Gadgetory

Linus tech tips coverage of pax 2013 is brought to you by western digital Intel and steelseries so we're here with Nick Herman co-director of a wolf among us also the walking dead and apparently a million other things is that correct yeah I guess we make a lot of games if someone said it it must be true and it's on the internet right sweet yeah yeah it's only a million games so give me the I guess give me the 30 to 60 second pitch for ha why you want a gamer to invest in the experience you guys are delivering here yeah I mean with the wolf among us we sort of you know we're following the walking dead and I think a lot of people are sort of putting the pressure on us to make this good and I think we instead of you know taking this really dark and really serious I mean the game actually is really dark and serious so one was saying we wanted to push it in a different direction it's not it's not about you know it's there to different characters right two different stories Lee's you know a story of sort of redemption and sort of being someone's Savior and in this game i think is is a little bit about redemption in the fact that bigby wolf who's the sheriff of Fabletown you know he used to be the big battle and now he's sort of in charge of protecting everyone and it's and it's sort of up to the player to figure out how they want to do that like the problem with him he's got all this power right and you have to choose whether or not using that power is worth it and and if when you do what how that affects you know the people around you want people think of you and I think that's really interesting and I mean with this game to you can look at the art and it looks so different the game feels different it's a different story so I I think people should just be excited for something new and yeah now I played a 10 minute demo of it here in the booth and the thing that I noticed more than anything else is looking for my screen to the guy next to me is we were playing the same ten minute demo and he had completely different stuff on his screen whether it's down to an option in the combat or whether it's down to driving away in the car versus falling out of window on top of the car it felt like the choices I was making we're having we're having a huge impact on how the story was progressing I mean you guys obviously have a branching structure to it but are there you know 101 endings or is it pretty linear yeah I mean I would it's closer to the walking dead I mean we don't have I mean with episode of one we don't have you know forty endings but I think a lot of the things we're playing around with our just giving the player more choice more often letting them sort of choose how they want to play on more of a micro level a lot of the times and something we're playing with two is sort of the sense of time so even in the demo when you're talking to mr. toe downstairs you can leave the conversation early in favor of sort of getting to figure out what's going on or you can sort of drill them a little bit more and get more information and and that comes into play in a much bigger way later in the episode two fascinating i mean asleep speaking of sense of time the combat was felt very frantic felt very urgent but didn't feel very punishing because whenever i made a mistake i was able to go back to about you know three to five seconds ago and and get a do-over so what does that say about the experience you guys are trying to deliver here yeah i mean with the combat specifically it's really about I mean we're not we don't want to punish people for not being able to play an action sequence I think most people play our games for sort of the narrative and the characters and the story and and getting to make these decisions and yeah I think I think it's really about in the fight sequence just sort of creating your own story I mean we now we have this branching fight sequences really just to let the player express themselves more like i was saying more on a micro level and even if you get the shit kicked out of you it's still fun to watch right it's still it's still something it's an exciting experience and there's only a you know a few death states and that in that fight but it's really about creating a narrative I mean one of the things I noticed is during the fight okay so when you're talking to people you really have the option to be a total asshole or to just be very passive or to be very helpful you can go one of it even in the fight you have an option to throw them and you can decide what to throw them against um how does that affect what how you're building yourself out as a character yeah i mean it's it's funny but there's a you know there's a couch you can throw them into it and a lot of people are like well I threw me to the couch because you know like I wanted to be kind of soft on them but you know just like they just sort of you know read into it more than and we even expect sometimes and that's that's sort of the fun part of it and I think in in thats fight specifically there's it were sort of just teaching you the mechanics but later on there's going to be ramifications for how you treat people in those types of situations that's absolutely very very cool i really enjoy the demo and i'm really excited to see this when it's available for me to buy yeah well yeah it'll be available uh early or late some timber early October yeah sounds great thank you so much so thank you we're here with Pierre charrette lead writer of a wolf among us at bulk at least episode one anyway hopefully episode two assuming things go really really well with this one tell me about how challenging is it to write for a character like bigby wolf when the character are the player gets to make a lot of the decisions and you just kind of have to make sure that everything makes sense regardless of what they do luckily for us Big B comes from fables the bill willingham comic book he's a dynamic enough character that the range that you have with him the way you'd want to swing this character emotionally whether you want to play the role of the enforcer the law abiding sheriff of Fabletown or you want to be the guy who kicks a door in and gets answers all that still fits in with who big he is and allowing people to sort of choose who their big b is it's still possible even with character that many people know and love okay so I mean if that if that's not the big challenge of writing for a for a game like this then what what were the things that you were sitting around the table or discussing or sitting at your desk tearing your hair out well figuratively that's what must be where it all went so um tell me what was so difficult it was definitely giving the game and giving the wolf among us an identity that is different and sort of sticks out from what the walking dead is done not trying to relive the same beats now trying to have similar characters it's it's own thing it's it's based on fables it's a fantastical world and just being true to that and giving it its own feel an atmosphere in tone and dialogue was probably the biggest challenge from a writing sample thank you so much I really appreciate you taking the time Pierre and okay good luck thanks thanks a nice talking to so guys don't miss any of our pax prime 2013 coverage remember our trip to the show here is powered by western digital Intel and steel series