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#278 a p r i l 2015
Alone in the dark As Peter Molyneux knows only too well, sometimes things don’t go to plan. (The more thought you put into your plan, the more opportunity it has of succeeding, naturally, but that’s a discussion for another time.) In the case of the issue in front of you, we were all set to review Bloodborne in the time-honoured Edge style, but then reality rudely intruded. As we twitchily prepared to make our journey into the macabre recesses of Yharnam, we discovered that the game’s Chalice Dungeons were not yet ready to be explored, and would in fact be added into the game courtesy of a launchday patch. Then we found out that online functionality wouldn’t be available, either, meaning that we’d be unable to test the game’s co-op or PVP features. So we faced a decision. We could be ruthless, stab our plan in the back, and walk away. Or we could try something different. With 40 hours’ play in the bank, and standing it against FromSoftware’s formidable back catalogue, we can make a clear call on Bloodborne’s quality and present our verdict. You’ll have to wait until issue 279 for some words with a digit at the end, but if the purpose of a review is to provide a recommendation – or otherwise – then our cover story should hit the mark. This issue’s delve into Bloodborne is more extensive than a traditional review, but it is still an experiment. Whether you like it or disapprove, let us know (edge@futurenet.com), and we’ll consider your feedback in how we tackle the review process in the future. Elsewhere in this issue, we look at the videogame-playing prospects of wearable tech such as Apple Watch, talk to Alexander O Smith about the art of translating some of Japan’s most elaborate RPGs, and discover how PixelJunk Games founder Dylan Cuthbert landed a job at Nintendo, where he helped to set the company on the road to 3D games with Star Fox. And we promise there’s only one further mention of the man at 22Cans.
games Hype
Play
38 Rise Of The Tomb Raider
106 The Order: 1886
360, Xbox One
42 Swords & Soldiers II
Wii U
46 InnerSpace 42
PC
iOS, PC
PC, PS4, Xbox One
114 Resident Evil: Revelations 2
360, PC, PS3, PS4, Vita, Xbox One
118 Total War: Attila PC
50 Sunset PC
52 Puzzle & Dragons Z 3DS
54 Outer Wilds PC
56 Hype roundup
Explore the iPad edition of Edge for additional content
4
110 Evolve
48 Donut County
PS4
120 There Came An Echo
PC, PS4, Xbox One
121 Kick & Fennick
Vita
122 IDARB
Xbox One
Follow these links throughout the magazine for more content online
114
100
sections #278
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a p r i l 2015
Knowledge 8 Reunion tour
Harmonix tunes up for Rock Band’s Xbox One/PS4 rebirth
12 King Obra
Papers, Please creator Lucas Pope talks Return Of The Obra Dinn
14 Grim resolve
Tim Schafer on bringing Grim Fandango back from limbo
16 Procedural content
We spend time with Sam Barlow’s investigative drama, Her Story
18 Painted world
Dark Souls’ Lordran as mapped out by Rogue Legacy’s composer
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20 Soundbytes
Developers talking shop, featuring Richard Hilleman and Rami Ismail
22 My Favourite Game
Labour’s Tom Watson reveals the extent of his bond with Portal 2
24 This Month On Edge
The things that caught our eye during the production of E278
Dispatches 26 Dialogue
Edge readers share their opinions; one wins SteelSeries hardware
28 Trigger Happy
Steven Poole considers virtual real estate and the uncanny valley
30 Difficulty Switch
Ian Bogost establishes a new order of genres for games today
32 Big Picture Mode
Digital discoverability is getting worse, says Nathan Brown
129 Postcards From The Clipping Plane
James Leach mulls over the nature of other people’s genius
Features 62 Bloodborne: The Verdict
We draw our conclusions after spending 40 hours in the grip of FromSoftware’s dark masterpiece
72 Collected Works: Dylan Cuthbert
The ex-Nintendo tech genius and Q-Games founder talks us through his lifelong experiment with games
80 Game And Watch
What does wearable tech such as Apple Watch mean for the changing face of videogames?
