00:00www.turtlerockstudios.com
00:30www.turtlerockstudios.com
01:00www.turtlerockstudios.com
01:04www.turtlerockstudios.com
01:05www.turtlerockstudios.com
01:07www.turtlerockstudios.com
01:08www.turtlerockstudios.com
01:10www.turtlerockstudios.com
01:11I mean, from a visual standpoint,
01:14you know, we just kind of dove into it,
01:16not really sure what we wanted to do. I think the initial goal
01:18was to come up with monsters
01:20that, you know, something that
01:22you'd never seen before, right? And so
01:23what we ended up with were
01:25some monsters that
01:26as works of art were really cool,
01:29but you would look at them and you
01:31didn't know what the hell you were looking at, right? They were
01:33just kind of so strange that
01:35they weren't really scary, one, and
01:37two, as a monster player you couldn't connect with
01:39them. The thing that we find is, you know,
01:41you want to be attached to your character,
01:43right? Hunters. Monsters
01:45are no different, right? I mean, if I'm going to play
01:47the monster, I want their, I want to have some
01:49kind of connection to that creature, right?
01:51We gave Goliath lips, right?
01:53So that the animators could pull them back,
01:55you know, and have them snarl, and, you know,
01:57and eyelids that can, you know, allow them to blink.
01:59Suddenly they were characters instead of
02:01these sort of abstract pieces of art.
02:06Scatter now!
02:16There's a lot of function and form that
02:18has to, you know, they have to coexist
02:21at all times and simultaneously.
02:23That, you know, it has to look a certain
02:24way, but that's also going to allow it to
02:27control a certain way, because
02:28unlike, say, maybe an AI-controlled creature
02:31that can have sort of a limited range of behavior,
02:33this has to be fully player-controlled
02:35and be enjoyable, so there has to be
02:37sort of a good range of what you can do with it.
02:39And a challenge there is,
02:41you know, in most games with a boss battle,
02:44the boss has these routines
02:45that he runs, and they go through these cycles
02:47that are, you figure out the rhythms,
02:49right, and then you can beat them.
02:50But as soon as that is player-controlled,
02:52now there's no rhythms,
02:54so now we have to, we put Tell's,
02:56a good example would be
02:58Goliath's Rock Throw, where he
03:00physically goes to pick up the rock
03:02and puts it over his head.
03:03And even though that's player-controlled,
03:04and the player has complete control
03:06of when he releases that rock,
03:07I've already seen that he's going to throw a rock
03:09as a player, so I'm ready to dodge, right?
03:12You create these windows,
03:13and you gotta ride that Razor's Edge,
03:15and that's where kind of the fun gameplay
03:17comes out between the two teams.
03:30When you first started out with the game,
03:33with the monsters and where they are now,
03:36a lot has happened.
03:38The evolution of Goliath and Kraken,
03:41if you could sort of detail, like,
03:42what you thought you were, you know,
03:44you were going to be doing at the beginning,
03:46and then we could talk about sort of
03:47where it is now.
03:48Each monster always sort of
03:49filled a specific role,
03:51so we always knew off the bat
03:52that Goliath was the brawler,
03:54and he needed to get up close,
03:56always close the distance
03:57to get close to the hunters
03:58to sort of seal the deal.
04:00When we started,
04:01it was originally first person.
04:02It was a tedious affair,
04:03I guess, to say the least,
04:05to try to keep track of four guys
04:07who are all just ganging up on you.
04:09It's just frustrating for the player,
04:11like, it wasn't an enjoyable experience.
04:13We played the game for a long time
04:14in first person,
04:15and one of the things
04:15that we never really saw
04:17was the sense of scale
04:18or, like, change.
04:20The evolution,
04:21the name of the game,
04:21was something that we had to sell.
04:22We knew that much,
04:23and you raise a camera up
04:24a few feet or even a couple meters,
04:26it wasn't really,
04:27there was no impact.
04:29Definitely nothing exciting.
04:30Getting taller is only part of it.
04:32Like, it's very difficult to sell,
04:35like, a sense of weight and size.
04:39It just feels like you're driving,
04:41like, the crappiest car ever.
