BRUNO GALET: PRODUCER

Bruno Galet is the Producer on Red Steel 2. He entered the project halfway through and had a lot on his plate from the outset. The recent arrival of the Wii MotionPlus accessory meant a whole new approach to see how the peripheral would reshape the direction of the game. As well as dealing with marketing and managing the budget, one of Bruno’s first tasks was to take on a Creative Director and define his job. Bruno has been in the industry for over 15 years, starting off as a programmer on various games and consoles, including the Super Nintendo console.

There’s a lot of talk about slashing and fighting, but what about exploration and adventure - what role do these aspects play in the game?

These will be key in the levels. In fact we are going to have hubs and each hub will have a safe place – we haven’t decided the exact name yet, where the main character will give you the story in that location and give you some quests. He’ll tell you the story along the way and you’ll find out more about your objectives, about you, because at the beginning you don’t know very much about yourself. There will be a lot of quests and of course you can also upgrade your weapons, because the katana and gun will be upgradeable – you’ll meet some people like a sheriff who will be able to upgrade your gun, you’ll meet a swordsmith that will be able to upgrade your katana.

So, the swordplay looks fun, but the shooting looks pretty effective – why wouldn’t you just go round shooting everything?

Yes, well in the version you’ve seen, it’s not well-balanced yet. The idea is to be able to give the enemies the ability to dodge. So you won’t be able to do it like that and in 10 bullets defeat the enemies. We also want to force the player to use the sword or the gun depending on the situation, so we have a lot of ideas for that. For example, in the mine, you won’t be able to use the gun because things could explode, things like that. And so we have to work a lot more on the gun. We have to offer a challenge, even if you’re using the gun.

And what sort of feedback have you got that’s been useful?

It’s been mainly about the slash action – people at the beginning didn’t really understand how to do a light and a strong slash because the hardware was the first of its kind. At first we had three types of slash: light, medium and strong, but people didn’t really catch that – so we set it to only two. So things like that we adapted, we worked on the movement of the camera – it was much faster than what we have today and some people asked us to decrease the speed, to have different kinds of configuration to give the player the choice of which speed he’d like to play at.

We also discovered that we’d have to put a kind of learning session before starting the game – because making a strong slash will be different depending on the person. So we want to put in some sort of training room to be able to calibrate the light and the strong per player.

So if you’re playing in the Ninja Mode it doesn’t matter if whether you are a little girl or a bodybuilder, you can still play okay.

Yes, because the Ninja mode will be determined more by skills than by strength. You need strength, but relative to the player. So at the beginning, you can do a light slash, do a strong slash, and set the parameters relative to yourself.. The different levels will then be more about skills, handling the different powers you have, doing combos, accuracy, to hit with the blade in a certain way, more precisely.

We saw the use of the Wii Remote to open the safe, which is pretty cool. But will there be many other non-fighting uses of the Wii Remote?

Oh yes, many of them won’t be violence-focused, like opening the safe. We have some designs, it’s just a matter of time. We have some puzzles, like locks, but with very complex mechanics. You have to slide the katana blade in and turn it just so and then slide some more – more peaceful things to do between fights (laughs).

We can see it’s set in the desert in Arizona. Will there be many other environments?

Yes, but the mix will stay Far West and Asia. Known places but with an Asian influence. So we’ll have canyons, we’re going to have a level on the rooftops, which will be nice, a ninja level. And in the mines – Far West locations but with Asian influences.

And bosses! We haven’t heard much about the bosses yet…Obviously there’s the big boss, the Warlord, but are there other bosses as well?

Yes, we have three families. The Jaguars, the Enforcers and the Ninjas. And each family has a boss and also a half-boss – as well as the main boss, who is the Warlord. And so you’ll meet the main bad guy three times in the game.

And so they’re really like different clans…

Yes, they’re like different clans and they don’t really like each other, but somehow the big boss has managed to make them happy enough to all work for him. The Jaguar style you have seen, the Enforcer will be more armoured, more police, more cop-style, with more armour, with military clothing. And then the Ninjas which will be a mix between Asian and cowboys, but they will be stylish cowboys with the ninja look. (laughs)..yeah, it’ll be very cool!