The fact that it's delayed just proves to me that Ubisoft is getting serious about the quality of their Wii games. So even though we won't be able to play it this year, lets work up a little anticipation and excitment for one of many big Wii exclusives coming in 2010.
Honestly, this game is taking a lot of risks. It's making a peripheral required for play. It's completely breaking art style, setting, and character away from the previous game. It's defining a whole new style of action gameplay from a first-person perspective. I'm excited to find out what the results will be.
I suspect this character will be one of the bosses in the game:
And here the game's creative director, Jason Vandenberghe, takes the time to answer many community questions about the game:
http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/6421073957/m/7461098867/p/1
Will the controls be the same than Red Steel 1? [supermarioM from Nintendo Master]
From Jason Vandenberghe, Creative Director
quote:Well… as the core gameplay has changed pretty dramatically from a shooting-focus to a sword-focus, this has of course had a big effect on the control scheme. So, no, not even close.
Our controls are built around movement and melee combat. For navigation, you use the left stick for motion and point the Wii MotionPlus at the screen for turning, and during combat, you slash with your katana by swinging the Wii MotionPlus (not waggling! Swing!), pressing the B button (the trigger) to shoot, and pressing A to block. Really, that’s the core – there are more controls available, but that’s the stuff you’ll need to master to play.
A key detail: there is no “weapon switching” between the sword and the gun. At any time, you can swing the Wii Remote, or press B to shoot, and the result is instantaneous. In Red Steel 2, you fight with your sword and your gun at the same time.
We’ve also spent a huge amount of time working on refining our pointing, turning, strafing, and aiming mechanics – those were a common complaint from the first game. We feel that there isn’t any room for compromise this time – the FPS controls for Red Steel 2 have to be great, period, and we think we’ve done that. You’ll have to tell us if you agree when you play it.
Is the Wii MotionPlus fully exploited in Red Steel 2? [Faloux from Nintendo Master, Dr.Coxy from Aussie-Nintendo]
From Jason Vandenberghe, Creative Director
quote:I’m not 100% sure what this question means… but I think I get the general idea. I’m going to assume for my answer that you are asking whether or not there are features of the Wii Motion Plus that we aren’t using, and how much effort we have made to take advantage of the new hardware… if that isn’t it, go ahead and re-send a more specific question and we’ll answer that one in the next Q&A.
Under the hood, the Wii MotionPlus is basically a gyroscope. It tells us (to a pretty remarkable amount of accuracy) precisely what angle the Wii Remote is pointing in space at all times. We’ve constructed our entire gameplay combat input system around having this information. The basic “first-person slash” mechanic doesn’t function without the Wii MotionPlus. The Wii MotionPlus is so core to our experience that we made the (controversial!) decision to require it for play.
So, I’m comfortable saying that from a design and gameplay standpoint, we’ve absolutely fully exploited the Wii Motion Plus. Hell yes, in fact.
So, then what about development effort?
We knew from the moment we got our hands on the hardware that this would be a key feature for us. So, from the start we’ve had a core group of programmers, designers, animators (and, at need, anyone that team needs), dedicated purely to adding, iterating, and polishing Wii MotionPlus input and replication features. This group of super-wizards is adding and refining MotionPlus attack, defense, and basic interaction features pretty much every day of their working lives, and have been for well over a year now. So, again, hell yes.
Let’s say it this way: there are likely very few teams on the planet who have had a greater opportunity than the Red Steel team to learn, use, and exploit the features of the Wii MotionPlus hardware. In many ways, it’s what we do.
What major difficulties have you met integrating the Wii MotionPlus to the project? [supermarioM from Nintendo master]
From Jason Vandenberghe, Creative Director
quote:Let’s see.
Well, to start with, we had to redesign the entire gameplay system. Since there were very few examples of this kind of first-person fighting out there (and nothing that used motion controls… except for Red Steel 1), we had to invent it, pretty much from scratch.
When we realized that we had something cool, we realized we needed to redesign the gameplay setting, all the enemies, the hero himself, the story, and make the (again) controversial decision to not use the same characters and setting as the first game.
Integrating the Wii Motion Plus meant that we had to redesign the entire game, basically. But, I don’t think that’s quite what you mean: maybe you are asking about more technical integration issues?
It turns out that, really, the hardest part about using the Wii Motion Plus is deciding what to do
with all the data. Getting the data is straightforward (in programming terms, anyway), but then what?
The short version is that we do an extensive amount of analysis and filtering of that data to try and predict what you (the player) are trying to do with your sword (the Wii Remote). Everyone moves the weapon a little bit differently, and we have to have a system that works for everyone. That’s complicated. As an example , when you « swing » your weapon, do you « whip » it ? Meaning, do you pull it backwards in the opposite direction briefly before you swing ? Like, a little wind-up ? Turns out that about half of players do… and half don’t . So, we have to handle that sort of thing in the code… and that’s not simple.
But, making games isn’t simple. That’s why we love it.
It seems that Wii MotionPlus requires regular recalibration? How did you overcome this issue with Red Steel 2? [Teox from Nintendo Master, rom_maniac from Aussie-Nintendo]
From Jason Vandenberghe, Creative Director
quote:The short answer: we have awesome programmers.
The long answer: a lot of fuss has been made of the recalibration requirements for the Wii Motion Plus – it turns out that the issues sound much worse than they turn out to be. The libraries that Nintendo provides us do a pretty damn good job of keeping the data stable, and with a few (very clever) programmer tricks on our end, we have eliminated most of the problems that can arise around desynchronization.