04:43You know?
04:44It takes forever to turn around,
04:46you know,
04:47you're trying to turn the corner
04:48and you're just driving a boat,
04:50you know,
04:50and we were trying all these different things
04:51to say, like,
04:52you're big, you're powerful now,
04:54you can knock down trees and things,
04:56but it just always felt
04:57like a frustrating work
04:59to make that happen.
05:00Yeah.
05:01If we could see the monster,
05:02I can sell his weight,
05:04how big he is,
05:05we could make him look really cool
05:07and you know that's you,
05:09like, why are we hiding
05:10the cool-looking monster?
05:13We were actually kind of worried that,
05:14hey, if this third-person monster thing works,
05:16it might be shut down
05:17just on the premise
05:18that it's too different
05:19from the other part of the game,
05:20and, like,
05:21maybe that juxtaposition
05:22isn't going to make sense to people,
05:23but it was cool
05:24because the reaction was,
05:25wow, the monster,
05:26they feel like their own experience now.
05:27The monster is his own guy,
05:29the hunters are their own guys,
05:30and it was, like,
05:31just kind of this accidental byproduct
05:32that it actually added something
05:33for them to be different,
05:34so that was really cool.
05:48You know, we say monster
05:50and I think we're conditioned to go
05:51bad guy,
05:52or thing which I should be
05:53very comfortable to loathe,
05:54but really in the game,
05:57they're remarkable animals.
05:59Like, there really isn't
06:00that kind of a moral judgment
06:01that's passed on them,
06:03and, you know,
06:03maybe sort of an allusion
06:05to, you know,
06:06movies like King Kong,
06:07you know, there's,
06:07at times I couldn't help
06:09but have a degree of pathos
06:10even sometimes when I was the hunter.
06:12I mean,
06:13did you always kind of see it
06:15as having,
06:16I don't want to say moral ambiguity,
06:17but actually a moral equity
06:19between the hunters
06:21and the monsters?
06:22Yeah, I think so.
06:23I mean,
06:23the thing about the monsters
06:25that we decided very early on
06:27is we're not telling you
06:29where they're from,
06:30we're not telling you
06:30what their motivations are,
06:32right?
06:33That's all left to your imagination.
06:35Certainly when I'm playing
06:36as the monster,
06:37I feel like I'm the good guy
06:38and they're the bad guys,
06:39and of course,
06:40vice versa, right?
06:41I mean,
06:41that is one of the most
06:42sort of fun aspects,
06:44is it is indulging,
06:46I think,
06:47many sort of childhood fancies
06:48so many of us
06:49have always had.
06:51I mean,
06:51I assume that must have been
06:53ridiculous fun
06:54in the beginning
06:54to just kind of
06:55think of the monster,
06:56think of the monster's
06:57sort of rule set,
06:59and just come up with
07:00all of that logic.
07:01I mean,
07:02very few people get to have,
07:03you know,
07:04that indulgence.
07:05Yeah,
07:05that was such a huge
07:07opportunity for us,
07:09being able to get it signed
07:10and actually build the game
07:11that we wanted to make,
07:12you know,
07:12and it was really,
07:13it was really us
07:15sitting there
07:16fantasizing about,
07:18you know,
07:18all the different things that,
07:19oh,
07:20and you could have a harpoon gun
07:21that you could shoot
07:22and it would stop the monster,
07:23but then he could smash,
07:24he could break it,
07:24and so going through
07:26all of that stuff
07:27and then,
07:27and actually seeing it,
07:28you know,
07:29become reality
07:30is amazing.
07:38One of the great pleasures
07:40of conducting these interviews
07:41and hopefully for all of you
07:43in watching them
07:44is in such a fascinating look
07:45at the creative process
07:47of a talented developer.
07:48The experimentation,
07:50the risks,
07:51all in pursuit of something
07:53that wants to be fundamentally fun.
07:56From what I can see,
07:57that's been accomplished,
07:58but there's one more step
07:59in this creative evolution
08:01and that's all of us
08:03playing the game.
08:04environment
08:07talking about it.
08:24To be a comic book.
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