Singularity Interview

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

FPS Gamer: This is set partly in Soviet Russia, and inspired by the Cold War experience. How have you reflected that era in the design?

Lee-Creel: The art style has done a lot of that for us actually. The stuff that Raven has done is – they’re working within a very industrial space, they made all of the architecture very sort of plastic and industrial. So it’s a bit recognisable, there are huge iconic representations of Soviet Russia, big hammer and sickle, big working man’s statue – things that represent that to people.

In addition they’ve added a lot of propaganda art that fits with the themes and the style of that era, so with all that plastered on the walls you create this sense of trueness to what was going on. In theory. That’s the biggest difference here, that the game was founded on the American perspective of what Soviet Russia was like at that time, so the game also follows that, that perception of what it was, as opposed to reality. I have no idea if there were propaganda posters on every wall, but certainly in the game there are, and it reinforces that message over and over again.

FPS Gamer: Raven has used id Software’s engine in the past, but this is on Unreal Engine 3. What was the rationale behind that shift? Do you prefer UE3 to id Tech 4?

Lee-Creel: It was a bit of experimentation, there’s really no… I think the engineers could speak to this better than me, but certainly there’s no preference, both engines have strengths and weaknesses, and they wanted to try something different and still retain their relationship with id, so there’s really no harm there.

So they tried Wolverine on Unreal Engine, they tried this on Unreal Engine… I think they’re just opening doors for versatility, so it just allows them more options in the future to keep all those lines and technical skills open. And they love challenge, frankly. They’re very tech-heavy guys, so for lack of a better word it’s “fun” to try something new just to see if you can do it. The guys are very open to that sort of thing.

FPS Gamer: Is Singularity more of a single player than a multiplayer game?

Lee-Creel: It’s heavily single player focussed, but we are doing competitive multiplayer and it’s getting just as much love it’s just coming a little bit later. So competitive multiplayer is in the product, I can’t go into the details about it. There are time-based mechanics in multiplayer so it does tie into single player. It’s a blast to play, I’ve been playing a lot. It’s getting quite good actually. You see things I don’t think you’ve seen in other MP games. I think it’s going to be really awesome, I just can’t talk to it right now.

FPS Gamer: What about co-op?

Lee-Creel: Co-op’s a lot harder because of the story we’re trying to tell. It was experimented with early on, we talked about it, and the hardest part is really conveying the sense of mood and tone and tension… For two people it requires a lot more resource and it was just something I don’t think we could have done as well, so we went ahead and pulled back on that.

FPS Gamer: Thanks for your time.

Singularity is due out on Xbox 360, PC and PlayStation 3 next year.

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