팟캐스트 1: 다크니스 II 소개

ELIZABETH: Welcome to the official podcast series for The Darkness II. I'm Elizabeth Tobey, and today we're traveling to Digital Extremes in London, Ontario to talk with two leads on the upcoming project and shed a bit of light on the game.

SHELDON: I'm Sheldon Carter.  I'm the Project Director on The Darkness II.

TOM: I'm Tom Galt.  I'm the Lead Designer on The Darkness II.

ELIZABETH: So let's give an overview of The Darkness, in general, for new listeners out there.  What is The Darkness and what are the origins of the story in the world?

SHELDON: The Darkness is based off an amazing comic book that Top Cow started, I guess, in the late 90's, and it really has to do with Jackie Estacado who is a Mafia hit man, who on his 21st birthday manifested this ancient evil called The Darkness that was passed through his family line, I guess.  And so there's kind of a bit of divergence where the comic book went and where the video games went.  For the video game, for the first one:  so Jackie manifested the powers of The Darkness,  and at the same time, you know I said he was a Mafia hit man--he had a falling out with his Uncle Paulie who was the Don of the Franchetti the crime family.  I guess "falling out" is a light word, because he tries to kill him; tries to bomb him, and then because of this, he actually ends up killing his girlfriend.  Uncle Paulie ends of killing Jackie's girlfriend, Jenny.  This really pisses off Jackie and while he's still struggling for control with this demon that's kind of in his head which is The Darkness, he's also searching for revenge against the killers who killed Jenny.  I don't know, what did I leave out of there Tom?

TOM: I think that's great.  The Darkness, the first game was really in my mind, an origin story for the video game version of The Darkness.  And it did, as Sheldon said, it did separate from the comic books, but at the same time, it carries the same themes and a lot of the same characters from the comic books are in the games as well.  So there is continuity there for the people who liked the comic books can still play the video game and enjoy it for what it is and get some insight into the characters.

SHELDON:  Yeah.  And it's like this personal story for Jackie about him trying to find Jenny's killers, but it's also this internal struggle against the force of The Darkness.  Imagine this demonic force that …it's kind of cool because it gives you these awesome powers, but is struggling to kind of control you; so there's this external struggle for Jackie as well.

TOM: Yeah, and that's a major theme throughout the first game; we touch on that a little bit, and it's also a huge theme in the comic books of what does it do to a man to have this evil inside of him?  And how does he deal with that as a person, as a human?  And that's what makes it interesting as an entire franchise for me--exploring that part of the human psyche that deals with trauma and this kind of emotion.

SHELDON: Yeah and being The Darkness, I'm just rambling here now.  But being The Darkness, it's in his head, but it only manifests itself while he's in the dark so that's another key component:  the power, it only manifests itself while he's in the dark and in the light he's normal, but he can still hear The Darkness talking to him.

TOM: Yeah, yeah.

ELIZABETH: The Darkness II is obviously the second in the series and we are at a new studio from the first game.  Can you talk a little bit about some of the things that you're doing that are may be the same from the first game and some of the things that are different and why you're deciding to go in that direction?

TOM: Okay.  Well the same, that's actually an easy one so I'll start with that one.

SHELDON: Cool.

TOM: The story, I mean trolling the forums and talking to the players who played the first one, it's overwhelmingly the story that drew them in and got them hooked on the game.  So right off the bat, we knew we need to tell an awesome narrative and have similar moments that had that same emotional impact the first game had.  Like the first scene with Jenny on the couch and then her death scene; and then the finale scene of the game, as a few examples.  We knew we had to have those.  We knew we had to tell a great story and get the players emotionally connected to Jackie and to the characters just as they did in the first game.  So to that end, we brought Paul Jenkins in to help us out.  He wrote the first game and he wrote a lot of the comic series:  30 plus issues of the comic series he wrote.  So he really is just a wealth of knowledge there both in terms of The Darkness, but also as a comic book writer, as a story writer, he's fantastic.  So we used that knowledge and we used our knowledge of games and gameplay to craft this amazing video game story that has these emotional moments where the player can get vested in characters, but also has these action moments where, you know, you're tearing guys up and causing crazy shit to happen.  That's something we're really proud of.  One of the things that make The Darkness so unique is its ability to tell a character-driven story that we're really proud of. 

SHELDON: Yeah, I absolutely agree.  I guess in terms of the things that we're changing; we kind of took the first game—we loved the first game, so it's really exciting for us at Digital Extremes to be working on Darkness II.   We took the first game and we kind of looked at what were the things we thought that we could really bring to it and every time you looked at screen shots and you were playing that game, you saw these two amazing demon heads on screen at all times and that was pretty awesome to us.  We just kind of wanted to make that a bigger part of the game and just to have all the abilities that Jackie has—for those to all be at your fingertips at all times.  We just thought an action focus there was one of our goals, so to that end we're calling it Quad-wielding because you can shoot your two guns, you can use one of your demon arms, which we use for grabbing—so you can use that one at all times.  You can use the one for slashing which is the other one, at all times.  Plus you can use your powers; everything's at your fingertips at all times.

