Lair For The PlayStation 3: A Q&A With Factor 5 Chief, Julian Eggebrecht
By Dean Takahashi
Friday, April 13th, 2007 at 9:00 am in Dean Takahashi, Dean and Nooch on Gaming, General.
Ive known Julian Eggebrecht, president of game developer Factor 5, for quite a while. Hes always eager to talk about the most technical stuff at game conferences such as the Game Developers Conference or the Dice Summit. But Ive never had a chance to do a sit-down interview with him until now. Eggebrecht, a native of Cologne, Germany, has run Factor 5 for a long time, mostly as a developer of Star Wars games for LucasArts. But with the disappointment of the GameCube, Factor 5 has now branched into original content, a risky move even for an established developer. We talked in a San Rafael theater about the making of Lair, the promising new exclusive for the PlayStation 3.ScreenGrab 0088
Q: Im interested in the beginning decisions here. As you finished your last game, how did start working on Lair?
A: When we finished Rebel Strike in early 2004, it was clear that the GameCube wouldnt survive much longer. In fact, Rebel Strike and Resident Evil 4 were the last big exclusives from non-internal Nintendo studios on that console. At that point, we thought wouldnt it make sense that it would be a good time to start on nex gen and at the same time to do original intellectual property again. At the end of Rebel Strike, I dont know if you ever saw the intro of the logo sequence where we show the Star Wars characters dancing in a disco outfit. Somebody once told me that once youve done that intro, youre clearly done with the franchise (laughs). Because you dont take it to seriously anymore. There was a little bit of our Star Wars fatigue setting in. We wanted to go back to our roots of creating original IP.
Q: How long had you worked on the Star Wars franchise?
A: Oh my god. We had been at that point with LucasArts since 1993, and with Star Wars since 1994. Yeah. Quite a few years.
Q: How long did you have this desire to do original IP?
A: We started out with original and we slipped into this dream fulfillment thing. To work on the George Lucas properties, that is what you think about as a child. That was my crowning thing. Once you are there, its a great ride for a while. But then you want to express yourself creatively again. Of course, on the other hand you have built up certain pedigree and certain genres. We knew how to do large-scale, macro-to-micro worlds and flight combat very well. And some of the vehicle combat. So we thought how could we move into original IP and at the same time move into nex gen. And be exclusive again. We enjoy being exclusive with a title on one platform. There isnt any negativity toward Microsoft or Nintendo. We just really like to take advantage of one game, one platform. Do everything with no compromises.
Q: In early 2004, how did you start your assessment process?
A: The assessment process was what was the likelihood of what ATI would do on the one direction with Microsoft and with Nintendo. And then what would Sony do? Our assessment for Sony was patently wrong because they didnt do in a graphics what we expected in a very positive way. That was the path for 2004. With Cell, there were so many patents out there already that it wasnt a big surprise. The big mystery about Sony was which graphics solution they would do in the end. We prototyped with multicore in mind already. Multithreaded. But on the PC architecture, assuming there would be some sort of pixel shader, vertex shader in the box.
Q: You were looking for the most technically advanced console?
A: As we always do. It wasnt so much searching. It was hearing out everybody. There was planning about things that were very different than what the Wii became. Sony was very quiet. We just assumed some things there. We had the biggest insight into what was going on at Microsoft. They wanted the Xenon out so early that they started talking extremely early about the baseline.
Q: And then you started an unnamed project before starting Lair?
A: Maybe.
Q: Then how did you start locking down on Lair?
A: It was the dragons. The dragon concept. By that time, we thought we would be able to achieve what we wanted to do graphically on nex gen. We also knew Cell would be strong enough that you could do a lot of physics and a lot of animations. One of our assessments for the flight drama was that you could only propel that forward if you could get different types of combat in there and projectiles. And if you get different types of combat in there, you have to go physical. You need to involve creatures. Ideally humans, because you can relate to humans. Or an avatar, where you have them ridden by humans. You can have that Western style cowboy and horse relationship. That was when the dragon idea came in. I dont know who came up with it first. It was so obvious that dragons would provide for everything we were looking for in our traditional flight genre that could propel it forward to nex gen. Of course, its hard to do physical combat when you are flying a couple of hundred miles per hour. That is literally what those dragons do.
Q: How would you sum up the idea? Doing Jurassic Park movie quality dinosaurs in real time?