88 Tale Of Tales
Meet Alexander O Smith, the translator who’s brought some of Japan’s biggest RPGs to the west
96 The Making Of…
The Beatles: Rock Band – or how McCartney schooled Harmonix creative director Josh Randall
100 Studio Profile
The highs and lows on the ten-year road towards Hi-Rez Studios’ MOBA monster, Smite
124 Time Extend
Ambition Force-choked by misdirection: the story of Star Wars Galaxies’ implosion
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62
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EDITORIAL Tony Mott editor in chief Nathan Brown deputy editor Ben Maxwell writer Matthew Clapham production editor Mark Wynne senior art editor Andrew Hind art editor Contributors
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Daniel Dawkins group editor in chief Graham Dalzell group art director Declan Gough head of content and marketing, film, music and games Nial Ferguson content and marketing director Printed in the UK by William Gibbons & Sons on behalf of Future. Distributed in the UK by Seymour Distribution Ltd, 2 East Poultry Avenue, London, EC1A 9PT (+44 (0)20 74294000). Overseas distribution by Seymour International. All submissions to Edge are made on the basis of a licence to publish the submission in Edge magazine and its licensed editions worldwide. Any material submitted is sent at the owner’s risk and, although every care is taken, neither Future Publishing Limited nor its agents shall be liable for loss or damage. While we make every effort possible to ensure that everything we print is factually correct, we cannot be held responsible if factual errors occur. Please check any quoted prices and specs with your supplier before purchase. If you read this bit, send us an email saying “I read that bit!” to officially join a secret club. All contents copyright © 2015 Future Publishing Limited or published under licence. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced, stored, transmitted or used in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales. Registered office: Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All information contained in this publication is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. You are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to the price and other details of products or services referred to in this publication. Apps and websites mentioned in this publication are not under our control. We are not responsible for their contents or any changes or updates to them. If you submit unsolicited material to us, you automatically grant Future a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in all editions of the magazine, including licensed editions worldwide and in any physical or digital format throughout the world. Any material you submit is sent at your risk and, although every care is taken, neither Future nor its employees, agents or subcontractors shall be liable for loss or damage.
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Chief executive Zillah Byng-Maddick Non-executive chairman Peter Allen Chief financial officer Richard Haley Tel +44 (0)207 042 4000 (London) Tel +44 (0)1225 442 244 (Bath)
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Specialist Magazine Of The Year
After years of rumours, and a categorical denial of its existence in 2014, Rock Band 4 is in development. Sadly, there’s no word on whether Wilson Phillips’ Hold On will be playable
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Knowledge Harmonix
Reunion tour Harmonix is bringing Rock Band back for PS4 and Xbox One
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is an independent studio once again, he stratospheric rise of the peripheralhaving bought itself out in late 2010, led music game between 2005 and and Alex Rigopulos, co-founder of the 2008 was one of the more extraordinary company, has stepped away from the trends in videogame history, perhaps CEO position he had held for 19 years equalled only by how quickly the genre and recast himself as creative director. disappeared. For millions, dropping to “I’d been looking for a replacement your knees with a plastic guitar held aloft for quite some time, in large part because is one of the defining memories of the the creative work is what I love most – it’s 360/PS3 era, but annual iteration and more fun and less stressful than CEO job, a flood of new games with ever-moreand so I’d been looking for a way to get redundant plastic instruments wore the more directly reinvolved in the creative market out so quickly that it could work,” Rigopulos tells us. not survive the recession. In much smaller now 2009, Activision released “Some of the most “We’re than we used to be -– 25 different music game SKUs. By 2011, there fun we’ve had was during the peak Rock Band phase, we were near 300 were none at all. at the beginning people. Now we’re at But Harmonix – one of the originators of western of the project, just 110, 120. The bigger is that back then rhythm-action games and taking Rock Band difference we were a monolithic the developer of Amplitude, studio. We were like a Rock Band and Guitar off the shelf” factory that had to be Hero, the game that devoted to producing more and more kickstarted the music game’s rise to Rock Band content and titles. Now we’re prominence – is still here. And now, after much more entrepreneurial, with several a five-year hiatus, it is bringing Rock small teams working independently of a Band back. Rock Band 4 will be out on central governance structure.” PS4 and Xbox One this year, and it’s It was one of those small teams that designed to be a platform that can be sparked Rock Band’s comeback. Last maintained and updated for years. summer, a couple of staff were working on prototype Rock Band-style gameplay, The industry is very different now, of and it reminded the studio that there was course, but so is Harmonix. When the still work it wanted to do with the series, first Rock Band was being developed, the the rights to which it still owned. “Some company was part of MTV Games under of the most fun we’ve had was at the Viacom. Viacom bought Harmonix shortly beginning of the project, just taking after Activision acquired the Guitar Hero [Rock Band] off the shelf and playing name, along with Harmonix’s former it again,” Rigopulos says. “Everyone publisher, RedOctane. Now Harmonix
