Unreal Ops Interview

First of all thanks for taking the time to read this article. I had been waiting for the chance to get some questions off to the Lucas Arts Team for almost a year. In 3 years of doing news, they were the hardest developers to ever get in contact with. However all of the hard work and patience paid off this week. In my Inbox yesterday I received an email with a .doc and a .zip of new screenies. Associate Producer Matt Fillbrandt, Director Tim Longo and Line Producer Chris Williams all pitched in to answer questions.

I thought I would try something different with this interview. Instead of generalizing the questions, I would put them in groups. One set for the content team, one set for the artists and one set for everyone else. It was a little different but I think it paid off. After reading this article make sure you stop by the forums and let me know what you think of doing it this way. Enough rambling on to the interview....

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20041105091648/http://www.unrealops.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Reviews&file=index&req=showcontent&id=145

How did the idea of Republic Commando come about?

We wanted to create a uniquely dark and militaristic Star Wars FPS, which featured finely tuned combat and accessible squad gameplay that would provide a broad audience with a dramatic \"Special Forces\" experience.


What was it like to get to tell a new story set in Star Wars history?

RC allows the player to look at the Clone Wars from the perspective of a Clone Commando deep behind enemy lines. This enables us to present the Star Wars universe in a new light and that is very exciting.


What were the limits on the ideas?

We want to make a “realistic” military experience in the Star Wars universe. In that regard, we want the player to feel like they are living the experience of a Republic Commando during the Clone Wars, so we always try to make sure that everything that we do meets those criteria. Those are self-imposed limitations. Even though we are taking the Star Wars license in a darker, more serious direction, we still have to live in that universe and abide by the parameters that the movies, books and to some degree previous games has laid before us.


Did you get to have access to all of the Lucasfilm files to get details on characters?

We started with many of the ILM film models and after some modifications we able to use them to generate normal maps for our character models. These models are frequently over 300,000 polygons so when that detail shows up in the normal map our game character models look fantastic!


Where you able to create new characters or creature for this project?

Some of the characters in the game will be familiar to the player but many will be new. Even the familiar ones have been given a design overhaul so that they match the dark, gritty, military feeling of our game. Just wait until you see the Wookiee!


Are there plans for Multi-Player in the PC version?

Definitely.
We’ll have deathmatch, team deathmatch, and CTF.


What did you have to limit doing know that it was going to be a cross platform game instead of PC only?

We didn\'t have to limit anything, but we have to be very careful to ensure that we provide a great gaming experience on both the PC and the Xbox. Nobody wants to play a console game on their PC! We are working hard to ensure the graphics and audio as well as the controls, balance, and difficulty are all perfectly tuned for both the PC and the Xbox. Our goal is that the game should not feel like a \"port\" on either platform.


What was it like working with the Unreal Engine?

Unreal gave the team a great foundation on which to build the game. We were able to prototype our ideas early in development - paper designs were very quickly turned into playable examples of what we wanted to achieve.


Are they plans to have Mod support for the gaming community?

We are planning on releasing the Editor post launch.


Have any of you met Mr. Lucas? Has he seen the game?

Some of the team have met him. I personally don’t know if he has seen actual gameplay, but I know he is aware of it and has seen both of our trailers.


What can I say but wow! I can't wait to play a nice looking FPS set in the Star Wars Universe. I liked all of the games they had so far but they just didn't have the power to do them justice. I think with them using the Unreal Engine we should see a very, very nice looking game this time around.


I want to thank JCal of HomeLanFed and Ronda Scott of Lucas Arts for making this article possible.

Tycho March 23rd 2004