Crusader: No Remorse part 2

CommentMarch 11th, 2010 19:05

Here’s part two of a huge set of interviews of started over three months ago with some of the folks of Origin Systems. If you haven’t checked it out already you can check part one out here.

———————————

Retroplayer- “Did the story for Crusader develop and change over time?”

Mark Vittek- “The story started out with big ideas, and an epic story. But, like any project in a time crunch, it had to get smaller or risk being cut altogether. The intro to No Remorse was going to have some epic qualities, but as we started needing artists to design artwork for the environments, the story’s cinematics started getting shorter and shorter. At one point we had to figure out what kind of a story we could tell using only the cinematics we had already generated because we didn’t have the resources to create any more. The intro to the game, which is the genesis of the hero Silencer, was a series of compromises. But I think it tells the story that we needed. I wouldn’t change anything about it.“

Retroplayer- “You’ve been in film, TV, video games, co-founded Mercury Studio and with the Shakespeare Project you’ve performed as well as designed sets and costumes. Looking back on your career so far is there any particular field that you’ve enjoyed the most?”

Suzanne Savoy- “Voice work is one of the most creative and freeing types of performing that I do. Whether it’s dubbing animé or voicing a TV commercial for some old-lady-medicine, it’s just a lovely medium. The clients and engineers tend to be really down to earth--not a lot of big difficult egos in voice-over. Plus, everyone involved in a voice-over project seems just to love the idea of painting pictures with sound--sculpting it in a way, forming character and time and place and style. It can be very cathartic, too. Try screaming your lungs out in an animé cartoon dub for several hours. You walk out of the sound booth feeling about 25 pounds lighter than you did when you went in!

Building and operating puppets of different sorts has also been really exciting. What’s great about puppets is that each one can be an entirely new kind of creation . . . and ANYTHING can be a puppet in the right hands! Ralph Lee was my hero and sometime mentor, and just a brilliant, fascinating designer (he designed and built SNL’s “Land Shark” and created the original creatures for the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, among many, many other fabulous projects). I also loved the work of Basil Twist; who knew that feathers and scarves swished around in a huge fish tank could be so hugely engrossing for an entire hour?? Coaching and teaching are exciting, too. And playing Shakespearean roles . . . Oh, man, I guess I just love doing it all!”

Retroplayer- “Are you a gamer yourself? What kind of games are you interested in?”

Tony Zurovec- “I am definitely still a gamer, but it’s rare that I find something that peaks my interest. I’ve actually been of this mindset since about the mid-to-late 1990s. You can pretty much count on next year’s first-person shooter looking better than this year’s, but I’m much more likely to play a game with five-year-old graphics and a better design – something like the Battlefield 1942 mod Desert Combat – than one of the latest graphical masterpieces that contains loads of amateurish design mistakes. It’s as if the gaming industry nowadays is one big Michael Bay movie. The products look really nice and will make money but there just isn’t much substance beneath them. As a result, if you approach them with a critical and experienced eye you’re often going to be disappointed.”

Kirk Winterrowd- “I don’t play games as much as I used to but back in my days in the game industry I enjoyed space combat and flight combat games as well as first person shooters. I remember when I first saw the early versions of Wing Commander and could not believe that I was going to get to work on that type of game. It was one of the real iconic games that pushed the hardware to its limits. I know that a lot of people bought new machines or did a lot of upgrades to be able to play it but man was it worth it back then. I still play some FPS’s to this day as well as some Wii games just because the controllers are so fun but I am not as hard core as I used to be. No more staying up until five or six in the morning playing Unreal Tournament online.”

Beverly Garland- “I generally spent so much time play-testing every game I was working on, I didn’t do that much at-home gaming, as I really prefer real-life stuff in my off-hours, like the outdoors, coffee shops, landscaping, reading books, etc. Sadly, some of the games I would like to play the most, like Team Fortress or Left4Dead, I just can’t handle because I get motion sick really bad playing first-person. Lame, I know.”

Mark Vittek- “I’m not as much of a gamer as I should be. In fact, I was just passed over for a job recently simply because I didn’t play the games that they wanted me to be familiar with. But I think that is the state of the industry these days. Ten to fifteen years ago it was hard to find qualified game designers. Now that you can go to college and get a degree in it, there is a lot more competition—even if you have a decade of work behind you. Games I enjoy? That has changed over the years. I remember I use to play a lot of flight simulators and now that is a genre that has all but disappeared. And this is in the middle of two wars! I would love to play a Predator flight sim! Oh well, it was the soldier sim (first person shooter) that has taken over the industry. Now I tend to play games where I am the interface. I like the Wii which allows me to challenge myself though my own body. I was just playing some snowboard games with the Wii balance board to get me geared up for the slopes this winter. I think the future is in games which are much more than slugging it out buttons on a controller.”

