2007-06-11 21:09:51 TooHuman.net Sits Down with Denis Dyack

Small Interview: (So fAR?)

Forget our plans for "Too Human Week," today TooHuman.net begins an exclusive series of weekly Q&A's with the directors of Silicon Knights' Too Human. In the coming weeks and months we will sit down with Denis Dyack and Henry Sterchi to give you some insight into the gameplay Too Human will be offering. But beyond that, you'll hear from Carman Dix on art direction, Steve Henifin with more on sound design, and James O'Reilly on the technical systems driving Too Human.

We begin today with the first of our discussions with Denis; this time focusing on the general RPG designs in Too Human and the comparisons to the Massive Multiplayer Online genre.








TooHuman.net: Where I want to start of is with the Role-Playing aspects of Too Human and some of the co-operative modes. That seems to be one of the areas our readers are most interested in. Tell us a little bit about what your philosophy was going into Too Human, trying to make a co-op game, and making it something that players can come back to time and again in single and multiplayer. We all know what the Silicon Knights single player experience is like, but what are you shooting for in Too Human's multiplayer?

Denis Dyack: I think the best way to describe it is this: we wanted the multiplayer in Too Human to be based around cooperative gameplay, and the classes in Too Human are made to compliment each other. There are a lot of combinations and things that you can do together during play to get certain things done. Much like these MMO’s or games like Diablo, TitanQuest, you get these combinations of classes that allow you to do things you wouldn’t be able to do in single player. So your second or third time through with friends is about getting these epic items and things. That was our focus in doing that. We really feel that cooperative gameplay with friends is much better than competitive gameplay in general. Competitive stuff is fun, but cooperative stuff is much more leisurely, and I would say much more mainstream and much more enjoyable because there is no losing. Everyone wins when you do that. That’s the kind of game we set out to make with the multiplayer, that’s sort of the goal.

With each class there will be certain specialties. I’m not going to go into too much detail, but take, say, World of Warcraft where you can be an Ice Mage or a Fire Mage… there’s different disciplines within each class. Same thing with Too Human, we thought about all of that too. For instance there will be different types of Defenders, different types of Berserkers; you may choose to be more human or more cybernetic, or you may choose to focus on your “spider.” There are all of these different ways that you can go with everything. We think it will be very interesting and we’re sure that players will create combinations that we never thought of.



TH.net: Any time you talk about creating an RPG like that there will be balance issues raised. Is there any concern going into it knowing that you have all of these classes and that players may end up wanting to choose the exact same class or is it something that won’t be as evident because it is a cooperative game where personal preference and user enjoyment might not be hampered by one class being overpowered?

Dyack: First of all, we’ll do our best to balance it. Probably eight years ago I would have said “yeah, everything is going to be balanced,” but after playing all of these MMO’s where players are saying “your class is better than my class” or “you’re getting more loot than I am” then we may run into that in the future. But the game has been structured and made in a way that we can do easy content balancing and easy class balancing. We feel pretty good about it. We know it is not insignificant; it’s probably one of the biggest tasks we face. We are going to have a really robust support mechanism in place not only for new content but also for balance patches.



TH.net: So we can look forward to new downloadable content through XBox Live, along with patches for balance issues?

Dyack: Absolutely. Actually, we have expected that even if we were not going to have downloadable content, which we are, that we would have to have some balance patches; not necessarily because anything was broken, but just to make sure things are playing as we intended for them to.



TH.net: Was there a specific mold you were looking at when creating the five classes found in Too Human? Some MMO’s have created classes that fit into specific archetypes, for instance. Or was this a situation where you said “Hey, that sounds like a cool idea for a class, let’s put that in there”?

Dyack: That’s a very good question. We wanted to do something as different as possible, but we weren’t naïve enough to say that we are going to do something completely different and create these archetypes that never would have worked. I think the MMO world has established certain archetypes that work extremely well. I kind of look at it as the mixing of the base colors. So we have a tank, we have a healer, we have a damage dealer, but there will be hybrids and it will all fit in the world we’ve created. I think you need those basic archetypes, but because we are looking at it from our perspective, you look at something like the Champion who specializes in air combat, and you’d say that’s something you wouldn’t see in a typical archetype. There are a lot of classes that we have created, but they won’t all be released right away.

