Volition "ruining other games for people"

By Johnny Minkley Published 23 March, 2009

RFG "5 to 10 years ahead of competition".

So confident is US developer Volition in Red Faction: Guerrilla, that lead designer James Hague reckons: "We're ahead of everybody by five to ten years in terms of destruction."

Not only that, but the Saints Row studio, which has been working on its openworld Red Planet sequel for the past five years, is "ruining other games for people with this game," according to Hague. He claimed that once gamers experience the "super-dynamic" action of Guerrilla, they'll find titles by other developers lacking and restrictive.

He added: "There's a lot of games out now that are very, very pretty, they're next-gen, they're beautiful games, but they're set-pieces. Everything was custom-built just to look nice. While other games companies were going toward pretty-but-static, we wanted to go toward fully-dynamic for everything. It's a very different technical direction from where other people are going."

There's nothing quite like talking up your own game. But, based on what we've played so far, the destruction tech used in the game is a bit of a show-stopper.

You can hear more from the team and see exclusive footage of the game in action in the latest episode of The Eurogamer TV Show.

Red Faction: Guerrilla is due out on PS3, 360 and PC this June.

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About Johnny Minkley

Eurogamer TV's Johnny Minkley is a veteran journalist with a lifelong passion for games and the games industry. He uses Twitter more than most people use air.

Read more articles from Johnny by visiting the Johnny Minkley archive page.

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Comments (42) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Wastelander #1 3 years ago

    I'm going for a 6/10, any more bets?

  • seasidebaz #2 3 years ago

    7/10

  • Midnight_Raven #3 3 years ago

    I raise you a 7/10.

    /feels lucky today

  • DFawkes #4 3 years ago

    No matter how it plays, I bet the Geo Mod stuff is very good. Good destuctability doesn't make a game good by default, but it does almost guarantee my purchase :)

    I also go as far to predict a 9/10, and a reference to being better than Halo within the first 10 comments (not by me, that would be a rubbish prediction).
    Edited by 1 at 23/03/09 @ 14:24

  • GitSomE_UK #5 3 years ago

    /Yawn

  • seasidebaz #6 3 years ago

    I remember in the first one there was a map that had a tower with a rocket launcher at the top. Me and my mate played that one map for hours carving a tunnel from the top of the tower to the floor underneath so that the fall wouldn't kill us.

    Can't remember if we ever made it to the bottom but we had fun doing it :D

  • Toothball #7 3 years ago

    Pfft, if I'm looking for destructible scenery I'll play Tetris.

  • zuljin #8 3 years ago

    Come on guys, let your game speak volumes, and keep the PR speak to a minimum. If its awesome, people will love it, simple as.

    EDIT: Come on farty, you're becoming as predictable as Apologie.
    Edited by 1 at 23/03/09 @ 14:37

  • Wastelander #9 3 years ago

    Geomod is very cool, without a doubt.
    I just wish the game didn't look so bloody brown and uninspiring.
    Mars was cool in Total Recall, a setting like that would be groovy. It's not so cool when it's just a vast, brown, featureless desert or a freakin' mine (which I'm sure are just as boring the universe over).

  • Moonprince #10 3 years ago

    lol fart - you've become as bad as that apologywhatshisname fool.

    Shame.

  • Dizzy #11 3 years ago

    The tech behind it is pretty amazing... I just hope they get the gameplay right and I am a bit afraid about the sterile feel to it all.

    8/10?

    But yeah... 100% dynamic gameplay is the future. We have seen this with AI (Halo/Half Life), physics (havoc and co) and now hopefully this will expand to the actual world geometry.
    Edited by 3 at 23/03/09 @ 14:47

  • Evolution #12 3 years ago

    Is this going to be as "revolutionary" as Geo-Mod was in the original Red Faction? As interesting as the setting could have been (see Total Recall), it was overall a bit dull and the so called environmental modification wasn't much more than a gimmick if I remember.

  • metalangel #13 3 years ago

    Yeah guys, just like Geomod set the world in fire in the last two desperately average Red Faction games. In the first one it amounted to little more than those 'cracked' walls in Quake that blasted away when shot, right down to only being able to use it in certain locations.