Andrew Sega- “I am, although I’m finding myself with less and less time to play these days (ironically since game development is my full-time job!). Recently I’ve been playing a lot of indie web games, enjoying Daniel Bermengui’s work for example.”

James Matthew Sheffield- “Indeed, I am still a gamer. I play many games including: PC, iPhone, console, and table top role playing games. Currently, my most enjoyable gaming experiences are dice and paper role playing games with a group of original Dungeons and Dragons illustrators. Old school gamers = Good times. It also great to sit around and sketch with these guys, very inspirational.”

Retroplayer- “Did you get a chance to try out the game for yourself?”

Suzanne Savoy- “I have a huge confession to make. I’ve never been much of a game person. My appetites run to some of the oldest, most basic video games around: Ms. Pacman, Space Invaders, stuff like that which you’ll find mostly in the game rooms of moldy old Holiday Inn Hotels and rest stops off the New Jersey Turnpike. And I was a pinball ADDICT for many years. Give me a good game of Gorgar or Highway Patrol! My husband (at the time) enjoyed playing Crusader: No Remorse, but I mostly watched over his shoulder.”

Marco Perella- “I’ve never played the game. I’m not very good at most computer games though I do play Civil War strategy games.”

Retroplayer- “Is there any particular videogame composer whose work you enjoy?”

Andrew Sega- “Perhaps Hip Tanaka? And of course the old school people like Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway, etc. Also Matt Uelmen’s Diablo audio was very innovative and refreshing, as well as the sound design from the original Fallout series.”

Retroplayer- ““What is your opinion on the current state of the games industry compared to back when Crusader was developed?””

Mark Vittek- “The industry’s “pie” has become fractionalized. A game company use to be able to weather a single dud in the market. But now that money has become so tight, it is hard for any small studio to make big, long term plans. Here in Austin there seems to be new companies popping up in the wake of the death of others. It seems like most people have to go to a new company every 3-5 years. That makes it hard to build teams, and even franchises, much less mega games that can make-or-break a new emerging console on the market.”

Tony Zurovec- “I read an interview with Nolan Bushnell a long time ago where he was talking about developing Pong. He said that they spent months tweaking the resistance of the paddle controller trying to get it to feel just right. That always resonated with me. I played a Joust clone a couple of years ago. It’s a simple concept and should be able to be easily duplicated with modern technology, and yet the clone wasn’t nearly as fun as the original. The problem was the interface. The upwards momentum imparted to the player via a single flap of the wings was too much, and as a result you couldn’t hover as effectively as you could with the original. That single flaw in the execution turned what could have been a fun game into something totally frustrating and forgettable. Such issues abound in today’s complicated games, and most have about as much thought given to them as that programmer gave to how much force a single flap of the wings should generate. It doesn’t help that the gaming industry had to dramatically lower its standards over the last couple of decades so that it could fill tens of thousands of new positions. As a result, even blockbuster titles with gargantuan development budgets like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 employ inane programmers that can’t lock down their network code well enough to prevent cheats from being released the same day as the game.

As a result of these and other issues, what you typically get today are games that continue to advance graphically and occasionally even in terms of their design ambition, but that are usually riddled with enough poorly designed and weakly implemented features that the overall experience is considerably less than it should be. I think that you’d get better games if the hardware stopped evolving for a decade or two. The basic engines to exploit the hardware would be developed within the first few years and the primary focus would then return to the game design and getting as many details as possible just right.”

Beverly Garland- “Well it’s a whole new world since massively multiplayer technology. Games are hardly ever limited to a solitary endeavor any more, and with the advent of casual games, a whole new audience demographic is being drawn into the game realm, including more women and middle-aged players. Back in the Crusader days, we were designing for the 13 to 35 year-old male audience. Of course those guys are now 23 to 45, and I reckon many are still gamers, along with some of their wives and girlfriends. Also, the event of casual games on smaller memory platforms and front-ends like the iPhone and Facebook has prompted a return to 2D art for awhile, so in some ways it’s like a revival of the Crusader era in terms of graphics. I expect somebody will figure out someday soon how to build a cell phone or other handheld device that can handle real-time 3D rendering like a PC or game console, though. Hmm. But what if you could play Crusader on the iPhone? Seems totally doable already!”

