When we first started working with Blur 4-5 years ago, we realized pretty quickly they are a passionate bunch - so the best way to work with them is a lot of back and forth. This means instead of writing up full scripts, we just write up partial scripts and let Blur come back with their thoughts. From there, Blur moves onto the storyboard phase - this is really crucial because it’s easier to make major changes at this point.

After we go back and forth on the storyboards, Blur works away and starts to deliver animatics (partially animated, partially modeled movies). These are always very cool to see (and a lot of times very funny). There was one scene for the “Wolverine Quits” cinematic involving Wade Wilson that looked pretty bad. But what’s great about Blur is you know when they deliver final, it will be perfect. And man did they nail it on that whole cinematic – I think it might be one of their best.

There’s another cinematic where it shows Blur knows their comic book characters – Wolverine has to free himself from being chained up and...man, it is not for the lighthearted. I think 99% of people are going to wince when they see it.

There are times when we would disagree on points in the cinematic and get in a pretty intense discussion. But it’s all worth it – and I love Blur for how much they believe in the character and their work.

Originally posted on May 16, 2009

Hey everyone –, I’m Aaron San Filippo, a game programmer here at Raven Software. I’m going to talk for a minute about the enemies we’ve created for the X-Men Origins: Wolverine video game.

Creating Enemies That Can Stand Up To Wolverine

One of the big initial design challenges for X-Men Origins: Wolverinethe game was this: how do you take a character with razor- sharp claws, and create enemies and fights that are a challenge? Realistically, your standard enemy doesn’t stand a chance.

  But then again, we’re talking about the Marvel Uuniverse here.

One of the great things about working within this universe is that we have an incredibly deep pool of characters to borrow from. Tons of varieties of Mutants will attempt to stop you, from teleporters who evade your attacks, to "cloners," who create copies of themselves and try to overtake you by sheer numbers.

Oh, and of course you’ll get a chance to re-create some of the epic showdowns from the movie - Gambit, Sabretooth, Blob, Wraith, etc. And then we went ahead and threw in some extras, like the Sentinel Prototype, a giant Lava Mutant, and the massive Sentinel boss.

Step 2: Add the Fun

Once we had the initial ideas for these enemies, we planned out a set of behaviors and fighting styles for each one. The primary goal is for the player to be having a blast, and so for everything that every enemy can do, we always try to give the player an opportunity to do better. You are Wolverine after all!

One example of this is the Sentinel Prototype, who fires a barrage of homing missiles at you. If you time your button presses perfectly, you can deflect them back at him, inflicting massive damage.

This is just one example of a "countermove" that you can execute – - we’ve setup dozens of unique countermoves, so you’re always going to be seeing some new way for enemies to get owned.

That’s not to say you won’t be challenged –- there are definitely moments when you’ll be tested. We tried to give each enemy a unique role, and then combine them with other type of enemies that make each battle feel a little different from the rest. For instance, remember the Teleporter I mentioned earlier? They hate it when you use the Lunge move, and they’ll do everything in their power to stop you. This creates a real challenge when you’re also fighting a 20-foot tall Leviathan where Lunge is your best tool for the job. So don’t expect it to be a walk in the park!

Seeing Them All Together: The Weapon- X Arena

Early in development, we set up an "Enemy Test" map where we as developers could manually spawn in any enemy in the game. This allowed us to test the combat for any given enemy over and over again. Fighting enemies in their "natural environment" is awesome, but we always enjoyed being able to throw together combinations of enemies that you wouldn’t ordinarily fight together.

In addition, Jeremy Blumel, our visual FX art lead, setup a "Dismemberment Room" to test the various death animations and… ahem "effects" (use your imagination.). This stuff was all lots of fun to play with, but we hadn’t scheduled time to make it an official game feature.

But when GameStop approached us and asked if we could give them a "little something extra" for pre-order bonuses, we wanted to do more than just an extra costume or an action figure. We knew the combat was the best feature of the game, and so we jumped at the opportunity to take these "behind-the-scenes" features and put them in the hands of players. Between the Dismemberment Room, the Environmental Kill Room, The Ladder Challenge, and The Custom Combat Arenafour rooms, there are hours and hours of extra fun to be had. The last one in particular is my favorite, and probably has some of the toughest fights in the game. I can’t wait to see all your videos on YouTube.