The Defender, Berserker, Bio-Mechanic, Champion, and Commando – those are the basic five. But there are more, and actually I would say that my favorite class is not in the game yet. I like playing the hybrid classes, and when we looked at the ones we wanted to include first, we knew we had to cover the basics. I think you need a tank, you need a damage dealer, you need a healer. Those are the three basic ones I think you need, and then we can incorporate classes that are unique to Too Human like the Champion. The Commando is also going to be very, very interesting. We have a little bit of new stuff, but I think it would have been way too ambitious to try to recreate the wheel there. Quite frankly it would have been a huge mistake. A lot of MMO’s have tried to break the mold entirely and have eventually been sucked back into the basic archetype system. I would say we were smart enough to avoid disaster in that area.

---
Halle Berry: Delgado i am feeling really reall dirty tonight, shall i call Jessica Simpson for a threesome?

Delgado: HALLE what have i told you about bothering me when i'm playing Mass Effect!!! now get out and dont come back for 2 months!! (Slams door

2007-06-11 23:28:17

There is no shadowing in that shot. :|

Good stuff about coop, anyway.

---
"That just happened 'cause that was awesome" - Randy Pitchford, Gearbox

2007-06-11 23:34:29 In reply to szaromir (2007-06-11 23:28:17)

---
THIS IS SPARTA!

2007-06-11 23:39:56

as the one toothed smiley said. disturbing lack of shadows. all nice having sweet as character models and environments, but when it has no lighting it just puts it all to waste.

co-op sounds like fun, but is it online only. i like having online functionality, but when your actually round a friends house rather then talking over LIVE, there really isnt much you can play for your co-op kicks. i'd like at least the option for some split screen action.

2007-06-11 23:48:53 In reply to Myro (2007-06-11 23:34:29)

2007-06-12 01:34:17 In reply to GriftGFX (2007-06-11 23:48:53)

---
Hironobu Sakaguchi is coming back to reclaim the throne :)

October 20th 2007 (A good day)

Don't ask any questions just shut up and buy Halo : Ghosts of the Onyx one of the greatest books ever.

2007-06-12 01:37:35

Shadows don't just disappear when the screen stops moving :P

2007-06-12 01:38:48 In reply to Optimusv2 (2007-06-12 01:34:17)

2007-06-12 01:41:54 In reply to GriftGFX (2007-06-12 01:37:35)

---
Hironobu Sakaguchi is coming back to reclaim the throne :)

October 20th 2007 (A good day)

Don't ask any questions just shut up and buy Halo : Ghosts of the Onyx one of the greatest books ever.

2007-06-12 01:42:30

Remeber guys these shots could be taken from a build with the lighting off, i highly doubt the game will ship without it!!

---
Halle Berry: Delgado i am feeling really reall dirty tonight, shall i call Jessica Simpson for a threesome?

Delgado: HALLE what have i told you about bothering me when i'm playing Mass Effect!!! now get out and dont come back for 2 months!! (Slams door

2007-06-12 01:46:11 In reply to KORNdog (2007-06-12 01:38:48)

---
"That just happened 'cause that was awesome" - Randy Pitchford, Gearbox

2007-06-12 02:07:41 In reply to szaromir (2007-06-12 01:46:11)

2007-06-12 02:36:09 In reply to dcdelgado (2007-06-12 01:42:30)

2007-06-12 08:42:03 In reply to KORNdog (2007-06-12 02:07:41)

---
Hironobu Sakaguchi is coming back to reclaim the throne :)

October 20th 2007 (A good day)

Don't ask any questions just shut up and buy Halo : Ghosts of the Onyx one of the greatest books ever.

2007-06-17 12:09:52

Part 2 of the interview is up
http://toohuman.net/index.php?option=com_content&t...

---
"you should be honored by my lateness
that i would even show up to this fake sh*t"

2007-06-17 14:42:32 In reply to KORNdog (2007-06-12 02:07:41)

---
The fans have spoken. Concerning the graphics of the Halo 3 Beta: "There's so many little effects and things going on that make this game pretty much 2nd only to Gears at the moment."

2007-06-17 23:04:51

The more I hear about this game the more interested I get. The whole co-op, MMO/Diablo type gameplay sounds like a lot of fun. I enjoyed playing with other people in parties in games like WOW but got bored of the grinding and repetitive quests. Hopefully this game has a lot of variety and the combat is enjoyable.