Retroplayer- “You now run portfoliomentor.com which coaches aspiring game artists on how to create job winning portfolios. How has yours years within the industry helped this new venture in your life?”

Beverly Garland- “For one thing, I remember my early days, and can empathize with people just starting out. Moreover, I’ve seen thousands of portfolios, and reviewed them alongside other art directors while we made hiring decisions, so I know what’s expected when you’re applying for a job on a AAA real-time 3D game.”

Retroplayer- “Did working on Crusader: No Remorse lead to any friendships even after filming was finished?”

Suzanne Savoy- “I actually knew a lot of the actors on Crusader: No Remorse before we filmed. The film professionals in Texas are a deeply talented and strongly knit group of performers and crew people. We generally knew each other pretty well (I moved away 13 years ago but still stay in touch), or at least knew OF each other, because we’d show up at auditions all over the state, and in Louisiana and other neighboring states. There was a sense of kinship in knowing that after you’d driven hours to get to an audition in Dallas, you’d be sitting in the waiting room with some of the people you saw at an audition earlier that day in San Antonio. (There’s a hilarious book about what a working actor’s life in Texas is like: “Confessions of A No-Name Actor, written by Marco Perella.) So, in a way, the shoot for Crusader was more a kind of reunion than a chance to get to know a lot of new actors. I was already friends with Alex Morris, Marco Perella, Tonie Perensky, Carlos Compean, and many others on the shoot. And Steve Hemphill (Producer) and I were also good friends for many years before that, although I’m sad to say I’ve lost track of him since then and would love to get back in touch with him. He was a really interesting, talented guy.”

Marco Perella- “I became a big hero to a generation of gaming geeks! I guess you could call us friends. Mostly they point at me and go….”OOOO…you’re that creep Weasel from Crusader!”

Retroplayer- “You’ve worked with Origins Systems on multiple games. Describe your working relationship with them”

Beverly Garland- “It was the most fun I’ve ever had at a job. There were some long, hard hours, but there was also lots of fun and levity to make up for it. I was encouraged to grow as a person and realize I could lead teams, and that being a member of creative team is deeply satisfying.”

James Matthew Sheffield -- “It was great. We were pioneers. We were developing games concurrently with the advent of this new fangled thing called the internet. We took pride in pushing the envelope. I can recall that people would buy new computers just to be able to play an Origin game. This was back in the day when a computer was a very huge investment, much different than today. At the time I worked at Origin, the industry was much smaller and exclusive than it is today. We felt like astronauts or National Geographic Explorers. We were rock stars, just a lot less cool.”

Trey Hermann- “It was a blast! I was with Origin for five and a half years. Three of those were in the Creative Services department doing design and illustration work on various boxes, books and promotional materials. The other two and a half years were spent in product development where I had the chance to work briefly on the Loose Cannon team on one of the Crusader follow ups before moving over to the Maverick team to work on the Wing Commander and Privateer projects. My last project was creating interface icons for one of the Janes flight sims. It was fun from beginning to end! From the Creative Services side of my tenure I would say I had the most fun working on logos and boxes. The Crusader logos were great projects to be associated, but the best part of the experience was being able to work with such incredibly talented people. I really enjoyed working with our primary illustrator Sam Yeates on a variety of projects. The Crusader: No Regret box was Sam’s work and I was able to help out by serving as the guy holding the gun for Sam’s photo reference shots. I still have those motorcycle gloves that Sam so diligently illustrated.

The development side of the company was the same way. Everyone was so passionate and dedicated to the project. It was more than a job, it was a labor of love for so many people. It was just amazing to see that much creative talent in one place. A real convergence. I’ve never encountered anything like that since. Between you and me I think my favorite project was the Bioforge illustration. That hand was so much fun to illustrate although it completely tweaked my boss. He did not want to go with that design, but I “accidently” left a sketch laying out where I knew Ken Demarest would see it. Fortunately my boss, Craig Miller, and I were and still are very good friends. If it had not turned out so well I think I might have been in trouble with that one.”

Retroplayer- “How do you want the Crusader series to be remembered?”

Mark Vittek- “If there was one thing people most liked about it, it had to be the “gratuitous destruction” that the player could inflict on most environments. When games moved over to 3D, the poly count kept down the number of “breakables.” If you had too many things you could destroy, the game slowed to a crawl due to all of the math. Not so for a 2.5D engine. A big chunk of the artwork was dedicated to broken and destroyed objects. The story was decent, the AI was okay, and the artwork was top notch. But out of everything, I’d say if you remember the “gratuitous destruction,” and had fun doing it, then that is what I’d want people to remember about it.”