Originally posted on May 08, 2009

From the beginning of the project, we knew we needed to have a huge Sentinel in the game AND have Wolverine take it down. Not only is this a classic Wolverine enemy, but it is an awesome game moment that shows off how badass Wolverine really is. Everyone was super excited and thought this was going to be the greatest boss battle ever. Then we sat down to plan it out and implement it, and we were slapped in the face with the cold, hard reality of how difficult it would be to really do it “right.”

The first hurdle we faced was, “How do we make something THAT big move around in the world and look good?” I won’t go into the technical details here, but there’s a whole slew of issues to overcome involving feet sliding, animations not blending smoothly and AI getting stuck. And of course, every little glitch that can occur is amplified by 1000% when you’re dealing with a 100–foot-tall character versus your normal six-foot-tall dude.

Our first instinct was to solve this problem using tried and true boss mechanics such as having the Sentinel remain in roughly the same place for most of the battle, occasionally stepping out to attack and always returning to his original position, or having the player run around on a higher plane than the boss, thus allowing us to “fake” him walking around like a giant, robotic puppet. We actually tried some of these approaches, but it never felt right. It always felt cheap or like something was lacking. We wanted the player to feel like Wolverine could go “toe-to-toe” with a 100–foot-tall robot. So in the end, that’s what we did. We literally put Wolverine on the ground right next to the Sentinel’s huge feet and gave the Sentinel the freedom to go wherever he chooses and do whatever he feels is necessary to take out Wolverine.

The next issue we had to conquer was, “How would Wolverine take down a Sentinel?” Most of our ideas centered on climbing up the Sentinel using Wolverine’s claws and dismembering him bit by bit as the Sentinel reacted to where you were on him at any given time. Rather than climb the Sentinel, we thought using our patented new “lunge” move would be perfect for hopping quickly around the Sentinel’s body.

Our first pass was an elaborate, timed, and almost puzzle-y sequence of lunges that Wolverine had to perform to get to key points on the Sentinel’s body. In these spots, Wolverine would rip parts off and get the Sentinel to destroy other parts of itself. While this had some really cool moments (like the part where Wolverine literally ripped the robotic baddy’s “eyeball” out before destroying him), most people found it difficult to figure out, and it really took away everything the player had learned up until this point in the game. It forced you to do a contrived series of tasks instead of just having fun doing what you already knew how to do. So, back to the drawing board it was.

The battle you will see in the final game is the culmination of over six dedicated months of work from a team of people. We have little bits of something from every dead-end path and crazy idea that ever came up during this time, and somehow it all comes together to deliver a truly epic moment in the game that I think you’ll really love. I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say the battle is drawn out over 100 miles of some of the most intense gameplay you’ll ever see in a game – with a finishing move you won’t forget.

Originally posted on May 05, 2009

It’s great seeing so many great debates or wild ideas - and the best part is you dudes keep it a friendly community to visit. We’ve barely had to jump on—you guys have been answering most of the questions for us.

This is the proudest I’ve ever been of a game. It’s been awesome seeing so much passion from you guys over the past few months. One of our big goals with each game is to listen to the fans—so we’ve been listening now and will continue to listen. We’d love to make a another Wolverine game and plan on listening to every opinion you have on this game to make the next one even better.

We are going to continue to visit and support the site with as much content and info on the game as we can even after the game release. So stick around and keep on discussing everything Wolverine and more.

You guys rock, thanks again!

Snikt!

Dan

Originally posted on May 04, 2009

Download the demo on Xbox 360 in North America and on PlayStation Network in Europe and Australia beginning today, May 1st. The demo will be available on both systems in North America on May 8th, while in Europe and Australia/New Zealand, the demo hits both platforms on May 16th.

Experience firsthand what PlayStation: The Official Magazine called, “The videogame industry’s first true-to-character Wolverine” with a demo containing all the features you’ve been reading about for months - Real-time Regeneration, Rage Attacks, Mutagens, Feral Senses and the Contextual Lunge Combat System await – download the demo now!

Originally posted on May 01, 2009