Singularity Interview

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

He’s not a badass, he’s not a marksman, he’s not this superb awesome rockstar of a fighter, he’s just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. Thematically too I think we’re touching on a little bit of – it gets fairly dark in that the player is constantly exposed to things that will bring him down. There’s just constant challenges, it’s a sense of – I don’t want to say “depression”, because that’s a really strong word, but the player is just beaten down several times.

There are several twists that should just lead to complete and total desperation and almost a sense of giving up. You’re exasperated and you’ve lost all hope and it’s about just pressing on. So that’s the biggest theme, to get past all the challenges and rise to the occasion. I think that pervades the entire story from start to finish.

FPS Gamer: Would you say that’s reflected in the gameplay? Does the gameplay ever become “depressing”? Or is it strictly a storyline thing?

Lee-Creel: I think it’s strictly the story. In terms of gameplay, right – one of the things that Raven does really well is craft a pretty intense combat scenario which compels you to want to continue playing because it’s fun. So it’s a fine line, what we had to balance is making a compelling storyline that provokes emotion and honestly touches on some dark reactionary things in a human mind, and also just making it something fun and easy to get through in that you actually want to continue playing, you don’t want to get depressed, “off yourself” mid-way through because it’s so dark.

There’s a line there. So you’ve kind of got to play with the storyline, and present enough of a compelling story to drive somebody to be curious, curious about the emotions they’re going to feel, and actually have good mechanics that make it a cool experience to continue playing.

FPS Gamer: The FPS market is rather crowded. How confident are you that Singularity will stand out?

Lee-Creel: It’s a challenge. I think the FPS market as you said it’s extremely competitive, there are some great games out there that we’re going up against. And I think it all comes back to the concept. We have an extremely compelling storyline that we’ve worked really hard to craft. We have a couple of really unique and cool mechanics that are different and I think differentiate the game, and on top of that we have the marketing machine that is Activision, we have a lot of steam behind us in that regard. So I think we can hold our own, because the game itself is good enough to be out there and stand its ground against really good games, but in general the bar has been raised and we just had to keep up – I mean frankly, it’s a tough landscape.

FPS Gamer: Are you worried that more familiar IP – like Wolfenstein – will get more attention than the original properties?

Lee-Creel: You know, I think on a very shallow, surface level they look very similar and they’re both FPSs so it’s easy to make that jump, but realistically when you get deeper into the games, and you start to see what they have to offer, they’re pretty vastly different games. So I think we can coexist in the same space. Wolfenstein has a pretty traditional fanbase that loves FPSs and what they stand for in the most conventional sense – you run and gun, you blow shit up. It’s pretty straightforward. And then you’ve got some really awesome baddies in that game.

And then on this side you’ve got a more emotional experience that’s a little more provoking in terms of the humanity role and themes, and we’re trying to tell a completely different kind of story. And it’s a little less run and gun, it’s more of a thinking man’s shooter. So on the surface they look very similar – as long as we can get the message out there, I think they’ll capture slightly different audiences.

---