00:02www.mesmerism.info
00:30www.mesmerism.info
01:05www.mesmerism.info
01:06www.mesmerism.info
01:07Well, the New York City for our game is really, it's the backdrop, it's the grounding thing which makes everything
01:12fantastic which happens in the game plausible.
01:14You want somewhere that's recognizable, somewhere that's iconic, somewhere that everyone can identify with.
01:19And I think most people, if they were offered an opportunity to go there, would go there because it's a
01:23really exciting, energetic, amazing city.
01:27Well, a couple things about our New York is it's probably the most densely packed city you've ever seen in
01:33terms of gameplay per square foot.
01:35There's so many fantastic events and fantastic things that the player can do in this game.
01:39We felt it was more impactful to set that against a hardcore background of reality, New York in 2008.
01:46And of course, New York is probably the most iconic city in the world, so what better city than that?
01:50New York City itself is a character, and in my view as an art director, it is the main character.
01:56Yes, it's a backdrop to story, but my approach visually is that this is my main character, and it's going
02:01to have a character arc.
02:02And I'm going to grow this story of New York and add to its history as it pertains to Prototype.
02:09Well, Skip's a visionary for this game, and the quality of his work has constantly driven both the art team
02:15to realize that
02:15and aspire to bringing a game visual as compelling as his concept.
02:20There was a team that went to New York City, took tons of photos to get a good sense of
02:25New York.
02:26But now we have these photos, but what's New York?
02:28I see it's flat, it's 2D, but what does that mean?
02:31I still have to turn it into a three-dimensional space.
02:34It seemed to me that what he was envisioning was huge volumetric cloud systems,
02:42sort of the great beams of light filtering from the skies, the great contrast in the colors.
02:48I sort of sat back and said, this will never happen.
02:50That's not a video game, that's a movie, that's way too insane.
02:53But we time and time keep delivering those things, and we pick the right elements to erase and say,
02:58hey, we can't do that, but we do a lot of what's in those concepts.
03:01And then when you compare the concepts to the game now, it's frightening how close they are.
03:07I paint these concepts that you see and start to visualize New York City for prototype.
03:13It's very important to me to hear the sounds.
03:15Prototype has a very specific tone.
03:19It's pretty dark, and audio plays a really big role in supporting that tone.
03:23And, of course, New York City being in a real environment and representing that environment in a contemporary and very
03:30realistic way.
03:31It's a very dynamic world. It's changing all the time.
03:34You know, there's time of day.
03:36There's dynamic levels of number of pedestrians and vehicles and traffic, and things are always changing.
03:42So keeping up with that and representing that in the sound is one of our primary goals, and it's definitely
03:48a challenge.
03:53Approximately 20% of the land mass of Manhattan is parks.
03:56So everybody thinks of it as a concrete city, but there's a lot of greenery in there.
04:00So it was a challenge to have enough foliage and enough greenery in the world with enough variety of the
04:05buildings,
04:05because you're almost trying to capture two games.
04:07A lot of people do a jungle game or a city game, but we almost have both.
04:11You learn. You learn the city. You get to know it.
04:14You get to know the neighborhoods. There's all these landmarks everywhere.
04:17So you start feeling at home eventually after you've played it for a certain amount of time.
04:21So it has that growth, like movies do.
04:23You know, you start scared and this in the beginning, and then you're all very powerful at the end,
04:28knowing your neighborhood, knowing your environment, and discovering it.
04:30Right now, it blows me away.
04:33Like, you know, we look down what's 5th Ave, and we just are amazed.
04:36We see the vistas. We see the buildings reaching off into the background in the fog,
04:41reaching out out of the fog into the sky. It just looks amazing.
04:43And the night stuff that we're doing is coming online very recently, and it's beautiful.
04:47And what you see are these great flows, almost natural-like rhythms in the vehicles and the pedestrians
04:52as they move through sort of the natural cycle of the day, and the sun rises and the sun sets,
04:57and all the lights in the building turn on and all the lights in the building turn off.
05:02And it's this beautiful flow, and that was also a flow that we were trying to capture in this video
05:08game
05:08by having our sort of dynamic time of day.
05:13I hope these making-off pieces are interested to people who are interested in learning about the game,
05:18that they get something out of this.
05:20But when they'll really see it is when they see the gameplay come together,
05:22they'll see videos out there for gameplay, which I know I'm seeing every day when you're making the game.
05:27So when you see those videos come online, on the web, on TV, there won't be any room for debate.
05:33You know, a lot of games, you know, do hype and pre-market, you know, and try to sell before
05:38they come out
05:38and build up the buzz.
05:39And, you know, I'll be honest, I mean, we're doing that too here.
05:41I mean, we're part of the marketplace.
05:42But if you know something about me personally, okay, I don't, I'm a realist.
05:47I don't over-promise.
05:49What I say, I frickin' deliver.
05:52So if you're seeing something here in these videos and you're not believing it,
05:55and you're not believing what we're saying, and you're not believing that we can pull it off,
05:59you're wrong.
05:59We will.
06:02We'll be right back.