A: The sum up was flight and fight on the graphical level of Jurassic Park. That was the exact verbiage back then. The whole Jurassic Park idea suggested more things about where we would take our inspiration from. Not from Jurassic Park per se, but more the reality of dinosaurs. We didnt pick the mythical representations of dragons that were out there. We wanted to invent a fantasy universe that would not be like one of the pre-existing fantasy universes. We wanted to go into a different direction with something unique. We have two factions in the company. One is science fiction and doesnt want to have anything to do with fantasy. The other is the hardcore fantasy side. I was one of the hardcore science fiction guys. For me, it was tough to convince myself that we could get something in the middle that both sides could like. That is what I hoped for.
Q: The scale of what youre doing here with 80 people is huge. Its many times more than previous team sizes.
A: There was a ramp, of course. You do the early work with a much smaller team. Then you ramp. Im not the biggest fan of these massive teams with 80 people. Id rather work on two projects with 40 each. Then youve got the ability to move people in a clear and concise way for a specific amount of time.
Q: How do you feel about the risks? What were your biggest bets?
A: The biggest risk around Lair is that it is something unusual. As with any original IP, we are layering on top of the usual risk. Its a new genre. At its core, as a genre, outside of our games, was never a multimillion unit seller. You do have mulitple layers of risks. On the other hand, you have multiple rewards. Weve got this seamless world. We have a new genre. We have this macro-micro game play. You have air to ground. Youve got all of the combat systems. The physical system which was our biggest risk is also our biggest asset. Certainly, its an unusual title.
Q: How soon did you figure out what the PlayStation 3 could do?
A: Will we ever? (laughs). The baseline isnt hard to figure out. Yes, its a harder ramp.
Everybody acknowledges that compared to the 360 and the Wii. Its not all that bad. Its not like the PS 2 ramp was at the very beginning. The interesting question becomes oh boy, we could go on forever optimizing for the PlayStation 3. The PS 3 has more of the situation where you could go another six months easily and forever. You can get so much more power. RSX is a known quantity. But Cell is pretty limitless at this point.
Q: How do you look back at this point on the differences between the PS 3 and the Xbox 360?
A: Youll have a hard time if you port without having a PS 3 game in mind when you created the 360 version. That is where a lot of complaints are coming from. They created the 360 engine with a unified memory architecture in mind, with the embedded frame buffer with its advantages and disadvantages, and not thinking too much in early stages about multicore. If you try to get that over to the PS 3, youre in for a bad surprise. The PS 3 is all about streamlining about the two different memory pools. They are separate. You dont have to do tiling because you dont have an embedded frame buffer. All of these advantages of the PS 3 turn into disadvantages if you dont start making your game on the PS 3. Hence the griping. If you create first on the PS 3, it is pretty easy to port it to the 360. A lot of companies coming on board now will probably start on the PS 3 and move to the 360. The lucky thing for us is we didnt have to think about the 360 at all.
Q: Some of the things Ive heard are that there is a big limitation on this generation is theamount of total memory in the system. The 512 megabytes is just not close to the 2 gigabytes you can have on a PC.
A: Yeah, but didnt we have this conversation eight years ago and five years ago? Honestly, yes we spent the last four or six weeks going through hell getting Lair into memory. But then again, we were doing the same thing on Rebel Strike. You always complain you dont have enough memory. I think it would have been a crucial mistake if either Sony or Microsoft had only 256 megabytes. I somehow have the hunch that both of them would have loved to. Tim Sweeney was very outspoken in the early days in the Microsoft circle. The 512 is probably the sweet spot. You have to figure out how to stream. Lair streams its geometry and its textures. If you have got enough assets which are streaming, the 512 megabytes are adequate. And if you have a large enough media to store those textures.
Q: Do you note some things that are good about Lair that we havent seen in a PS 3 title yet?
Launch titles always make some compromises.
A: Yes. Lair basically is the only game out there which gives you a 20,000 feet view as well as the one meter level view at pretty much the same detail level. Lair is also the only game which does all of its light in real time, and the atmospheric calculations. That gives us the day and nights cycle, the fluid dynamic simulations in the water. That wouldnt have been possible half a year ago. We needed more time for that. You need the SPUs for that. Extensive streaming. Ted Price mentioned in an interview that Ratchet is now the first one where they start to stream. I can understand why they didnt do it for Resistance. With Lair, you have to do it or you cannot manage the detail level and the expectations for the detail level and at the same time move around this world.
Q: Some of the games all look good to me. This looks great. Is there a big difference you can see between this and Gears of War?