Just so we’re all clear on exactly what we’re talking about, the problems generally center around the fact that “wild” motions with the Wii MotionPlus gyroscope add a little bit of error to the data… which accumulates over time. “Recalibration” in this case means getting the Wii MotionPlus to “correct” this error by telling it what direction it is currently pointing, instead of asking it. The easiest way to do this is to wait until the player points at the screen, and then use the sensor bar as an “anchor”… but this isn’t the only way to correct the accumulated “error”. And, fortunately for us, we have super-nerds on our team who’s favorite hobby is finding clever ways to correct for error.
Is there any way to alter the Wii MotionPlus sensitivity manually in the game? [pigu9874, Bhaskar24 from Aussie-Nintendo]
From Jason Vandenberghe, Creative Director
quote:See next answer
Will the player be able to configure the controls for his individual needs? [Lorol from Wiiinsider, Meet7heSniper]
From Jason Vandenberghe, Creative Director
quote:Yep. Our controls are fully customizable. We’ve got a complete controller customization system that gives you total control over your sensitivity settings. The game will come with three levels of presets, but if you want to tweak all the settings, you can.
Currently, you can tweak the following:
o Pointer sensitivity
o Pointer acceleration
o Inner bounding box (dead zone)
o Outer bounding box
o Rotation acceleration curves
o Rotation speed
o WM+ off screen rotation on / off
o WM+ off screen rotation speed
o WM+ sensitivity
We may add more as we focus test and polish.
Is the Nunchuk motion detection used for anything in RS2? [chema64, supermarioM from Nintendo Master]
From Jason Vandenberghe, Creative Director
quote:Maybe…
Is RS2 going to be playable with both handsets for left-handed players? [blackbeltbap]
From Jason Vandenberghe, Creative Director
quote:We’ve been looking very closely at this issue, and focus-testing around it. The core issue for us centers around the visual representation of the weapon matching the player’s hand position – the inputs are actually identical regardless of which hand you use. That said, it is very strange for some players to hold the Wii Remote in their left hand and see the sword being held on-screen in their right…
So, we’re currently looking at the best ways of tackling the problem from a technical standpoint. Stay tuned on this.
Is it possible to swing the sword in any angle? And does this have different impact on the target? [Fender0, Penguyen, BlackMage from wiiinsider]
From Jason Vandenberghe, Creative Director
quote:Yes, of course. This is core to the experience – we measure the angle of your slice, and represent that exactly on-screen. The angle of your impact determines the enemies’ hit reaction and direction of movement – they will move in the direction you hit them. We’ve invested a lot of time and energy (and memory and CPU) into making this work well – since it’s sort of the whole point.
Also, your enemies will take defensive stances (in the same way the player can) that guard against horizontal or vertical attacks. To penetrate such a defense, you’ll need to attack in the appropriate direction.
As a side note, it’s surprising how effective a simple mechanic like this can be in practice. We’ve experimented with giving the player a higher bar to meet for their attacks (such as high or low attacks, or attacks requiring a more exact angle), and we’ve found that at the end, while this is more “accurate”, it’s much less fun. At least, as we’ve defined ‘fun’ for this game.
When you control the sword, does it recognize the depth of the moves in order to, for example, thrust the sword forward? [PARADOJA-MAN, chema64]
From Jason Vandenberghe, Creative Director
quote:Oh yes. Yes indeed. Look for more info on this kind of attack soon.
How do I turn in the game? Do I have to turn my back to the TV? [by Stickman1978]
From Jason Vandenberghe, Creative Director
quote:You turn by simply pointing the Wii Remote towards the edge of the screen, like in most Wii first-person games.
I think I understand your confusion, though: it may not be clear how I can attack with the Wii Remote by swinging it if I also have to use it to turn! The trick is that when I am in combat, I am locked onto my enemy. When I’m locked, I can use my sword to attack, and the left stick gives me all the movement I need. When I’m not locked, I can then use my Wii Remote to navigate normally.
This might sound tricky, but in practice we’ve found that it feels pretty natural to players.
What will happen if the sword runs against some resistance like the sword of an opponent - the player will of course not stop his movement? How will this be synchronized? [Zauberzunge from Wiiinsider]
From Jason Vandenberghe, Creative Director
quote:Yeah, this is a tricky issue. Wouldn’t it be cool if the Wii Remote had force-feedback so that we could stop you in mid-air? Sigh. I suppose we’ll have to wait until anti-gravity is invented or something before we get that experience. When it happens, believe me: the Red Steel team will be there.
So, the answer to your question is this: we build those kinds of “rebound” interactions with strong on-screen feedback for the player, so that even though the physical sensation of being stopped isn’t there, the gameplay sensation is (FX, audio, animation, actions, etc). Gamers have been getting by on that kind of feedback for a long time now – turns out it still works.
With the previous game, when swinging the sword or doing melee, the action of swinging the Wii Remote past the sensor bar moved the camera unintentionally, has this issue been addressed? [liamrudel]
From Jason Vandenberghe, Creative Director
quote:Yes! The lock system (discussed briefly above) resolves this issue nicely. If you are locked to an enemy, you will automatically face him, so you don’t have to worry about keeping the camera pointed at him… and the need to turn is eliminated. You are then free to use the Wii Remote to slash without confusing the system. (Players will also have the choice between using our auto lock system and using a more precise manual lock system, but more on that later!)
As a side note, when the player is not locked to an enemy or an object, we have found that (through clever programmer intervention) we can also, with a great deal of precision, detect the difference between the player slashing and trying to turn. So far, in playtest we are finding that players generally don’t unintentionally move the camera while navigating.
"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event." — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
*Image indefinitely borrowed from BrainBoxLtd without his consent.
