팟캐스트 4: 다크니스 II 의 등장인물

ELIZABETH: Welcome to the fourth episode in the podcast series for The Darkness II. I'm Elizabeth Tobey, and today I'm talking with three guys from Digital Extremes about the characters in the game, as well as The Darkness and its role in the story. So, how about we start off by giving your full names and titles?

DAVE: Dave Kudirka, Producer on The Darkness II.

JAY: Jay Baker, Lead Animator.

SHELDON: Sheldon Carter, Project Director of The Darkness II.

ELIZABETH: Okay, let's start off by asking a broad question and talking about the cast and the main characters of The Darkness II. Who are the primary faces you're going to meet and what's their story?

SHELDON: Sure, I'll start. So it's interesting, The Darkness II has a set of returning characters that people are going to be familiar with from the first game. So, obviously Jackie Estacado is the protagonist, we'll start there. I'll assume you guys know who he is. The returning characters that are kind of interesting: Aunt Sarah is back if you remember her from the first game. She was kind of your gun toting, mob-connected aunt. There was an awesome showdown with her holding her house in the first game. So she's returning and she's got a really big influence in the game because she's kind of the mother figure in the mafia; in the Estacado crime family, so she's an important character. Another returning character is Jimmy the Grape who is kind of your...I can never say the Italian word so I'll just say he's your advisor. So he's back again and he's got a crucial role. An interesting character that returns that I can't really talk to you about is Jenny. She's super-important from the first game; she's kind of your reason for your going after your Uncle Paulie because he killed her. She has a huge impact on this game and needless to say Jackie and Jenny are still in love and that's probably all I can say about that. In terms of new characters, who do we got new character-wise?

JAY: Well the Berserker he's returning but kind of in a different light…

SHELDON: Ah yes, the Darkling, yeah.

JAY: Yes, he's the mischievous little imp that runs around like he did in the first game and he's got some pretty cool characteristics this time around.

SHELDON: You call peeing “characteristics.”

JAY: Yeah, yeah. The desecrations are new, and they're pretty cool, and we've been having fun creating animations for those guys and it really pays off when you see people playing it and they get a chuckle or excited about what he's doing or how he's interacting with bodies you just placed there.

SHELDON: Yeah, I always laugh because my first time I had my iPhone sitting on the counter in my kitchen and my mom picked it up and there was an email, I think it was from you, Jay, and it was “Darkling Corpse Pissing”. And that's what she picked up to see my new iPhone. So yeah, anyways, Darkling is cool. In the first game those guys were just gameplay tools and now he's a fully realized character and he's crucial to the story. What else do we have Dave?

DAVE: I think one of the thing we're doing in The Darkness II that's different from The Darkness 1 is that we're bringing a little more character to the Demon Arms, themselves. I mean, they were totally symmetrical in the first game, they looked the same and now they have different personalities, different functions. Now there's that avenue of characterization that available to us and the two demon heads that are with you the whole time.

ELIZABETH: So with some of the new characters or characters you've changed—I definitely want to hear more about the Darkling—can you go a little more in depth about them; either their story, what you focused on in terms of their characterization, their animation, how you brought them to life?

DAVE: There's the main villain of the game who is the head of The Brotherhood, Victor. I guess he must have been a challenge for you guys, Jay, because he actually is crippled.

JAY: Yeah, definitely. With the leg braces and all that, we have to work with Design to try and get him the ability to move around quickly and responsively. I've been in the game industry for 14 years and don't think I've ever animated a guy with Forrest Gump leg braces on before. It definitely gave us something to work with, you know, and we just tried to roll with it. He turned out pretty cool, I think.

SHELDON: Yeah, we don't want to tell the whole story, before you play the game. But I think that there's a story--when you see his disfigurements and what he knows of The Darkness, he's a really fascinating character because he's not your normal, all-powerful super villain. At least he doesn't present like that. He turns out to be extremely dangerous, but in a different way than most video game villains are…

DAVE: In a sense almost misleading like Yoda is. Yoda is super-powerful but…

SHELDON: He's the evil Yoda.

