The original Sly caused quite a stir with the gaming masses for its slick cel-shaded visuals, simplistic yet innovative gameplay and a humorous cast. And now with the impending release of the sequel, we have Bruce Oberg, lead programmer at Sucker Punch to talk about Sly 2's chocolaty visuals and heist system, among other things.
Media We have a total of 15 screens for this game.
My name is Bruce Oberg. I'm one of the founders of Sucker Punch, and I was a lead programmer on Sly 2.
What kind of a game will Sly 2 be? Will it just improve upon the original and add more of everything (like Ratchet & Clank 2), or go beyond the platforming genre (ala Jak 2). Can you still call Sly 2 a platformer?
Sly 2 actually does a good amount of both. It improves on Sly 1 by being much larger, moving beyond 1-hit kills, and allowing you to play as Sly's pals Bentley and Murray. Sly 2 also goes beyond typical platformers with more wide open worlds, a more diverse set of objectives, and enemy AI that is both challenging and fun. All that said, Sly 2 has a great story and characters, and is still super easy to pick up and play, just like Sly 1.
Seeing how well the original was received by the gaming masses, how do you deal with the gamers' high expectations with the franchise now?
You have to be careful trying to predict what gamers are going to want in any game. The best thing we can do is make a game that we think is as fun as possible. Sly 1 had some issues that gamers were concerned about, and we've spent a lot of time making sure that Sly 2 improved on those areas. In the end, we have to balance a fine line: gamers expect Sly 2 to be familiar, but they also want to be surprised. You need to have both things to be fun, and we think we succeeded with Sly 2.
What other technological advances/features that has been incorporated into this sequel?
Our engine was totally revamped to allow for more enemies, bigger worlds, and cooler effects. One big advance has been with enemy AI – the bad guys in Sly 2 are both tougher and more fun to fight. The enemies are also more mobile; they can follow Sly to most places and they are much more aware of the environment and each other. We also upgraded the music to full streaming dynamic audio, and added support for USB headsets. You can use the headset microphone to get guards attention in the game!
Really? I'm sure gamers will get a kick out of that feature. Moving on, how do you feel about online gameplay? Is this feature essential to the Sly franchise now, or in the future?
Online is a great feature, and we could certainly see a networked game taking place in the Sly universe. That said, in Sly 2 we decided to concentrate on a super fun single player experience.
What is the current status of the game? Any problems encountered during development?
The North American release of Sly 2 is in the can, and we're almost done with the European version (in 11 languages!). Our development went very smoothly... Sly 2 was the third title we've completed at Sucker Punch, and we've been learning more and more with every game.
The graphics of Sly were great, many say cel shading at it's finest. In what way's have you improved upon the graphics in Sly 2?
It's funny, because inside Sucker Punch we've never thought of the Sly games as being cel-shaded. The classic cel-shaded games have a very flat look that we try to avoid. We've always strived for an illustrated look with Sly, and we use some cel-shading techniques (e.g. borders around objects) to do this. But I think the look of Sly's universe is really unique. For Sly 2, we optimized our lighting model and gave the artists more flexible tools. These changes let us put more things on screen and get them made faster than before. As we like to say, everything is "more chocolaty."
Any plans to release the game on other consoles, or will it stay a PS2 exclusive franchise?
We've very happy with our relationship with Sony. They are an awesome publisher, so we're going to stick with them as long as we can.
What type of new skills are we going to be able to purchase in Sly 2?
Tons. An the best part is that power-ups are mostly specific to each character. So as you get more powers and gadgets, the guys in the gang get more powerful in wildly different ways. Sly gets sneakier and more crafty, Bentley gets more gadgety, and Murray gets beefier.
Sounds great. From the features list we noticed something called the heist system. Can you expand a bit on this?
Once you've completed all the set-up jobs in a world, you're ready to take on the heist. Each heist is different, but they all require you to execute an elaborate plan using the whole gang. This makes for some crazy complex tasks and handoffs. Sometimes you have to go back and play the same timeframe as different characters!
How is the learning curve on Sly 2? How do you keep it from being overly hard, while being challenging at the same time?
We've always wanted the Sly games to be super easy for anyone to pick up and play. Near the beginning, there is more instruction and handholding through the jobs. But pretty soon you need to figure out a lot of things on your own. One thing we do in the engine is change the difficulty on missions if the player is having a hard time. This lets less capable players get through every job eventually.
What was your favorite part of working on this title?
I think the dialog and story in Sly 2 is fall-on-the-floor-funny. The characters are hilarious and the voice acting (especially by Bentley) is amazing. Many times during development, I would see a new cut scene and I would not be able to stop laughing.
Can we expect to see a Sly 3 in the near future?
We are currently focused on completing the European launch of Sly 2 and have not made any announcements at this time regarding future projects.
When can games expect to see Sly 2 hit store shelves?
September 14th in North America. End of October in Europe.
