Game Informer: Prior to Lair, Factor 5 worked very closely with Nintendo. Why did you decide to split apart, and was the split amicable?
 
Julian Eggebrecht: Yeah, the split was extremely amicable—you’ll see me drinking as much with the Nintendo people as with the Sony people (laughs). It’s a small industry, after all, so no bad feelings. It was at the point in time when we saw that we wanted to move on to next-gen. Quite frankly, Nintendo hadn’t made up their plans yet completely. For us, it was simply something where we already saw the initial direction of the Wii slightly, and at the time they hadn’t really completely figured out yet the extent of the motion control and the extent of how much they would be doing with the wand and everything. So it was more about, “We’re going to keep the specs for graphics and sound on the same level, and then we’re going to do something else which is cool.” Quite frankly, if you don’t have the complete stuff in front of you—which they didn’t at the time—that’s a scary proposition for a developer, who’s looking for, “Well, we should go high-definition and 7.1 audio and all of these things.” And so, in 2004, when all of that happened, it was just logical for us to move on there. And that’s how it happened with Nintendo, end of story. We talked to them openly back then, we talked to Sony—we also talked to Microsoft—and Sony really had the whole package. I was blown away, because initially, I was hoping for the motion control that would also be in the PS3. When we had our early talks with Sony, it was basically about our dream system. The dream system included high-definition graphics and definitely larger storage media, which at the time was Blu-ray—that was pretty clear—but also motion control. I was like, “Yeah, they’re probably not going to do anything with the motion control, but oh well. We’ll have to live with that.” That was kind of the final perfect dream come true when it finally happened with the PS3. But yeah, we’re still good friends with Nintendo.
 
GI: What are your thoughts on the Wii?
 
Eggebrecht: I love it, absolutely. I mean, I love it as much as the PS3. When I read all of those things about how you have to buy a 360 and a Wii, that’s not true. You have to buy a PS3 and a Wii—that’s the perfect combination.
 
GI: So why Sony and not Microsoft?
 
Eggebrecht: On the technology front, there is simply more vision at Sony. By now, there’s now more—if not more, at least equal—vision on the online front. I have to say that. When we talked to Sony and Microsoft at the time, Microsoft was very determined and they delivered very nicely on what they wanted to do with the 360. But even back then, there was the, “Well, 1080p? Well, we don’t know about that. Real high-definition? You know what? Let’s do 720p for the games, mostly.” And they’re doing catch up right now, and they’re doing it quite cleverly. But nevertheless, in the early days you had that as a vibe of the system. What was a killer for me was no HDMI. We had huge fights with Microsoft basically going back and forth about, “Please, please, please, please put an HDMI port in there, because only then can you really see the graphics,” and they said, “No, we’re designing the whole graphics chip around being analog.” And they’re retrofitting it now, trying to catch up with the PS3. But all of that vision was there, right from day one, with the PS3. That was very encouraging. Kutaragi-san, in that sense, is on the technology front, and I don’t think anyone would contest that it’s still the greatest visionary in the industry. So, it made it easy. Sony was the clear-cut, perfect match.
 
GI: At Factor 5, are you guys Sony second party, or are you free to do whatever you want?
 
Eggebrecht: We’re an independent, closely aligned with Sony developer. Let’s put it that way. We’re not owned. We’re completely independent. So, we’re like Insomniac, I guess, if you want to make a comparison.
 
GI: One thing we don’t know much about with Lair is the story. Where did you guys come up with the concept and who created the story. Is there anything you can say about that?
 
Eggebrecht: The story almost developed at the same time as the basic concept, because when we pitched Lair to Sony, first of all it was about game mechanics. It was the, “Let’s take the strengths that we have, build on a couple of them and apply them to something that hasn’t been done before—which is a good dragon game.” As far as I know, there isn’t one out there in the 25 years of video games.
 
 
GI: At Tokyo Game Show, you said control of the dragons could be completely gesture based—you’re not going to use the analog sticks at all. Has that changed?
 
Eggebrecht: I did? So I guess this is my John Kerry flip-flopping moment (laughs). No. You are controlling the dragon with the Sixaxis. So, let’s probably preface it with we analyze every single game mode in the game for basically where does the Sixaxix motion-control part give us a better control and a more-refined control than an analog stick. Then we sat down and took a hard look at the thing and said, “Is this a gimmick? Does it make things worse than stick control, or does it enhance it?” In flight, the interesting thing—and I think it would also apply to racing games, though we haven’t tried that yet—the complete range of motion that you get with a controller gives you a significantly higher amount of control over your turn angle. If you remember, for example, in the Rogue Squadron games, you had the tight turn—you had the too-tight turns, oftentimes, which made people wiggle around, or when we tweaked it into the other round, which you never saw, but internally we had, oftentimes it felt too sluggish. And it was, because an analog stick for a flight game really doesn’t give you the range that you need, and arguably so for racing games it could help more with the whole wheel feeling. That’s actually why in air the Sixaxis controls way better. On the ground, that’s where I’m actually doing the flip-flopping.
 