    Besides, if you let us blast holes in EVERYTHING, what's to stop just just, er, blasting holes in everything and avoiding the inevitable tedious find this switch/computer/key tasks? Indestructible walls or something I bet, and then we're right back where you started.

  • Monkey_Puncher #14 3 years ago

    To be fair their destructability compared to Mercs 2's canned animations does look 5-10 years better.

    I just hope they can build a decent game around the explosions.

  • RedSparrows #15 3 years ago

    I don't care if destruction reigns, if the game isn't fun I cba. Endless explosions are only cool when there's a score multiplier attached, or it does something that you can't do every 30 seconds.

    :)

  • Buztafen #16 3 years ago

    Developer in "Our games the shizzle!!!" Shocker!!.....

  • Gearskin #17 3 years ago

    I like to bash stuff.

  • Buztafen #18 3 years ago

    We'll take your input onboard Gearskin, thanks.

  • Whizzo #19 3 years ago

    Wow have they completely re-written it after the MP beta then? It wasn't up to much, to put it mildly.

  • hjarg #20 3 years ago

    Come on, give us Freespace 3 instead! Though unfortunately, spacesim genre is pretty much dead...

  • sneetch #21 3 years ago

    @Monkey_Puncher
    To be fair their destructability compared to Mercs 2's canned animations does look 5-10 years better.

    I just hope they can build a decent game around the explosions.

    "Build a decent... game. Holy crap! I knew we forgot something!" ;)

    I'm looking forward to seeing more about this, have to catch the special. If they can pull it off then awesome, I liked the first one, missed the second. 7/10 would be enough for me. So long as it isn't a "this game is actively causing my intestines to bleed but still, nice explosions" 7/10.

  • metalangel #22 3 years ago

    Hey, at least it's not another Turning Point.

  • Darren #23 3 years ago

    "We're ahead of everybody by five to ten years in terms of destruction."

    Oh really? So I guess we can shoot down trees and blow up buildings and vehicles completely a la Crysis then can we? ;)

    I'm going to stick my neck out and predict that this is simply a case of a developer hyping up their own game so it gets noticed and that it won't be anywhere near as good as they imply. Given how quickly the games industry moves, I suspect that the tech they're using will look dated inside two years, never mind five.

    I mean Red Faction was OK, nothing more, but the sequel was average at best. I don't expect Red Faction Guerilla will be anything more than another medicore FPS along the lines of Turok, Haze or Blacksite: Area 51 myself. I'm happy to be proved wrong however. A good game is about more than having environments you can destroy, right? Look at how much Fracture's environmental deformation feature was bigged up and how utterly underwhelming the end result was. I rest my case.

  • stonedben #24 3 years ago

    "While other games companies were going toward pretty-but-static, we wanted to go toward fully-dynamic for everything."

    So what you're saying is that your game isn't pretty?

  • miiiguel #25 3 years ago

    I can't find a single comment by Darren in the last 3 months that doesn't feature the word Crysis.

  • Spekingur #26 3 years ago

    I predict 4/10 for gameplay but 9/10 for modders.

  • seasidebaz #27 3 years ago

    I predict 4/10 for gameplay but 9/10 for modders

    Only on the platforms that aren't the 360, however.

  • kangarootoo #28 3 years ago

    5 to 10 years. Is the man insane?

    I'm sure his brief is just to big up the game with various tit bits of fight-talk, so fair enough. Pinch of salt well and truly taken.


    "Besides, if you let us blast holes in EVERYTHING, what's to stop just just, er, blasting holes in everything and avoiding the inevitable tedious find this switch/computer/key tasks? Indestructible walls or something I bet, and then we're right back where you started."

    That is exactly where Red Faction 1 ended up. Being able to blast through any wall is a level designer's nightmare, and eventually they just ran out of ideas and stuck in loads of blast proof walls.

    They would have been better off taking a Far Cry style approach, where walls and so on didn't matter (well, not in the good bits of Far Cry anyway - I am ignoring the shit monster filled corridors). But instead they took their wall blasting technology and stuck it in a game full of corridors. FACE PALM!!