Tony Zurovec- “When you think about Crusader, it would be nice if the thought were followed with…”Now those were the good old days of computer gaming.”

Andrew Sega- “Crusader, to me, was an example of the great games Origin was publishing at the time. It was an interesting, fresh approach to an isometric shooter.”

Beverly Garland- “As a fable about personal integrity, responsibility, and paying attention to who you serve, so that you are not supporting an institution that devalues life and individual freedoms. (I regret that in the process of standing up to said institution, the Crusader used extreme violence and therefore devalued life as well, but I don’t think enough people back then would have bought a game about passive resistance or a peaceful grassroots revolution). I would also like it remembered as an artistically progressive 2D game in which every last asset was created as a 3D model, then animated, rendered and saved as 2D sprites. It also represented the step from games that came on seven floppy disks to a game burned to one CD.”

Kirk Winterrowd- “I hope that people enjoyed it and will continue to think of it as a pretty unique and innovative game. I got a bit nostalgic when I saw a bunch of video clips of it on Youtube recently and read all of the positive comments, some quite recent, so I know people are still playing it and enjoying it.”

Daniel Gardopee- “Hopefully people will remember some good times — I was never really into the 3/4 view or whatever they called it sorta games, so I didn’t play it a whole lot.. but it seems to have connected with a generation of gamers and I’m glad the music was part of that. I hope it lives on in some way. It’s always good to have your work be part of something larger, that may go on and be available for people to hear after you’re gone..”

James Matthew Sheffield -- “As a classic action adventure. I think that we were the very first game EVER to use 800x600 graphics and smooth scrolling together. It’s funny that at the time we produced the game we thought that we were crazy to push to envelope so far. In retrospect, I think that we were creating a paradigm for game development, as it seems that most developers through the years have boasted that they are pushing the limits of technology limitations.
I think that my years at Origin Systems were a great blessing and I am very proud to have been involved with the development of products that had tremendous influence on development trends in the computer gaming industry.”

Suzanne Savoy- “How do I want C:NR to be remembered? Jeez, that’s an interesting question, . . . I guess I’d really rather know how all YOU GUYS remember it. The gamers who played it. The funny thing is that although I was a character IN the game, the people who played it actually got to be INSIDE it. Each of us actors saw it strictly from our character’s perspective. But you got to experience the entire world as the designer created it. I think that’s more exciting!”

Marco Perella- “As an early innovator in the game world that tried to go first class and give the gamer more feeling of personal relationships within the world of the game.”

Retroplayer- “And finally, do you think we’ve seen the last of the Silencer?”

Tony Zurovec- “Most likely. Even classic games are rarely resurrected from the intellectual property vaults of Electronic Arts. On a trivia note, the term Silencer came about after I spent dozens of hours looking for just the right euphemistic word to imply concepts like power, fear, technology, and death. The idea was that the term would be akin to the word Sandman as used in Logan’s Run.”

Mark Vittek- “Unfortunately, we’ve seen the last of the Silencer. I’d like to think that some day the franchise could be reactivated as I don’t think it ever reached its full potential. We were just starting to build a true 3D engine for the game when it got shut down. I think we made a pretty shooter built on an engine what was 2.5D and built for RPGs. But, seeing much bigger Origin titles like Ultima and Wing Commander fall into the dust, I have to be honest, Crusader will remain in the shadows of the past.”

———————————

So there you have it. This ends just over three months of interviews for two articles that I’m extremely proud of. I want to extend a massive thanks to everyone involved. Without their dedication, devotion and love for the games industry we never would have been given the gift that is Crusader: No Remorse. Each and every one of them was a joy to chat to and some were extremely helpful in getting me in contact with other people from the development team. I also want to thank “Keenan Weaver” and “Candy” from the Crusader fansite, Echo Sector. They helped me out with a few things and ultimately without hardcore Crusader fans like them this game wouldn’t have been the huge hit it was. I think I can close the book on Crusader in my life. Sure I’ll play it again but by chatting to these developers, actors and musicians I feel somehow closer to the game than I ever have been before. Now the names during the credits have more texture to them, a back story and much more of a meaning. Now, even after all these years, the game feels a little more personal.

Links…

Mark Vittek

v-tek.tv

Tony Zurovec

Superluminal

Andrew Sega

Alpha Conspiracy.com

Diffusion Records.com

Iris Music.com

Daniel Gardopee

Mobygames Profile

Kirk Winterrowd