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Ninja Theory: Enslaved performance prevented team expansion
Every year, critics and fans provide the word-of-mouth support to several games that barely subsist on a whisper of marketing. "Enslaved should have done better," says Tameem Antoniades, head of the game's developer, Ninja Theory. "Right now we should have been doing a sequel and perfecting that sequel and doing what franchises do, which is get better over time." The comments come from a new issue of Edge (via CVG), and go on to show that the studio's longterm plans were altered by Enslaved's so-so sales. Antoniades reveals that Ninja Theory meant to expand to two teams, but have now remained a "smaller shop" to focus entirely on the Devil May Cry reboot for Capcom. Though team members had "mentally prepared" themselves for this outcome, Antoniades said in October of last year, it's clear that the game's success had been embedded in the studio's plans for growth. (At least Enslaved wasn't a racing game.) Since Devil May Cry is a firmly established brand, Ninja Theory's expressive characters may yet find themselves in a hit -- and perhaps even a finely tuned action game.
Ninja Theory head wary of AAA retail model, despite following it with DMC
"We're putting everything into it, the whole studio is focused on it. It's not 'knock it out because it's safe', we're taking some of our biggest risks on this project, we're doing some of our most creative work on it," Ninja Theory co-founder and "chief creative ninja" Tameem Antoniades told GamesIndustry.biz in a recent interview, when asked about his studio's latest project, Devil May Cry. "In fact, Capcom wouldn't have given it to us if they wanted a straight sequel, they wanted something new," he added. He noted all of this before he stated that "there's this stranglehold that the AAA retail model has which I think is just crushing innovation and access to creative content." But wait, isn't Antoniades' studio currently hard at work on a reboot of a AAA retail franchise for a major publisher? "We're in this kind of AAA bracket, I guess you could call it ... the barriers to entry for that are so high, so difficult, that we seem to be getting, being offered, decent work in that area," he explained. "It's hard to say no when you've got a team of 100 and you have to keep the payroll going." So, Antoniades believes that AAA retail games are "crushing innovation and access to creative content," but that his studio is developing a AAA retail game that features "some of our most creative work." Yup.
Heavenly Sword 2 could have gone to Hell
With Enslaved now wrapped up, Ninja Theory's Tameem Antoniades answered a few questions from VG247's readers. One asked about the possible direction a sequel to the team's previous game, Heavenly Sword, could take. (Spoiler alert!) The death of the first game's heroine, Nariko, obviously poses a challenge. According to Antoniades, one idea had players discovering Nariko "trapped in Hell by the spirit of the sword." Coming to her rescue would be Kai, playable in the real world and somehow able to "communicate with Nariko and try and help rescue her soul." Fascinatingly, the potential sequel would have played with the movement of time -- one day in Hell represents a year on Earth -- and as such, Kai would transform from "teenage girl to old woman" throughout the course of the game. The Voices of a Distant Star approach to the game's storytelling could have made for an interesting, thought-provoking journey. (Certainly more so than EA's Dante's Inferno.) However, it's unlikely this concept will ever come to fruition. Last we heard, Ninja Theory is no longer involved with the series.
Enslaved DLC will be 'an entirely new experience'
According to Ninja Theory chief Tameem Antoniades, the downloadable content for the much-anticipated Enslaved isn't just going to be "an extra few levels kind of thing. It's an entirely new experience," he tells Destructoid in a recent interview. He says that the "extra" content was designed as a whole new project -- the game is a cohesive story and experience in itself, and then the DLC was created from "a little extra time and budget for something totally extra, which is totally optional." Strangely, he couldn't confirm that the DLC would follow the Pigsy character (which is what Namco said about a week ago), but he promises a "meaty" experience nevertheless. Antoniades also talks more about how the game was developed from a very cinematic point of view -- the company hired real screenwriters and filmmakers to come work on the project, and took inspiration from the idea of "buddy movies, where each character is part of a team," Antoniades says, "and that without each other you can't accomplish the mission." We're very much looking forward to seeing how all of this influence and hard work pans out -- the game will be out next week.
Develop: How a movie screenwriter helped save Enslaved's story
Gamers sometimes criticize games for playing too much like movies. But as Ninja Theory Designer Tameem Antonaides explained at a Develop Conference session this week, bringing in screenwriting veteran Alex Garland to consult on their upcoming game Enslaved: Odyssey to the West made their game more movie-like is some very beneficial ways. As the writer behind movies like Sunshine and 28 Days Later, Garland had a feel for how to get the most drama out of Enslaved's story scenes, Antonaides said. Garland would write scenes with very simple, reductive dialogue that looked thin on the page, Antonaides said, but gained more "meat" with an actor's performance behind them. Indeed, the short story clips shown at the conference were notable for how much they relied on body language and vocal cues to convey information without words. Antonaides said they ended up cutting the game's cutscenes down from two hours of dialogue to a lean 80 minutes, with less focus on exposition and more on drama. "If you have too much dialogue, it doesn't work," Antonaides said. "Alex changed my view of what writing meant," Antonaides said. "I felt like a schoolboy so many times talking to Alex." %Gallery-97232%
Ninja Theory co-founder explains studio's move to multiplatform development
With the release of Heavenly Sword, Ninja Theory had seemingly established itself as a high-profile, PS3-exclusive developer. However, the studio's next game, Enslaved, a gritty action version of the same classical Chinese story Journey to the West from which Dragon Ball originates, is going to be multiplatform. "Heavenly Sword came out pretty early on the PS3," Ninja Theory co-founder Tameem Antoniades explained to CVG, "and we sold, I think, a million and a half copies, and that's still not enough as an independent studio to break even. The publisher potentially breaks even at that point, but the developers don't. It's just that when so many people have Xbox -- I mean over half the market or more has Xbox 360s -- why limit yourself to one platform?" Without a clearly dominant platform like the PlayStation 1 or 2, he said, it's difficult to profit from console-exclusive games. "I think people are going to hold off for a long time before getting on to the next generation," Antoniades added. "I think everyone's licking their wounds and releasing new games to try and keep this current generation going. I'm hoping it doesn't come too soon either because we want to make at least a couple more games in this generation." Squeezing in a few more current-gen releases sounds like a good plan -- it'd be tough to be totally broke and have to start developing on new hardware again.