Peripherals are revamped but won’t deliver new functionality, and Harmonix is working hard to make the next Rock Band backward-compatible
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Knowledge Harmonix
Amplitude, originally released in 2003, will be the first of Harmonix’s old catalogue to get a second chance at glory. But unlike Rock Band, it never found an enormous audience in the first place – its UK sales at the time were in the low thousands
Alex Rigopulos (top) is one of Harmonix’s co-founders and its creative director. Product manager Daniel Sussman has been at the studio almost as long – he joined in 2001
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was immediately reminded of just how damned fun this experience of playing in the living room with the speakers turned up and a group of friends is. All these memories came flooding back and started restimulating all of these ideas about where we could take it. “Back in 2011, [Rock Band] needed a rest, the market needed a rest, so we decided to step away from it for a while, but we were not nearly creatively done with it. There’s so much more left to do.” In August 2014, excited by what the prototyping teams had come up with, Harmonix added a producer and a couple of publishing staff to the team to figure out whether Rock Band 4 could really happen, whether the studio could afford it, and what form it could take. “It’s a lot of work just to bring the core experience to this console generation,” says Rock Band 4 product manager Daniel Sussman, “and yet we felt very strongly that wasn’t going to be enough. “We didn’t just want to do a port of Rock Band 3, we really wanted to imbue the experience with incremental improvements to the accessibility of the gameplay and overall metagame and structure, plus straight-up new features. That led us into the autumn, where we rolled up our sleeves and started work on the foundational elements of the platform, engine-level architecture and the art tools, and engaging with [the platform holders] on DLC and hardware compatibility.”
level: wireless communication is different. The plan right now is for Rock Band 4 There’s only so much we can do as a to be backward-compatible not only with software developer. That said, we have all the series’ previous DLC songs, but great relationships with Microsoft and with every existing instrument too – all Sony and we’re having conversations to those dust-covered plastic drum kits make sure that no stone is unturned, either and guitars currently lurking in storage on our side or theirs. I like our chances. cupboards, buried beneath rarely “That relationship between the used camping equipment and boxes hardware and the game is one that we of old photographs. This represents, have managed very effectively, going unsurprisingly, a monumental challenge. back to the early days of Guitar Hero. There is a minefield of technical We understand the and licensing challenges tech, we understand the for Harmonix to gingerly “We see some challenges, and we know pick its way across. who to talk to on the Thankfully, most of the parallels to Rock manufacturing and firstparty songs in Rock Band’s Band 1 with side to support our enormous library were ambition. We’ve always licensed on a longterm respect to where staunch advocates for basis – some licences have PS4 and Xbox One been backward compatibility, expired, but most were renewed without difficulty. are in their cycles” cross-game compatibility – people invest in their There’s the odd song that gaming setups and we want to respect people won’t be able to bring with them those investments. If you have guitars and to the new hardware generation, but if they work, we want to support them. It Microsoft and Sony can work it out on shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that the purchase-permissions front, there are that’s our stance. We just have a lot of thousands more that will be able to tech to work through.” translate across. There will also be new instruments, The hardware, though, is proving to of course, and Harmonix has partnered be far more problematic. “Our ambition with Mad Catz to manufacture them. But would be to support all the old music these new peripherals won’t have any controllers, regardless of manufacturer. If new features. Even aesthetically, they they worked on Rock Band 3, they ought won’t deviate far from the traditional to work on Rock Band 4,” Sussman says. Stratocaster shape, given Harmonix’s “But it’s complicated by the fact that the ongoing relationship with Fender. The technology has changed on the console
unnecessary proliferation of expensive peripherals helped kill off the music genre, after all, and launching with a shiny new range of essential fake instruments would be in conflict with Harmonix’s current beliefs.
