the Episodes in general?
Erik Johnson: Thanks for reading this far.
الصور داخل المقابله بهذي الوصله http://pc.ign.com/articles/703/703602p1.html
صراحه الصور لا تعليق :jawDrop::
الجرافكس تطور ^_^ اهم شي alyx امبدعه بهالحلقه 😛