The Unseen: James Phinney Interview
At E3, many games were unveiled, but some we just got a peek at. One of these such titles was The Unseen from Tremor Entertainment. The trailer for The Unseen left many hungry for more, so we spoke with James Phinney the lead designer of the game to pull as much info as we could about this mysterious title and its main character Moira.
How does it feel to finally be able to talk about and show the Unseen? What type of game is it?
James P: It's definitely a lot better than saying "unannounced first-party xbox title" every time someone asks what you're up to.
At its heart, The Unseen is an action game because of its pacing and the scale of the battles you'll find yourself in, but there's a significant amount of RPG, Horror/Adventure and Fighting-type gameplay styles in the mix. You play as Moira, a not-quite-typical college student. The environments vary from the real world, like museums and streets and nightclubs, to the fantastical.
Moira has an ability called "Second Sight" that she can use to pierce illusions, see the invisible, and sometimes (usually where the spirits of the dead linger) look into the past. She also has rituals for summoning spirits and creating illusions, but most of her spells are what we call "elemental kung fu", which is where a wizard channels elemental magic as a part of making physical attacks. So a series of punches might generate arcs of flame that can set your opponent on fire, while a rising attack might involve flying into the air and summoning a shadow blade to slice and dice him.
What is the premise of this game, tell a bit about the back story and where Moira came from.
James P: The game is set in the present, in the apparently sleepy town of Seapoint in the Pacific Northwest. In the world of the Unseen, much of what modern-day conspiracy theorists fear is true, except it's not simply corporations and shadow governments pulling the strings behind the scenes. Wizard cabals, fey creatures, demons, and long-forgotten gods all walk unseen among us, orchestrating diabolical maneuvers in their ancient and deadly power struggles.
Moira has had visions and dreams of the supernatural all of her life (chalked up as psychological problems when she was growing up), but it's during the course of the game that she first becomes aware that these things are real and learns to control her "gift" of Second Sight. As her powers begin to manifest, she quickly finds herself hunted by people she doesn't know and the creatures out of her nightmares.
Moira looks like a bad-ass, what else can you tell us about her personality and her abilities? In the trailer it looks like she has a lot of flashy powers.
James P: She's smart and tough and has a wicked sense of humor, but given her presumed psychological problems as a child, she grew up a bit of a loner. You might even say she has a little bit of a dark side. And yes, she does have some pretty nasty powers... you wouldn't want to get on her bad side.
How long has this game been in development, and approximately how long till it is completed?
James P: The idea's been simmering for a while, but the game has been in production for almost 2 years now (making a brand new engine from scratch, design, character art, etc - takes a long time). Right now we're shooting for Spring of 2003 as our ship date.
Approximately how many hours of gameplay is this title expected to take for a gamer to complete?
James P: We're shooting for at least as much as other great single-player games like Halo. In terms of exact number of hours, it's tough to say at this early stage.
James P: We've worked on a wide range of games, including Starcraft, Diablo, Warcraft II, Heroes of Might and Magic, James Bond: The World is Not Enough, Czar, Sacrifice, and Knockout Kings. Many of our artists have experience in other media as well, including sculptures for the Luxor and Harrah's Casino, animation for the movie Starship Troopers, and a slew of 3D VR theme park rides.
How is this game unique from anything else we have seen on Xbox so far?
James P: I'll tell you about the top three:
Elemental Kung Fu: The magic system in The Unseen has never been done before. Elemental Kung Fu changes the feel of magic and wizards. Wizards are traditionally portrayed as physically weak people who hold back and cast spells memorized from some old tome. In The Unseen, wizards are physically powerful martial artists who harness primal forces to kick ass.
The Scale of Destruction: The environments are hyper-interactive. There's tons of set pieces for the player to demolish or use against opponents, adding a strategic depth to combat - basically everything you see can be destroyed and used to your advantage... and with the number of enemies we'll throw at you, you'll need all the help you can get. Typically, after Moira leaves a room, expect everything and everyone to be broken, burned, or shattered.
Second Sight: Our engine allows us to do some amazingly cool real-time morphing. We can basically morph anything and anyone in the world in real-time like it was out of a Hollywood movie - in most games, you could only get what we're planning real-time in CG cut scenes. Plus, we have no constraints on size... we can take a man and morph him into a giant, 15-feet-high, fire-belching demon (and we do).
Second Sight also allows us to create both a horror element of creepy surprises and add a lot of depth to the environments to reward greater exploration. That normal - looking person walking down the street could be a demon just waiting to lunge out at you. That wall there may actually conceal a magical gate to another realm. When playing, you'll never know what's lurking around the next corner.
Rearranging the letters in "Moira" spells "Mario." Coincidence?
James P: Weird, huh?
Thanks James! We can't wait to see more of this interesting title.
http://www.teamxbox.com/images/games...1022889617.jpg
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