The videogame industry has never been great at documenting and preserving its own history. Games are tied so closely to the technology of their time that playing them a few years down the line is often arduous or impossible. This problem is especially pronounced for rhythm-action games, thanks to their reliance on peripherals and the advent of HDTVs, whose latency renders a lot of older music games unplayable. Rock Band, of course, isn’t the only game from the Harmonix archive that’s being brought back this year: after a nail-biting Kickstarter drive, electronic beat-matching cult classic Amplitude will also reappear in the summer. “Amplitude was lost, trapped back in the sixth generation of consoles, in the CRT and PS2 era. I think we viewed that as kind of tragic, and our hope is that it will have a new life on present technology,” Rigopulos explains. “For a host of reasons, it’s a fantastic game that never quite had its moment in the sun. Very few people even knew about it, but we feel like the world has changed sufficiently in the past dozen years that it has an opportunity to find an
audience this time around. By contrast, Rock Band very much found its audience back in the day.” That might be true – but can Rock Band succeed again now? There are things working in its favour: for instance, it will be launching into a much less crowded, less competitive market for rhythm-action titles, and there is no publisher-driven imperative to release a new version every 12 months. The patching process is much more straightforward on the new generation, and Harmonix’s intention is to continue to add things to Rock Band 4 in the coming years, working with the community to develop the features that players want. It’s also a good time in the console cycle for a game such as Rock Band to shine again, Sussman believes. “We see some parallels to Rock Band 1 with respect to where PS4 and Xbox One are in their cycles. There’s not a lot of games that are accessible, family friendly, fun and social. Last year, we saw games that appealed to your classically core gamer demographic, and this second year is when there’s an opportunity for these consoles to support experiences that are a little more massmarket, that break the mould of what core gaming is. We think the timing is right to bring Rock Band back.” But the biggest source of confidence for Harmonix is that even though there’s been barely any support or new songs for
years, people are still playing Rock Band 3. “People never stopped playing,” says Sussman. “Certainly the numbers have not been there relative to 2008 or 2009, the peak of the band game trend, but hundreds of thousands of people are still playing Rock Band 3. That makes me feel really good about the idea that this is not just a passing fad. This is something that connects people to music that they love.” Rock Band was always the ultimate expression of Harmonix’s initial mission: to bring the joy of playing music to people who can’t play an instrument. After Rock Band’s heyday, Harmonix went off in all kinds of different directions, from Kinect-based Fantasia: Music Evolved and Dance Central to experiments with musical shooter Chroma, which is now being retooled after feedback on its early alpha. The studio’s focus broadened, but that original mission statement is still loaded with emotional power. “A lot of the things that I feel are relevant about Rock Band have nothing to do with gaming at all,” Sussman says. “They have everything to do with music and culture and the fantasy of playing music, which is something that transcends any gaming trend. The fantasy of playing live music to a crowd is a common thing, and timeless. There is a whole cultural music component to what we’re trying to do here that has nothing to do with gaming politics… This is a thing that ought to exist.” n
Royalty cut One of the questions that kept popping up for Harmonix during the Kickstarter for Amplitude was, ‘What happened to all that Guitar Hero money?’ The truth is that although Guitar Hero certainly made someone very rich, it wasn’t Harmonix. “When Harmonix was acquired by Viacom [in late 2006], the vast majority of the money paid for that acquisition was to the former shareholders, which was primarily the investors who had funded our operation for ten years and kept us in business,” explains co-founder Alex Rigopulos. “The windfall from that sale of the company really has nothing to do with the current company that now exists. We’re now just a small, independent studio again, facing the same challenges that any indie studio does.”
