“Their personalities are coded into the AI: Drax will have a tendency to take on too many enemies Gamora’s always going to look for stragglers, and she’ll be acrobatic in her attack. “Whether in traversal or combat, we wanted you to feel like you were hanging out with the Guardians,” says Fortier. When you show skill, variety and finesse in fights you earn points that can be spent on new abilities, but there is a real emphasis on being part of a team and allowing the other characters to express themselves, too. You can move really easily between melee and distance combat and the animations are all beautifully contextual – like, say, the Batman Arkham games, but with a wry smile. I wanted it to feel empowering to use the team.”
“So when you press the Guardians button, time slows down and you get a breather, you get to look at the battlefield and make a decision – you don’t have to remember a lot of buttons. “I wanted everything about the game to feel pleasant to use,” says Fortier. It’s like the party-based combat of a role-playing game, but super-simplified. Peter Quill has his twin blasters and melee abilities, as well as elemental attacks that can stun and inhibit enemies, but during a fight, players can bring up a wheel menu to access Rocket’s array of grenades or Drax’s shoulder barge. ‘Enjoying being with these characters is as important as making progress’ … Guardians of the Galaxy. Everything’s been done to make them feel alive and fluid – there’s no stopping in your tracks for big conversations.” “AI-wise, we give them routines so that they come across your path, see you and talk to you, they’re aware of you as you’re walking around or in combat. “That’s the vibe that we’re going for,” agrees senior gameplay director Patrick Fortier. “It’s a beautiful game, and the characters are just so fluid and so natural when they’re talking.”
“Oxenfree was a big influence,” says Dugas.
It creates a loose interpersonal dynamic where simply enjoying being with these characters is as important as making progress – rather like Oxenfree, an indie thriller famous for its believable dialogue and tight cast. You can instigate little chats with the squad while exploring, and they’ll come out with snippets of backstory or a joke. “But we were always going back to: what is the heart of GoG? What makes it different from other superhero tales? And for us it was all about the family, the interaction between the characters, how they connect and disconnect, and it became clear that if we wanted that, we needed the player to truly inhabit one of the characters.”Ĭonversation plays an important part in the game. “When we started the project, multiplayer was an option in front of us,” says senior creative director Jean-François Dugas. ‘Lived-in and chaotic’ … Guardians of the Galaxy.
This is an action-adventure, but it’s also a sort of soap opera – a character-led drama. It looks lived-in and chaotic, like a slightly dysfunctional family home, which is very much the vibe Square Enix is going with for the whole game. Before touching down, you can explore the Guardians’ spacecraft, the Milano, a beautifully rendered mess with scratched floors, junk strewn everywhere and a 1980s boombox perched on a shelf. A demo of the game, set in its fifth chapter, has the squad arriving at a police station to pay an overdue fine. The story is classic Guardians, in that it’s based around a minor misdemeanour that quickly transforms into a colossal cosmic drama. Guardians of the Galaxy, due out next month, is the developer’s chance to redress the balance and remind Deus Ex and Tomb Raider veterans about its skill with single-player, cinematic stories. But most critics agreed that its story and characterisation were strong they just didn’t belong in a live game. The company’s Avengers-themed online action game has had problems with bugs, matchmaking and endgame repetition, and is struggling to retain an audience. I t’s fair to say that Square Enix didn’t have the smoothest entry into the Marvel Universe.
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