Irrational talks SWAT

Irrational Games seems to be redefining "different" this year. One doesn't have to look much farther than Freedom Force Versus The Third Reich, the genre-bending update to the genre-bending original or the fact that Irrational decided to self-publish the title. It's hard not to like a development studio that's willing to stick their heads out for the fans.

They recently released the single player demo of SWAT 4 to the world, and I had a few questions regarding the design of the game. Bill Gardner, a designer for Irrational Games on the project, was ready to answer them:

Q:
The SWAT 4 demo gave a preview to the mission editor. What are the expectations this will have for replayability of the title? How should it compare to more traditional tools like a map editor or modifiable code?

Bill Gardner:

Even though SWAT 4 will have both a map editor and highly moddable content, we wanted to give people who aren’t that mod savvy the chance to create their own scenarios. All the missions in SWAT 4 have high replay value since the AI spawning and general behaviors vary so much from one playthrough to the next. We wanted to take that to the next level by giving people the ability to add even more variety by choosing what types of enemies, hostages, weapons, etc. The whole system creates a game that has near limitless replayability.

Q:
Immersion seems like a high priority for SWAT 4. Did this place any complications on level design or asset production? How did you balance the "flow" of a map versus the "realism" of a map?

Bill Gardner:

It’s always a challenge to find a balance between what’s realistic and what plays well. In the end, we all agreed that everything takes a backseat to the gameplay. We did manage to keep it as realistic as possible though. I think that even though our maps have very nice flow to them, they also maintain a high sense of realism.

Q:
One comment that's been heard about the SWAT 4's single player demo is that the "professionalism" required from the player is quite high to achieve a decent rating. What role do you see that including proper procedure and tactics will have in the overall design of the game?

Bill Gardner:

This is true to a point. SWAT 4 is not a run-and-gun shooter. It’s a tactical shooter. As such, we tried to encourage people to follow procedure whenever possible. In some cases, that meant penalizing players for things like the use of “unauthorized force”. It may take a moment to get into the groove of not simply shooting anything that moves like in many shooters, but when it begins to click, you truly feel like you’re an officer of the law.

Q:
How does the artificial intelligence in SWAT 4 compare to standard first person shooters?

Bill Gardner:

I think our AI programmers deserve a special pat on the back. John Abercrombie in particular did some truly amazing work. It’s one thing to have to create believable enemy AI, but to then have to carry around a squad of four friendly AIs is an enormous feat. At the end of the day, SWAT 4 has some of the most impressive AI you’ll see in a shooter. We knew we were succeeding when we were able to surprise ourselves after playing the game for over two years.

Q:
In general, how does working with a high-end middleware graphics engine impact the game design? Does the cost of production place limitations on the overall project or does the engine provide the kind of features which offsets the demand for more polygons and higher resolution textures?

Bill Gardner:

With all the changes, improvements and customizations we’ve made to the Unreal Engine, we’ve been able to effectively create amazing content under a very realistic development cycle. We’ve been able to go in and add features like normal mapping on level geometry and static meshes. Features like these completely change the look of a level. As you may already be aware, this is one technique that’s used to create the illusion of more polygons. In other words, as production demands escalate, you find ‘shortcuts’ that give you the same benefit (or greater) at a fraction of the cost.

Q:
Irrational made the decision to self-publish the new Freedom Force title. How has the experience been so far?

Bill Gardner:

Amazing. We took a big risk and a huge jump ahead when we made this decision. There’s a lot more that goes into making a game than I think we realized. Naturally, we’ve adapted to the increased responsibilities. I don’t know if it would have gone nearly as smooth if we didn’t have such great fans and press support. We’re keeping our fingers crossed. If things work out the way we hope, we’ll be able to continue with this model and give our fans more of what they want.

Q:
Freedom Force to SWAT 4 ... that's a pretty wide spectrum. Irrational seems to have a diverse array of interests. If you could start a project next week that didn't have to recoup any costs, what would it be?

Bill Gardner:

Yeah, we’ve got more than a few bases covered with our stable of games. Working on BioShock is certainly a dream come true for us. As for what else we’d like to work on, there are a lot of things. One thing is for certain though, whatever projects we take on in the future, they’ll be geared towards our fans.

Well, he had me at "near limitless replayability". Thanks again to Bill for his responses. And rest assured that as BioShock gets closer to the gold disc treatment, I'll probably knocking again.