Preview | APB
By Fraser McMillan
When does an air of confidence become outright arrogance?
Some would say it’s a fine line, others that no such divide exists. Either way, few would deny that Realtime Worlds’ Assistant Producer Ben Abbott has the utmost faith in his studio’s upcoming massively-multiplayer crime epic APB. In response my question about whether the depth of customisation demonstrated was one of the game’s key features, he exclaimed in an excited tone: “It’s not one of the key features, it’s one of the awesome features.”
At that moment it became apparent that overly formal rhetoric didn’t do justice to the visibly fierce passion Abbott displayed for his product. If his strong self-assurance happens to conflate into cockiness, then so be it, because what he told and showed to the packed screenings room at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival looked mightily impressive to say the least – and that was without any proper gameplay to pick apart.
//Getting into character
Chest-beating about the character, vehicle and logo creation for the best part of twenty minutes in a room so overcrowded by sweaty nerds it smelled more like a Rammstein mosh pit, the video he played was, all things considered, pretty astounding. Simple push and pull mouse gesturing allowed avatar features to be altered instantly by imperceptibly small degrees, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen any system with such flexibility before. It looked implausibly cleanly laid out, while still presenting a depth that has to be seen to be believed. As Abbott himself continued, “you’re not going to find that level [of customisation] in any other online game.”
As if to prove his point about the system’s adaptable toolset, halfway through the demonstration a character model with its back to the screen appeared, a note on its back asking “Can we make him?” He turned around. We were greeted by the President’s signature grin and the familiar campaign slogan, “Yes We Can.” It was uncanny.
In a bid to avoid tempting players into robbing banks and gunning down civilians using the world’s political inner circle, Barack was hastily discarded to make room for aspiring mechanics. That’s the career mechanic, not the game element, though strangely enough the latter looks fit for the former’s purpose. Automobile creation was every bit as malleable as its sister system, with the size and shape of nearly every component able to shift and then some. An intelligent decals system, which recognises the location of windows and wraps neatly around curves, is present and correct – and, as Abbott pointed out, avoids being “just slapped-on textures.”
The creation of decals echoes the tattoo and clothing print system, which again wraps artwork naturally around muscle and fabric folds respectively. The former was particularly interesting, Abbott explaining that the team went to great pains to have inks stand out more prominently on darker skin, which has been a problem with games in the past. Making the logos themselves works like a drawing program, the layer-based system and thousands of shapes and colours handling anything one could throw at it. After talking through and showing the creation of a logo from scratch, Abbott informed the audience that “this is just the art department going crazy,” as dozens of professional looking emblems, made in their entirety using the game’s features, flashed up one by one.
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Sounds like similar stuff to what we were shown at Develop. I’m ridiculously excited about this game.
The recent announcement that it will be subscription-free made this a pretty much guaranteed purchase for me. Even if the game turns out to be utter shite, I reckon I’ll get my money’s worth using the character creator to churn out pics for modern day pen ‘n’ paper RPGs.
There’s a little bit of dissonance between the character creator demos and the description of how the gameplay works. Character customisation does look awesome but every time it’s demoed theirs little to no restrictions as to what the player can do. What to change a thin short white guy into a muscled up hispanic gang banger? No problem, just slide that slider.
All of the game design description to date has had customisability a bonus you pick up from doing well in the game. It doesn’t read that’ll have the god like powers of virtual cosmetic surgery unless you’re a far way into the game.
There’s also a tension between customisability and celebrity, two of the games major pillars. I can’t see how you can become acclaimed by the world and instantly recognisable if all it takes are a few slider twitches to change your appearance completely.
None of this is insurmountable but without further details I’m worried RTW are doing a sly bait and switch game by getting everyone hyped up about a feature that won’t come into its own until you’ve spent a lot of effort in the game world. We’ll see.
During the session Ben reassured us that there’d be plenty of scope for customisation right off the bat. Apparently it’s only the “really cool gear” that’s reserved for later.