ELIZABETH: So let's talk Darklings. They made an appearance, as you said, in the last game but the Darkling has a very different role in this game. What's different, and why did you go in this direction?

SHELDON: I guess I can answer this one. The Darklings in The Darkness 1 felt more like tools; they were specialized tools used for specific circumstances like zapping lights or getting guys. We're bringing in the “everyman” Darkling who, you know, he's gonna have a personality that carries through the whole game, but he's also going to be able to handle all sorts of tasks instead of having to pick that specialized Darkling for one case, this guy does it all. He's your universal tool in the toolbox, I guess; your Swiss Army knife.

DAVE: Yeah, it's neat because I think Jackie being completely alone in his struggle, this kind of internal struggle against The Darkness in his head; I think it's kind of cool to have a character that can relate to you and tell you…well, he brings in an element of humor. But he also kind of humanizes Jackie, because obviously that's a lot of stuff that you're doing in the game--the action is pretty over the top--and it's nice to have someone else that's talking to you and he's your friend throughout. So he serves a really important role that way.

JAY: That's my big thing with it, this kind of friendship that you're developing with him. You come to kind of love him, like he's your little brother and he's helping you out running through the levels and he's assisting you, and I think that's great. I think we've definitely…our design of him has evolved over the time of making the game. It started off where this thing, you know I didn't really care about it; but by the end of it, adding all this flavor, giving him this attitude and all these comical reliefs--he grows on you.

DAVE: He wears a cat on his head.

ELIZABETH: That's my favorite part. You also talked about the Demon Arms as a character which I think is a really interesting way of describing them. Can you talk about how you made that translate into player experience?

DAVE: I think it began on the superficial level; just that they acted as HUD furniture before, showing you what power was activated and they were totally symmetrical. We first approached them from a visual standpoint. “Wouldn't it be cool if the one arm looked more like the function it was performing?” And so that's what we went with. The bladed, slashy as soon as you see him the player should get that right away that this guy's sharp, he's dangerous; this guy's going to sever limbs. The grabby guy, we looked at animal types like turtles, fish, anything that had some kind of weird, chomping jaw and moved on from that, and tried to communicate a grabbing head. So, hopefully just the visual design of these two reveals some character for the player right off the bat.

ELIZABETH: In terms of enemies, a lot of the times enemies can be faceless masses that you just shoot. How did you make them unique and feel alive?

SHELDON: Yeah, we've got kind of two tiers of enemies in the game. Jackie is part of a mob, so there's a whole rogues gallery of mobsters and that stuff we found kind of pretty simple to characterize. It was fun research, right? It's the stuff where you're going through all the mob movies asking, “Okay, what are the guys I'd want to fight? How would these guys actually react to seeing someone that has Demon Arms around? What's that going to be like?” It's not going to be just get ‘em and shoot ‘em. I'm not sure if I can just reel off a whole bunch of profanities…it's a little more than that. It's the disbelief that these guys have with what they're seeing. It's pretty awesome and it actually empowers the player. The second tier is The Brotherhood. The Brotherhood knows about The Darkness and wants The Darkness, so the minions of The Brotherhood, with their intimate knowledge--we kind of built up a whole bunch of different characters. So, depending on where a Brotherhood member ranked in the organization, you're going to feel a different type of personality coming from him. From the kind of obsessive fanatic to the more hardened veteran without giving away again too many story spoilers for you--I think that you notice there's more to this organization that just comes out with the enemy barks and their kind of minute-to-minute interaction with you that tells you what The Brotherhood is and where it started. It's kind of building the fiction in the minute-to-minute combat.

DAVE: That's something that we definitely have to focus on seeing as opposed to military shooter games picking off a guy across the map. We're encouraging people to get right up in people's faces so we need that characterization to come through we need to see their faces changing in different situations, we need to have them vocalizing what's happening appropriately. Otherwise, you're just shooting muted guys across the map, you know and never making that connection.