A: In Gears of War there is no way you could actually go above the city and then basically go seamlessly from air to ground. Unreal Engine in the end just provides for corridor and corridor being more a metaphor here in terms of design. Our engine is always designed in a huge world bubble and that can be 32 kilometers by 32 kilometers. You can go anywhere at extreme speeds. Unreal Engine is dependent on the fact that you go relatively slowly through your world. With us, you can go through the world fast or slowly. If you are in night mode, or you are on the ground, you get all of the detail that Unreal Engine provides. But there is no way you can get the macro.
Q: What does that allow in the game which is fun?
A: That allows if you play early levels like Asilia I, it is a linear experience like the old
Rogue Squadron. You have a city there. It is very nice to look at. It is getting destroyed. But your experience is linear. In the second level, we start having troops on the ground. We have ground targets and air targets. Due to the fact that you can go seamlessly between the two, you get all of the emergent game play which the player creates for himself. We just lay out these relatively vague mission goals. You play it. We are surprised by how the player solves it. Gears of War, on the other hand, and all of the Unreal games, are very linear experiences. We can do linear. It goes back and forth. Some have experimental, open game play. Others, we funnel you right here. So I think we have a much more flexbile engine. Im sure that Tim would contest that.
Q: The parts that still seem like tough technical problems to solve? What would you do in another game?
A: For us, the challenge would be to put all of this in a multiplayer game, with this macro and micro scale. We are only dabbling with online here. We have leader boards and chat. The next step of course is multiplayer. Im a huge fan of Gears there and their cooperative play online. For me, it has to feature that. On the graphical side, it brings issues on the streaming side. You have to deal with the latency on the other side. We have so much time invested in this engine that it is much further along than with the last generation. Rebel Strikes engine was flexible and it could do a lot of things. Rogue Squadron was very specific. Its a pity the GameCube went downhill. With this, you can do an Ace Combat with this or Gears. Or you can do what we are doing which is a combination of the two.
Q: The Sixaxis this is your first crack at that. How is it?
A: Yes. That waggle. Sixaxis. For me, I am not in the rumble camp. I am in the motion control camp. Give me the choice any day and I will choose it as the next logical evolution. You get more disk space with Blu-ray. You get more CPU power with Cell. The pixel shaders with RSX. What changes about the controller? Thats my one gripe with the 360. It is very nicely done. Dont get me wrong. On the controls, nothing changed. Sony and Nintendo went the extra mile. Nintendo went the extra 10,000 miles. But Sony said we have to have something fresh in every area. That doesnt mean you should absolutely have to use it. That is one point that Lair should make. The history of the game shows you can overdo Sixaxis support. At the Tokyo Game Show, we had a version where you could use Sixaxis controls on the ground. That was forcing something that didnt feel natural. Flight is natural because you have a wider range of motion than you could ever have with a stick. On the ground, you are used to the analog stick. For us, the gestures came in and that really made it possible to have the physical combat between the dragons. It was all about the physicality of the dragons. If you didnt have that, it would be a air to ground, seamless shooter. The shooter element is in there and it is fun. But the physicality of the dragons is the big one and that gets enhanced by the Sixaxis controller a lot. When you fly next to a dragon and want to slam into it, you slam the controller. You dont have to do it like a madman. The Sixaxis is surprisingly subtle in realizing the motion. You get very detailed curves out of it. It works great for the gestures. The gestures are heaven sent. We were starting to double up buttons. And we wanted the 180 move. Somebody came up with the idea of moving your hands up to do the 180. You can also cram to many gestures onto it and people wind up getting confused. You have to balance it. Use traditional controls where applicable and integrate motion control as one more tool. With Lair, we believe you get the complete PS 3 experience which does include Sixaxis.
Q: What are the most interesting moments you can have? (spoiler alert)
A: The most interesting comment I got from our last focus test. We had people watch the whole story. In one level you havent seen, you make it to enemy territory with a huge fleet and you start firebombing the city. One person in the focus group test said he didnt want to fire bomb civilians. You are asked by one of your buddies to do that. But he said it was morally wrong. That was an amazing comment. That is exactly the kind of questions that we want the player to have. Suffice it to say, the story does support that quite a bit. You should experience what the character is experiencing and the character experiences exactly that arc. It is an inspiration of wars of today and wars past.
Q: What are the kinds of games you would like to work on?
A: There is too little done in this macro-micro world. You can do different things than just flight in there. You can use these types of games. GTA is one example. You can use this engine and you can display it good with the hardware. You can do much with genres which are stuck. I dont know. Maybe something that goes in the shooter direction. There are plenty of things out there.
