DGC Ep 215: Republic Commando (part two)

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we continue our series on the 2005 squad-based shooter Star Wars Republic Commando, on which both hosts worked. We talk about demoing at E3, some of the design philosophies evidenced by the scavenger droid and tidbits from the levels we played, before turning to feedback. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played:
Through the Prosecutor

Issues covered: getting approval with the Ranch, trailblazing, how clones talk about commandos, showing on the E3 floor, getting a theater presence, E3 as trade show and practicing to present the game, how teams were handling demos, handling rude Q&A, being glad to do it once, being at ComiCon, playing a live demo in the theater, the value of a demo and the predictive power, bug counts, giving you the Star Wars juice, setting up the scale of the environment, making the player feel small relative to the battle, having an assassination that really matters (to the nerds), the massive size of the torpedo launch tube, changing the sniper visual effect in response to the game feeling bad, having to make the weapons feel better, making the games feel not so "pew-pew," going from trigger-to-hit, having a good even basic weapon, having a difficult sections and losing sight of them, the fingers that tap on your armor, having really good Foley, introducing the maneuvers, bringing in the door breach and adding the slice option, object-oriented maneuver design, the team putting in extra things that made the game better, building up the scavenger droid, pulling the survival horror vibe from Alien, getting the scale of the place, the audio and music cues really selling an experience, introducing the scav droid, orthogonal enemy design, overly high lethality, shooting the greebles in case they were scavs, using the scav droid properly and not, embodying the player with the scav, adding new elements to the universe, introducing the brute and selling their toughness, introducing the mercenaries, the mercenaries breaching the room like you did, getting some additional bang for buck, reusing a space, the expense of building spaces, the hangars as tactical areas with lots of options, constant decision-making, the usefulness of a movable monster closet, reexamining our choices there, needing more support from voice or something to help the player know what's going on when they are locked in perspective, trapping the player, having the ship battle behind you, winning and disabling the droids, the impact of games and the humility with which we take that responsibility, visits from the Make-A-Wish Foundation, building a connection that is player-motivated, ikigai and iyashikei, shelf-level events, damage types, putting too much into the tutorial, coming back to a game and having the skills to overcome a challenge that defeated you previously, the Tetris Effect, skill acquisition and sleep. dynamically lowering the difficulty on challenges, wanting to avoid taking away the feeling of mastery, the original Xbox controller configuration, mapping A to squad control vs jump, taking time to accommodate a control scheme, controlling a camera vs controlling a head.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Halo, ATI, Enter the Matrix, Xbox, Revenge of the Sith, Battlefront II, Pandemic Studios, Chris Williams, Matt Fillbrandt, Cat Sheu, Jonny Rice, Uncharted 3, Assassin's Creed, Skyrim, Daron Stinnett, Starfighter (series), Return of the Jedi, Dark Forces, Ben Burtt, Geoff Jones, Troy Mashburn, Jana Vance, Adam Piper, Jeremie Talbot, Alien, Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now, Yaphet Kotto, Harry Dean Stanton, Spider-Man, Tom Bissell, The Disaster Artist, Greg Sestero, Gears of War (series), Reed Knight, TIE Fighter, Battle for Naboo, Jedi Knight, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, Sam Thomas, Animal Crossing (series), 343 Industries, Nintendogs, Mario Kart (series), Luke Theriault, Alan Stevens, Pokemon, Super Mario Galaxy, Mario 64, Bethesda Game Studios, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Tetris Effect, Spider-Man 2, Jamie Fristrom, MobyGames, Chris Gripeos, Jenny Huang, Kirby's Epic Yarn, Epic Mickey, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers.

Links:
Discovering presents from your mum on Animal Crossing

Next time:
Finishing the game!

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