Zeno Clash's ACE Team Interview

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Eurogamer: What do you think about the industry as a whole? Is it creative enough?

Carlos Bordeu: That's something that's been in debate a lot. The industry as a whole gets a lot of criticism for doing the same things over and over again, but I don't think it's doing it any more than Hollywood is with movies. There are the super-duper big budget projects that try to play it safe, and there are the smaller game companies that do the more risky games.

The games industry is a newer media - film has been out for many, many more years. There's still much more room to innovate in the games industry. There are still a lot more genres that you don't usually see in videogames that you see in films, such as comedy, suspense, romance. Eventually, as they become more mainstream and maybe more women or old people play games, we will see the industry grow and we will see more new, more innovative types of game.

Eurogamer: Are videogames as good as films at telling stories?

Carlos Bordeu: Videogames can be a very compelling way to tell a story and can be very artistic, but they range so much that the purpose for some is just to have fun - it's not about the story at all. Whereas in film that is - most of the time - the objective. You want to show something to the viewer and present them with a story. It's normal that films are better at telling a story than videogames, but that doesn't mean videogames can't do it. And I think as time progresses we will see some very interesting stories pop out.

What's going on here, stupid-faced boy?

Eurogamer: Let's get back to Zeno Clash 2: what are the main concepts you're working on?

Carlos Bordeu: Well the first thing was the scope and making an open-ended game. We're looking at improving the melee and weapon combat and giving it something more in-depth - adding more attacks and doing something more dynamic, like playing with the environment and not having all levels as flat floors. We're also looking at the possibility of playing different characters. We still haven't decided completely, but it's an interesting idea. Stuff like that.

Eurogamer: And the RPG elements you're adding, will this be simply the option to choose a good or evil solution to a quest?

Carlos Bordeu: We're looking at having levels for characters, attributes, an inventory, objectives, side-quests and several other bits that make RPGs popular.

Eurogamer: Are you interested in multiplayer?

Carlos Bordeu: It is interesting, but it's something we often debate here about whether the effort is worth... if it's worth trying to tackle. We're still a small studio so we don't want to try to do more than we're capable of, which doesn't mean we're not going to do multiplayer, but maybe we'll keep it as something like a different game mode.

Look! A Cyril Sneer-osaur.

Eurogamer: How big is ACE Team?

Carlos Bordeu: Right now we're very small. After finishing Zeno Clash some people left to do other things, but right now in the office we're six. No, that's a lie. We're like nine people. But we're going to grow for this project and hire some people like artists.

Eurogamer: When, realistically, will we see Zeno Clash 2?

Carlos Bordeu: No way this year. Absolutely impossible. Beyond that, we have our internal estimations about the time we may take, but we miserably failed when we planned how long the first one would be, so if I told you now I would probably miserably fail again, so I'd rather not say! Ha!