Yesterday, we talked with executive producer Jonathan Knight about the development of Dante's Inferno. Today, in part two of our interview series on the game, we chatted with senior VP of Visceral Games Nick Earl, who discussed the importance of Dante's Inferno and Visceral to EA as a whole.
IndustryGamers: When did EA know that Dante's Inferno was going to be something special?
Nick Earl: Jonathan was a creative director on The Simpsons Game and when that shipped Christmas 2007, he took a little time off and came back with a concept that I loved and I immediately gave it the green light. Fortunately, we have a strong tech base and one engine that we've done all of our games with; they built the prototype that wasn't anything to look at, but we knew it was a great concept and it ran at 60 FPS. We had a prototype in a few months, and again it was still rough but it was playable and the combat was fun. In all, the game took 25 months to complete.
IG: Wow, that's fast for a modern game. That sounds like the development cycle for a game from the last generation of consoles.
NE: You're right, last generation it took about two years to put out a AAA product. To go from a concept to a gold master in 25 months is quite rare. This is setting the bar high for this studio and it's becoming more important for the studio to put out quality, linear action titles on time.
John [Riccitiello] has created an atmosphere where people take risks and create original IP and John is supportive of those types of titles. We've built the infrastructure of the company to bring about those changes and right now, we're at an apex and hopefully we can push it even further.
IG: Now, violence has been a celebrated part of video games for decades, but sex usually ends up being more muted. That obviously isn't the case with Dante's Inferno; how did this come to be?
NE: We let the team do what they wanted to do. We pay attention to the ratings and we let them loose within those confines. It's about being true to the property; when we did The Godfather, we were true to that. It's very true to the poem and the art based on the Inferno. We felt it needed to be; it's part of the game's atmosphere.
To put it more clearly, there's nothing they censored. There wasn't anything cut unless it wasn't quality.
IG: The demo gave some interesting glimpses into the world of Dante's Inferno – it posed the question of if this was real or if it was merely the last spasms of a creative but dying mind, while the crumbling environments were evocative of Hell in reminding the player there is no solid ground to stand, nothing to rely on. It also showed how vital the story was in moving the game along.
NE: There were two key things for Dante's Inferno: we wanted to give it awesome action but also tell an interesting story. This is an inner journey for Dante, and our responsibility was bringing it to life in a compelling way.
IG: How did the decision for the Super Bowl slot come about?
NE: The company has started to figure out that, with something that's high quality, we owe it to ourselves to give a lot a lot of exposure. For example, we had the two minute spots during the NFC championship game for Mass Effect 2; that comes from John, who knows how to speak to those audiences. For the Super Bowl, we've got potentially 100 million people watching and we felt we should swing for the fences. It was 4 or 5 months ago, we were talking about Dante's Inferno and later we put together the piece and pulled the trigger on it.
IG: Has a Super Bowl ad ever been done by a gaming company? We can't recall one...
NE: Well, we know EA has never done one and we've been a publisher of record for many years. We know it hasn't been done in years. There may have been one from Atari years ago, but it has not been done in recent memory and it shows the confidence we have in Dante's Inferno. John really does like the big opportunities and he saw the opportunity to do this now.
2 Comments
February 3, 2010
I really enjoyed Dead Space on XBOX360. There were so good jump-your-seat horror moments and terrific graphics and sound with a few puzzles in it and gameplay innovations that really left in me an excellent game experience. Don`t know much about going more action-like than horror with Dead Space 2... They are definitely widening the audience...
February 3, 2010
YEA .. that's all well and good .. but after that Game Informer review I read that the boys at the newly formed team for Dead Space 2 think that the game is too scary.
I think you guys (EA Viceral) missed the point ... we picked up the game because it was scary and your new direction is going to make (what could be a great franchise) fail and go down the path of Resident Evil (repeated watered down versions of a great "what could be" title).
So cut the BS EA V ... seriously.