Singularity Interview

Extensive tongue-wag with Activision Producer Kekoa Lee-Creel on Raven Software’s upcoming dual-timezone shooter.

By Adam Doree, December 23, 2009 (0) comments

FPS Gamer: Can you give us a brief overview of Singularity?

Lee-Creel: Singularity is the new first-person sci-fi shooter from Raven. It starts in 2010. There’s an antagonist who’s come back to 2010, he’s come to this island – it’s called Katorga 12 – and on that island there was some experimentation being done in the fifties, which led to a Chernobyl-esque disaster. The island had been quarantined and closed off. So he’s returned to re-engage the experimentation and take advantage of the science that was done there.

Somewhere, somehow, the undead become involved. Well, they look like undead.

Enter the US forces – this isn’t Soviet Russia, this is modern-day Russia – in 2010, a pilot and a co-pilot who fly in on a recon mission based on these strange things that are happening on this island that’s really not supposed to exist, because it’s all been mothballed and covered up. The plane crashes, it’s brought down, it’s not clear why, and when the player awakens he’s one of those people, he’s been separated from his pilot and he’s trying to figure out what’s going on, and he gets pulled into a large-scale conspiracy, now that he has to understand as he’s being thrown back and forth between 1950 and 2010. So there’s something much bigger that happened here than just that baseline, those ground rules.

FPS Gamer: The obvious comparison is Timeshift, but your demo is more reminiscent of Bioshock in its tone and puzzles.

Lee-Creel: I’d say so. We don’t want to draw absolute comparisons, but some of the things you touch on are really valid. Some other games have done time [manipulation] via pause or rewind or fast-forward functions, that’s been the way to explore the time mechanic. We’re not doing that at all. In fact, as you said we’re trying to create a mood that’s driven entirely by the conspiracy storyline, and these environments that immerse you in the sci-fi world.

And the time manipulation device is just one component of these things. So instead of manipulating the time of the world, you’re manipulating the time of objects in the world, so you can age objects – and you’re also thrown between 1950 and 2010, and there’s this out-of-time place called the null zone which is sort of in-between time, it’s not really in a normal plane. That’s what we saw in the demo, there’s this wave that comes over you, and you’re thrust into this place that has looping things happening, it’s sort of a “stuck spot”.

So the player does have the opportunity to move back and forth between 1950 and 2010, but really he’s not controlling time, in fact he’s kind of the victim of the time anomalies and instability that the island is surrounded by.

TMD in action. Eat rapid ageing, sucker.

FPS Gamer: It also sounds remarkably like the last season of ABC’s Lost…

Lee-Creel: Exactly right! The game’s been in development for some time, so as we’ve seen the fifth season of Lost unfold it’s been a bit jarring how similar it’s become – but that’s not entirely fair, because we’ve been working on this forever! Comparatively speaking. So it was kind of, yeah – I know when the guys saw it at Raven it was like “Did you see that episode? My god man, it’s the same!”