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Knowledge Lucas Pope
King Obra Polymath Lucas Pope talks tools, leaving Naughty Dog behind, and Return Of The Obra Dinn
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Of Sabotage, another game with a spye may have made his name with fiction lilt. Both earned attention, and the lo-fi Papers, Please, but back Pope felt there was more in the theme. in 2006 Lucas Pope was exactly what “I’m a big fan of 1984,” he explains, Naughty Dog was looking for: a “and that kind of government has always prodigiously talented programmer who been interesting to me. I wanted to keep could effectively build internal toolsets. making games with this kind of spy-thriller He joined the Santa Monica studio when vibe. Plus, I have what you could call it was ramping up preproduction on the a document fetish. I love checking first Uncharted. “I was underqualified,” documents. And I love the moment of Pope tells us, “but they gave me a catching a mistake.” chance because I was willing to do Pope began work on Papers, Please stuff that no one else wanted to do.” in November 2012. Balancing the Pope built the tools that would be development with his home life was a used by Naughty Dog’s designers and challenge. “I would eat breakfast with artists. Uncharted’s level editor was his the family, spend time doing chores and work, as was a program that organised errands, then get to work kind of late,” the dialogue for faster localisation. It was he explains. “After six hours of powering enjoyable – “I friggin’ love tools,” he says through, I’d eat dinner, – but after Uncharted 2, then try to do another six it was time to move on. “Mechanically, I hours. It was supposed “That was a great time to be at Naughty Dog,” wanted something to be quick and experimental, but I got big Pope says. “There was a bit like Gone ideas about this game, so a real sense that you I panicked and started could pave the road this Home, except crunching, and this sixcompany was going on. with a very clear month game turned into a Plus, I learned a lot – nine-month game. Keiko everything I know about game element” understood, because she’s producing games these a game developer as well. She stepped days, I got from Naughty Dog. But I up to do the things I wasn’t able to.” wanted to do my own thing and work on After its extended development, small stuff that nobody else would do.” Papers, Please launched in August, Before starting at Naughty Dog, Pope 2013, and according to Pope’s estimates had met and married Keiko Ishizaka, and has to date shipped about 1.2 million together they made puzzler Mightier, copies. A port for Vita is now in the which was nominated for the Innovation works. Pope is also gearing up his next Award at the 2009 Independent Games project, a puzzle game called Return Of Festival. That gave Pope the confidence The Obra Dinn, an early build of which to go into business for himself. can be downloaded from his website. The couple moved to Japan. Soon “I wanted to do something 3D, but after, the Ludum Dare game jam came all in black and white, and with that around and, as a warm-up, Pope built old pixellated visual style,” he explains. The Republia Times, a browser game in “Mechanically, I wanted something a bit which you control a state-run newspaper. like Gone Home, except with a very For the jam itself, Pope made Six Degrees
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Pope is at work on a Vita version of Papers, Please and macabre nautical puzzler Return Of The Obra Dinn
clear game element. People look at Gone Home and ask, ‘Is it a game or not?’ I think it is. But I wanted to do something where there’d be no question, and you’d be judged on your ability to solve a puzzle.” In Return Of The Obra Dinn, players scour the eponymous maritime vessel, trying to determine the fates of the dead crew to log in the roll book. It’s being built in Unity, an engine that Pope says suits his design philosophy. “Some people don’t like it, because you can’t do anything low-level – you have to work with what Unity gives you. But I love that. I love working with restrictions. Rather than having an open canvass and filling it with stuff, it’s better for me if I’m working on something very defined.”
Pope’s pragmatic approach has led him to success, but also brought him critics. When he removed nudity from the iOS version of Papers, Please to pass Apple’s content requirement checklist, he was accused of compromising his vision, of selling out the ideas behind his game. But Pope doesn’t see it that way. “I don’t want to throw out my whole game just because of stupid nudity. A lot of people flipped out, but to me, it wasn’t a huge compromise. I want my mom to play this game and I know she’d play without the nudity. I don’t want to seppuku over something like that. “Of course, there will always be things that I want to stick to and I do go into games with a vision. But I understand people have limited time, and there are a shitload of other videogames out there now, so I don’t have any problem making any game smooth or easy or accessible. I like compromising something ‘pure’ to serve a practical need. I’m less of an artist, more of an engineer.” n
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