  • Xerx3s #29 3 years ago

    So ahead of it's time that red faction games have been featuring it for years.

  • metalangel #30 3 years ago

    Maybe it was five years ahead of its time when they started five years ago... so it'll just be average when it comes out. Again.

  • Darren #31 3 years ago

    @kangarootoo - For Volition to suggest that their tech is five to ten years ahead of everyone else is absurd bordering on hyperbole IMO. I predict that Red Faction Guerilla's tech will look outdated in two to three years max. even if it is revolutionary now simply because that's how fast the games industry moves.

    I remember all the hype poured on Red Faction when it was released on the PS2 years ago. It all revolved around the supposedly revolutionary destructible environments but the truth was the game was average and little different from any other FPS as you could only destroy certain walls and other structures. I remember throwing grenades at crates and structures that should have blown up but didn't. At that point I realised that the developer's claims were just a load of hot air. So you can perhaps forgive me if I'm not so willing to believe their claims some eight years on! ;)

    I can see why developers do it - bigging up a game's features is the only way to help it stand out from the umpteen other similar games out there - but it's still depressing when they do do it because that usually means the game won't be much cop. Been there with Haze and Fracture and, besides, Volition are hardly in the same calibre as Bungie, Crytek or Epic are they when it comes to FPSs?

  • Eldritch #32 3 years ago

    A physics engine is not a game.

  • Clive_Dunn #33 3 years ago

    It's the emotion engine all over again.

    FS3 please.

  • Widge #34 3 years ago

    I hope this game is fun. Fun is determined by being able to have your character wear his pants on his head while firing martians wearing nuclear bomb vests into the destructable landscape. Running the script through the infantile slapstick machine would also be desirable. Woe betide it if it dares to try a more mature approach otherwise it won't be fun/gameplays etc.

  • shotgun44 #35 3 years ago

    The geomod was good but I swear it was forgotten about 3 levels in where they just gave everything an 'indestructable' metal texture. I found the original to be an above average shooter for its time though. Interested.

  • septimus #36 3 years ago

    They concentrate on blowing shit up so much that they forget to put a playable game in there.

  • kangarootoo #37 3 years ago

    @Darren

    I think what Red Faction taught us was that,

    great gameplay + average tech = good game
    great gameplay + great tech = good marketable game that sells more units
    poor gameplay + great tech = bad game

    I also understand that they have to big up their title though. Selling games is important, no doubt about that :)

  • BBIAJ #38 3 years ago

    Do pay attention Darren, the game is THIRD person, not an FPS!

    That is all...

  • Redeye #39 3 years ago

    Why is it that the phrase "up your own arse much?" sprang to mind?

    Whilst completely understanding the need for hyperbole and aggrandisement, the whole 'five to ten years ahead' schtick is just asking for a large plate of derision, with a side order of facepalm.

  • Markusdragon #40 3 years ago

    This sort of overconfident arrogance usually annoys me, but I recently picked up Saints Row, and was pleasantly suprised. Guess I'll be watching this one with interest after all.

  • FogHeart #41 3 years ago

    What I've seen so far, it seems this game is a GTA/crackdown affair where your actions potentially destroy buildings and they stay destroyed. It's not tempered by indestructible walls, rather making you try to avoid that adage 'in order to free the village we had to destroy it'. If your mission is to take the city back for the people, they won't thank you for giving them a pile of rubble to live in, oppression-free.

    I think they probably sat down at the onset and said "We can't go on cheating the player with things they can't destroy - so how do we really construct a game where the player can destroy everything but stop him wanting to do it?" Their answer seems credible.

    While Far Cry 2 and Crysis have building that fall apart, they're constructed to do so. I think the idea of geomod is you don't create a building like lego bits that fit together and come apart - you make a wall as a single entity and it inherently can break apart into many pieces.

    I'm betting great tech, good gameplay - if they avoid the inevitable 'thing that makes it broken' that often mars these highbrow ideas (eg radiant AI in STALKER) and then EG knock off points for poor voice acting, script and story.

  • Red-Moose #42 3 years ago

    If you bunny hop a lot your feet begin to hurt and slow you down.

    THIS IS THE NEXT GEN