Luxoflux’s Joby Otero talks to eu.playstation.com about bringing Transformers to life on PLAYSTATION 3.
How did Luxoflux become involved in the development of Transformers Revenge Of The Fallen?
We've been lifelong fans of Transformers anyway, and when we heard about the first film and that Activision were going to get the license we actually wanted to do it then. That was several years ago and the reason we didn't do it was because of the timing.
Our studio was in the midst of developing technology for next generation consoles and the timeframe was very tight, which meant we wouldn't be able to develop our engine as much as we would have liked to. So when Revenge Of The Fallen came about we jumped at it and came up with loads of ideas for how to do a great Transformers game.
Is there pressure in developing a game like Revenge Of The Fallen and the fact that it must be ready for the film's release?
Yeah, but it's a good sense of pressure. We've been developing games for a very long time and we've got some great people on the team which allows us to have a pretty good idea of what we can accomplish in a certain amount of time. So actually in a sense, there is a certain amount of pleasure in knowing when the end date is and working backwards from that.
What was it like working with the film's director, Michael Bay?
When we first met him he said that we would have a challenge on our hands in keeping up with his pace, and it turned out it was even faster than we thought. But he also understands that what we do as developers is a different kind of art to filmmaking, and we were really pleased that he got that from the outset.
He just said to us: ‘I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do with the film, which is to tell the story from a human perspective. I'm not going to tell you to do that because my suggestion would be that you do it from the robots' perspective.' That was perfect because it was exactly what we wanted to do. It was just a really good marriage between us, Paramount, Michael Bay and Hasbro, because everybody understood each others' expertise and was more than ready to share each others information.
Did you have great access to Hasbro's wealth of Transformers knowledge and expertise?
Oh yeah. They were great from day one. They came in and saw what we were trying to do with the transformation mechanic and the fact that we included the War Room in the game, which is a fan favourite feature carried over from the original series.
They came out of our first few meetings knowing that we were taking care of their baby, and also that we were taking it to a whole other dimension by doing things that none of the other games, and maybe the movies, had ever done before.
You've not only included all the Transformers from the film, you've also got old designs from many years ago and revamped them for the game.
Yeah, we've done that with the Seeker on the Decepticon side, the Protectobots and the Aerialbots. There are a few others as well but they're a surprise for the fans when they play through the game. Those are fan favourites for us and the kinds of Transformers that our director was really shooting for during the development process.
These are really cool characters that at least implied an additional sense of hierarchy to characters such as Starscream, who has the Seekers under his wing so to speak. They're not in the film, so we went back to the old toy designs and updated them so they matched the look of the film, which was really fun to do.
Transformers fans are extremely loyal and vocal about what they want from a game like this; how did you go about incorporating all that feedback into Revenge Of The Fallen?
We read a lot of forum posts, which is always scary because they are very vocal. Yet, it's an awesome resource. We as developers already had a lot of ideas and we were scared about digging deep into these forums and reading about what people wanted because it could be 180 degrees from what we really wanted to do. The good thing was that everything the fans wanted, we wanted and the two most prominent things were multiplayer and transforming anytime, anywhere.
Does the story for the game follow the films, or were you able to deviate slightly and add some of your own material?
Our approach was to ask the filmmakers and Hasbro what are going to be the four or five most memorable moments in the movie that people are going to talk about when they come out of the theatre. Asking that question right at the start meant that we knew that those scenes were definitely going to stay in the film despite the fact they were very early into production.
So once we synchronised with those points in the film, we had a lot of latitude for territory in between and flesh out stuff that the film only hints at, or maybe doesn't go into at all.
How many characters will players control in the game?
In the core game there are five playable Autobots and five playable Decepticons and then there is some stuff that happens later in the game that means you effectively get two additional playable characters. So there are 12 in total there for players to get to grips with.
We also have several unlocks, some of which are retailer exclusive and we'll also have downloadable content in the future.
What was it like working with Peter Cullen, the actor who voices Optimus Prime?
He was fantastic and amazing in the sound recording. Our whole crew got to go there and they were just over the moon about it. They came to our studio and they met our whole development team and answered loads of questions, signed autographs, toys and one of our guys had a brand new Mini Cooper and he had him sign his dashboard in indelible ink!
