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Daily Game has an interesting Q&A up with Mat Hart, the producer of PS3 exclusive Heavenly Sword. I actually never got a chance to play the game at E3, but what I saw of it looked pretty impressive, even more so then Resistance: Fall of Man. Of course, that's probably because I love sword games.
In the Q&A Daily Game touch on developing for Sony's next-gen console, the inspiration for the game, how the single-player mode was designed and such. Here's a taste:
DailyGame: One of the things that's so intriguing about Heavenly Sword is its fighting sequences. We imagine you were influenced a bit by fighting games, but where did you draw the most inspiration for the gameplay?Mat Hart: We were inspired mainly by film, to be honest with you. Wushu films, things like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hero, that kind of thing. It's that over-the-top, cinematic, beautiful ballet that builds up to the fighting that really gave us our inspiration.
DG: The combo system, though, with juggling enemies in the air...there's not exactly a lot of juggling in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.MH: Well, I'm not sure if that's really true, actually. I think I'd have to disagree with you on that. I think our combat is an expression of the unique worlds that are in some of the Wushu films. There are fantastic elements to those films, and certainly there's a cinematic element, but we recognize that for our game, the important thing is that the combat system be accessible and yet deep. So we've worked long and hard; the combat system has been in development for about two years, completely from scratch. We've got an amazing combat designer, and he's basically put this system together.
Now you've got guys who've never played this game before kicking ass, doing cool moves, looking really great, feeling powerful .You know, you go into power stance and you feel the weight of the weapon, and you're hitting people across the room, but then you flip over into speed stance, and you're dancing all over the place, spinning the blades around, just whacking guys up into the air. It's all really cool, and it flows together well, and we're really excited about it.
DG: What we saw at E3 was obviously an arena type area. Can you talk at all about the single-player portion of Heavenly Sword, and maybe some of the other levels we might see?MH: Basically you've got a half dozen chapters, and they tell the story of Nariko through her journey with the Sword. The environments are all very different, very varied. The chapter that that particular arena was in is part of a vast level built in sort of a water garden with waterfalls and beautiful scenery all around you, mountains all around, that sort of setting.
Hit the link for the full interview. This is one of the PS3 games that I'm pretty excited about, though Resistance: Fall of Man is starting to tantalize me a bit too now.
Heavenly Sword Q&A [Daily Game]