At Tokyo Game Show, we had a very first implementation of the ground Sixaxis. We got a lot of flak for it—rightfully so—because it wasn’t as good as analog-stick control. We’ve been going back and forth, and in the end we might—but that’s a strong might—we might have the option to switch back and forth between the two, but if we in our last focus testing now find out that everyone just says, “Look, on the ground, the Sixaxis control is not the preferable way to play it,” then we’re going to go analog stick only there. Then there’s knight mode, which is analog stick and it always was, because you’re running around with a character and I don’t think that Sixaxis for moving around—the motion control—doesn’t make sense. Having said that, though, what you do have is a first-person look-around mode, where you basically go into the head of the character and look around, and that’s actually on the motion control. It feels, again, very natural, interestingly enough. When you run around with the guy, you can go into the look-around and you can very seamlessly use the Sixaxis there. So it’s all about doing it right, not gratuitous, gimmicky stuff.
 
GI: One of the things you were criticized most in your last Star Wars game for the GameCube was the on-foot elements. They seemed kind of forced, to a point, and obviously your expertise is in flight games. What did you learn from that game that you’re bringing over to Lair.
 
Eggebrecht: Lair doesn’t have a shooter weapon on the ground, so you’re not running around with a character who basically would have a gun running around and shooting like crazy. So first of all, I think that comparison directly doesn’t apply. When you’re the guy on the ground, it’s merely to get to the dragon. It’s more to give the feeling that you really are that person, because you try to flee. You are an air force pilot, right, controlling these dragons. Usually, these guys are not perfect Navy SEALS who can basically fight off a horde of people, either. So, in the end, you just need to get to your dragon. So that is traditional Ratchet and Clank control, which is basically just the way you guys wanted it—which, by the way, we had in Rebel Strike at one point, and yes we should have kept it that way. I think, just to finish on that note, Rebel Strike’s biggest problem for the character mode was actually the camera system, because the camera was predefined, and was the taste of the day, and it was a bad, bad decision to do that. No, the dragon actually on the ground is very much inspired by the fact that we had tank versions of it, which felt too much like a tank. It’s a large creature, so what you now get is a lot of weight of the creature still, but the cool thing about having a video game is we can over-emphasize reality a little bit. So when the dragon latches onto humans, basically, we zoom in with the camera to give you close ups, and we actually do time jumps, a little bit Matrix inspired, where basically you get to engage with your enemies a little faster. Outside of that, it’s traditional melee combat with the added incentive of eating people.
 
GI: How long is the game? How long do you think it’ll take the average gamer to get through it?
 
Eggebrecht: All of these percentage questions and length of gameplay… Let’s put it this way: If we really succeed in terms of tuning the difficulty curve right, and that’s what we’re doing right now, then even a newbie player should be able to play through to the end—but, we’ve taken a cue from our old games, so we have the medal system and all of that, so you’ll be at home with that. So replayability of the missions is important. Ideally, we want to tune it so someone can get through the game and the story in about 10-12 hours or something like that. Then there’s a whole lot of replay value. We have online leaderboards, supporting network platform fully there, we have chatboards inside the game, we have messaging inside the game, so all of that you can directly do within the game on the network platform. With the leaderboards, especially, I think our replay systems work quite well, because you can compare yourself and there are hidden things that you can unlock later. So your 10 hours is just your first playthrough.
 
GI: Cool! Downloadable content?
 
Eggebrecht: That’s something we’re thinking about. There is, of course—you always have to make a couple of sacrifices for shipping the thing. There’s a couple of points where we cut out parts of the story, and we kept it in place so we could re-insert subplots here and there into the whole thing, and I hope it’s going to happen.
 
GI: How far in development, and when can we see it? Spring is very vague.
 
Eggebrecht: Basically, by all definitions, pretty much everything is there. Now it’s optimization and really getting the difficulty curve right and really getting everything tweaked right. All of the systems are there. All of the unlocking—everything is there. Would I want to give it to you? No, because it needs to be tweaked right. It’s a 80-90%, but those last 10% are actually the hardest ones—because they’re going to make the game really perfect or not so.
 
GI: Are you still on target for spring?
 
Eggebrecht: Yeah. I know when we’re going to deliver, but Sony’s not going to ship it the next day. They need to determine what’s the perfect day for the platform.
 