TOM: I remember that being the very first things that we all latched onto really, really early.  I remember that was one of the ideas of the designers, to "hey, let's bring this demon arm out and make it always there."  And then we latched onto that and everything sort of grew out of that; our unique gameplay, our Quad-wielding; you know, it's what makes this game so unique and so visceral and so action-packed.

SHELDON: Yeah, for sure.  I'm trying to think of other good examples.  Another good example is probably the Darklings.  In Darkness 1, you have this set of gameplay tools, and they're funny and we liked that--that you commanded.  They're kind of like "fire and forget" to some degree and so wanted—to Tom's point earlier, he was saying how the story is so important. We really held that up and we thought to run the Darkling through that filter as well.  Like how can we make the Darkling a fully realized character and kind of your side kick?  Someone you grow to care about through the game and is actually incorporated through the narrative.  So he's still funny and still does fun stuff like pee on corpses and that type of stuff; but at the same time he's his own character and someone who goes through the whole journey with you.

ELIZABETH: So try and bring this back to the experience of the gamer who's going to pick this up, relatively soon.  What do you want them to think about, going into the game and what are you really looking for them to experience as they're playing—be it in terms of gameplay or story or emotion— What are you hoping for?

TOM: I'm hoping they get invested in the world.  I hope they get to care about Jackie and the people around him.  I really hope that they don't just go through killing everything and then forget who these people were.  Like the first game, I hope you remember who Jackie is and who the key characters in his life are, such as Aunt Sarah.  You know, it's these people who are so important to his life [and] are what build his character and his personality, and so it's important for us that the players can connect with them and can therefore connect with who they're playing as, who their protagonist is.

SHELDON: Yeah, it's pretty important.  We've kind of shown with the game how visceral, how brutal you can be with the demon arms, but it's kind of in context.  If you identify with the character and what he's going through, then what he's doing in response to what's happening to him totally makes sense.  And if you have that connection, you're going to feel--and when you ripe a guy in half, you're going to feel kind of exonerated.  I don't know if that's even the right word, but you're going to feel good about that; that it happened, because you want to punish the guys who've come against you.

TOM: Yeah, there's that, and I guess on the gameplay side I just hope that people finish it, and are like "Wow that was a unique game.  There's nothing else out there like it."  You can't—I can't think of any other shooters that are this fast-paced and give you this many options at your fingertips at once as The Darkness II.  You can slash, you can grab, you can shoot your guns, you have your Darkling; there's a lot of other stuff that we haven't announced.  And it sounds overwhelming when you hear about it, but the controls are actually very intuitive and we present them to the player in ways that encourage you to combine them and use them in a variety of ways that make them engaging and fun throughout the game, from start to finish.

ELIZABETH: So final question for this podcast.  We just came out of PAX East, which was a great experience.  It was one of the first times that anyone got their hands on the game, and it was gamers.  How was that experience and how was the outcome?  Can you guys talk a little bit about that and how it's getting you excited moving forward?

SHELDON: Yeah, it's funny. PAX is pretty cool because--

TOM: PAX is awesome.

SHELDON: It was great to see people…I mean kind of embarrassing that people were lining up.  You know like [seeing] a big line up and you're like, "Wow, really? This is real." 

TOM: Yeah, we wanted to go out and buy new kits so we could get more people playing.

SHELDON: Exactly.  It was pretty cool.  It's funny for me because actually leading up to PAX, I wasn't sure if I really wanted to go there; the game to all of us is kind of like our baby and you don't want to let it lose its innocence all over the world.

TOM: We're all excited for people to see and play it, but at the same time it was nerve-wracking and yeah--it's your baby.  We've been working on it for two years and we're protective.

SHELDON: Yeah and then all of a sudden, it's like this is graduation day.  No maybe graduation day is when it ships, so this is like mid-term…

TOM: It's like turning 16!

SHELDON: Yeah, exactly! It's seeing people actually play it and come out with a smile on their face and saying, "Oh, yeah.  I get it. I get what's cool."

TOM: Nothing's more rewarding to us than when fellow gamers say, "Yeah, I really like the game you're making."  That's got to be the best feeling in the world.

SHELDON: It was awesome. I had like that arc through PAX. Like day one: really nervous, and then you start to get feedback and you start seeing people [play the game] and then, like, day two and three even, when we were talking to the press and when we were talking to other people and our confidence is building.  We were feeding off the energy of the people coming through the booth.  So yeah, it was really cool.

TOM: And we learned a lot about the game too, just watching other people play it and listening to their feedback and their comments.  It re-energized us to come back and share this with the team and talk about these experiences and how we can improve them and make the game even better,  because of this feedback we'd been getting from the community.

SHELDON: It was pretty cool.

ELIZABETH: And with that, so ends the first episode for The Darkness II podcast series. I want to thank you for listening, and give you a taste for what's to come in our next episode. We'll be back to explore The Darkness II, and how the video game world meshes with that of the well-known comic.