SHELDON: Yeah, and it's cool because The Brotherhood, because they know what The Darkness is, like I said, the contrast between them and the mobsters is pretty interesting in the game because the mobsters are going to react in a certain way where they're just going to try to gun you down. Then you've got The Brotherhood who actually know that light is Jackie's weakness so they can exploit that which makes for pretty interesting gameplay.

ELIZABETH: One of my final questions for you is probably one of the broadest that I have. What were some of the things that you have created to date that were the most challenging and what were the things you were most proud of?

JAY: Well, I hate to beat a dead horse with a stick, but the Darkling is actually one of my favorites. It's the longest in development, I think, so far…

DAVE: I'll pump your tires a bit, Jay. We've got some good characterizations in the script, but once Jay got his hands on a couple of these guys and animated them, that's when their true character really started to come through. So Victor, the leader of The Brotherhood is a great example, but even better is Peevish, one of his henchmen. He's not got a whole lot of screen time right now, but what we've seen of him, people just love him: the way he acts, the way he moves, the way he talks. Yeah, I attribute that to Jay, for sure.

JAY: There's like this creepiness to him, right? His creepiness isn't just from the few lines---I mean he just has a few lines. It's the way he holds himself and acts and that takes it to another level, and makes it very satisfying to battle Peevish.

DAVE: So a lesser known character has really become elevated in our minds. That's a big surprise and a big win in my mind for sure.

ELIZABETH: What about for you?

SHELDON: Hmmm. I guess some of the things I'm most proud of I guess from characters is the way…we have a couple of these big set pieces. The restaurant is a good example of that where you really immerse the player in the atmosphere of this restaurant. You've got tons of patrons that are interacting; you've got one of the main guys, who we didn't talk about in characters, Vinnie--he's kind of your right-hand guy and he's leading you through the restaurant. There's kind of that feeling and a shocking surprise that probably everybody has seen by the time this podcast airs--there's a shocking moment where we kind of snap you out of this mob fiction of you being the Don, walking through the restaurant. But that buildup in my opinion is one of the best setups, at least in games that I've seen. Every time I watch someone play the game, they are completely surprised because they're so immersed and I think that's something that we've taken--I mean I'm talking about that because that's something we've shown--but we have moments kind of throughout the game that we do that. Where we bring you in really tightly with these animated sequences which you still have control; it's not like you're in a cutscene. You're still a character during these scenes, but the level of immersion you get when everything feels natural and I think that's probably it: you go from kind of feeling like you're watching an animated scene in a game to where you're living a sequence. That's something I'm really proud of.

DAVE: Completely immersed—that said it. That's what feels good with this game.

ELIZABETH: Now, before I let you guys go, are there any characters that you think you've missed or are there any points that you think I haven't touched on that you would like to talk about? Feel free to say no if that's the case--

SHELDON: You know I think yeah. One character we haven't talked about is Johnny Powell. Jackie has a mystical advisor in this game. He's been trying to bottle up The Darkness and his kind of advisor in this is a mystic named Johnny Powell. And this guy, in the game you kind of get his origin; but at one point he's dug up from under the Brooklyn Bridge so I mean, he's kind of like a magic junkie for lack of a better word. So it's really interesting like he just a really interesting character because at one point he knows--he kind of gives you the crucial supernatural information that Jackie has to get at certain points of the story. But at another point he's sympathetic. You feel for this guy who is just—who has gone the occult plus five and it's kind of driven him mad, so he's a character that I think is pretty interesting. He's almost like the counterpoint---we were talking about Peevish earlier? He's like the counterpoint to Peevish in Jackie's world.

ELIZABETH: So ends our fourth podcast episode. Next time, we'll be back to talk with the guys who are working on the art style of the game and the amazing visuals you've been seeing glimpses of in previews. Thanks for listening.