GI: How have your overall experiences been with the hardware?
 
Eggebrecht: It’s an interesting ramp-up, interesting in terms of challenging—like I said before, less so than the PS2, but certainly moreso than, say, the GameCube, which was extremely easy. But that’s to be expected, because that’s where the power is. If it’s too easy, then as we’ve seen with the GameCube, there’s no headroom. We had a terrible time trying to squeeze more out of that system for Rebel Strike. On the PS3, the sky’s the limit. I’m happy that we got as much from it as we do right now, but we could go on for three years developing that engine and we know that the system will bear it. That’s the genius of Kutaragi’s designs—there’s so much headroom. And that makes the start up harder. But when you cross a certain threshold for the system and you know what to avoid and what to do right and how you write efficient code, how to basically have the Cell really talking in an optimized way with RSX, at that point it’s an exponential increase in productivity with what we’ve seen. At this point, it’s really going fantastically. It’s great hardware—it really is.
 
GI: You mentioned in an interview that your next project will be a downloadable game on the PlayStation Network.
 
Eggebrecht: We’re talking about that, and yeah, we’re working on some stuff—on small projects. We’re also working on large stuff, of course, but the EDI platform… As you can imagine, after two-and-a-half-years, people are a little burned out, especially people who have burned the midnight oil for a long time, and the EDI stuff is just perfect to say, “All right, let’s do this wacky little idea. Let’s not spend a lot of money on it, let’s not take a risk and get it out there, and if people love it, it might be a mini franchise. Or it might fail, but at least it didn’t cost that much.”
 
GI: What about bringing some of your older titles over on that?
 
Eggebrecht: in the context of what I mentioned there, which was EDI titles specifically for the first-party initiative, I don’t think that the current thinking from Phil Harrison is that under the worldwide studios umbrella he wants to see too many straight ported older titles. Having said that though, you’ve seen Midway’s announcement. The network platform is open to everybody, so there are other routes of releasing that content on network platform, and I’m sure that it’s going to come. We have been in some talks about rereleasing some of our old Turrican titles for the platform, but nothing’s been finished yet. I’d love to do it.

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GI: How have your overall experiences been with the hardware?
 
Eggebrecht: It’s an interesting ramp-up, interesting in terms of challenging—like I said before, less so than the PS2, but certainly moreso than, say, the GameCube, which was extremely easy. But that’s to be expected, because that’s where the power is. If it’s too easy, then as we’ve seen with the GameCube, there’s no headroom. We had a terrible time trying to squeeze more out of that system for Rebel Strike. On the PS3, the sky’s the limit. I’m happy that we got as much from it as we do right now, but we could go on for three years developing that engine and we know that the system will bear it. That’s the genius of Kutaragi’s designs—there’s so much headroom. And that makes the start up harder. But when you cross a certain threshold for the system and you know what to avoid and what to do right and how you write efficient code, how to basically have the Cell really talking in an optimized way with RSX, at that point it’s an exponential increase in productivity with what we’ve seen. At this point, it’s really going fantastically. It’s great hardware—it really is.
 

"The PS2 undoubtedly can be a great machine if used right. The Vector Units especially have some potential. We have used the N64 Vector Unit probably more than anybody else out there. Battle for Naboo and Indiana Jones use the N64 Vector Unit for almost unlimited dynamic lights, we did a complete particle system on it, character animation and skinning and even a landscape background engine. So I guess we would be more than qualified to use the PS2's Vector Units. But why should we? Why spend enormous resources, time, and ultimately too much money fighting the machine?" -- Julian Eggebrecht, president, Factor 5

Julian: Gran Turismo 3 is a gorgeous game, but I don't want to know how much time the guys at Polyphony had to spend to get it on-screen just because they had to fight the PS2. I would bet you that their development cycle would be cut in half on GameCube -- no doubt about it.

Souvenez-vous de la démonstration technique de la PS3 réalisée pour la dernière fois lors de l'E3 2006, nous présentant une foule de petits canards dans une baignoire.
Figurez-vous que le célèbre Phil Harrison a déclaré lors du DICE 2007 à Las Vegas, faire de cette démonstration un jeu nommé Super Rub a Dub, qui sera disponible très prochainement en téléchargement gratuit sur le Playstation Store.
 
Le principe de ce mini-jeu consistera à diriger un canard devant conduire ses petits vers la sortie la plus proche, le tout en utilisant uniquement les fonctions d'inclinaison de la manette SIXAXIS.

Virtua Fighter 5 débarquait aujourd'hui chez nos amis japonais. Le bilan des ventes ne s'est pas fait attendre puisque selon une enquête, le jeu s'est écoulé à 30 000 exemplaires pour sa mise sur le marché.