Dear Reader:
Red Steel interview
An interview with Marie-Sol Beaudry, producer for Red Steel.
FiringSquad: First, how did the idea for Red Steel come about and did it come up before the Nintendo Wii controller was revealed or after the plans for the controller were released?
Marie-Sol Beaudry: The first contact between Ubisoft & Nintendo was at E3 2005. At that time Nintendo wanted a third party team to work on a first person view game for the Wii. We only got basic info about the concept of the pad, the capture device & the relative power of the console. No real technical data were supplied at that stage.
Then we spent about 2 to 3 months just to imagine how you can use & play with the controller & the buttons. We had no deadline, no pressure and no constraint, but to try & move with a remote control & see what they could do with it. We listed all the moves they liked and the first ruff ideas of gameplay linked to those moves. Two teams began to work on the project at first: the engineers & the designers. They worked as you can play �ping pong� > at first designers got ideas and in a second step, engineers tried to see if this was possible vs. the hardware.
The goal was to explore all the kind of move/use you can imagine with a remote control in hand that would represent a device. They made a first list of interactions: cut, shoot, slash, smash, dick, use it as a rackets, lasso, spoon, flashlight� They wanted to focus on the moves that are possible to do in reality.
We did it with real remote controls as we hadn�t received any Wii controler so far. So no technology at first only ideas and this was a very fresh & new development process!
They decided to go for a gun gameplay at first as it was very intuitive as you just point and shoot & then they found out that the contact weapons were an interesting track to explore, such as knife, sword, saber�
FiringSquad: What can you tell us about the game’s storyline?
Marie-Sol Beaudry: The story of the game is about an American who, meeting his fiancee’s father for the first time, hardly discovers that the man is a great yakuza leader. This happens during an attack launched against his �father in law� in a LA restaurant. The hero is forced to intervene and save the father but his fiancee is kidnapped by reprisals.
Looking for her in LA, he will fail to prevent the kidnappers to bring her to Japan but discover what they want: The Katana-Giri, sword of her father and symbol of his power over his clan. About to die from his wounds, the father won�t have any other choice that put the hero in charge of the katana, with the promises to rescue his daughter. Thus with this prestigious but dangerous inheritance he will have no other way than going to Japan trying to save her
There he will discover that the forces he has to fight is much bigger than expected and deal with a strong war for influences over the yakuza’s world. But the katana as a weapon as well as a symbol will help him to gain allies to the condition to prove his valor and merit. This will lead him to accomplish several missions to prove his good faith and help to get back the influence of the clan of his father in law. Fighting, dueling and getting respect from Yakuza will become the story of his life in Japan.
FiringSquad: Some people might see Red Steel as nothing but a different kind of “light gun game”. How is working with the Wii controller with the weapons different than the typical light gun title?