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Mecurysteam had 'a lot of help from Nintendo' with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate
A portion of a CVG interview with producer David Cox...
CVG: Was it difficult to take a third-person Xbox 360 and PS3 game and turn that into a side-scrolling action platformer, while still retaining the Lords Of Shadow feel?
DC: It was. On paper it all made sense then when we started to put it together we thought "hmm, we're going to have to simplify things somewhat". We did struggle with the combat right up until the end - it just didn't feel right, we just couldn't... at E3, the combat we had was different to what it is now.
Now it's much smoother, faster, more solid, but at E3 it wasn't at that point and we just weren't happy with it. That's one of the reasons we delayed the game, actually - we just weren't happy with the combat, it just wasn't working, and that's supposed to be one of the main focuses of the Lords Of Shadow series, its strong combat element. So we simplified the combat.
That's really the only thing we did kind of compromise on, I guess. We created everything in high definition - all the textures, all the levels, high-poly models, everything - and we kind of shrunk it all down into the 3DS. Then we lost bones from characters, you know, we dropped the resolution of the textures and everything to make it fit.
At MercurySteam we have an HD version of the game sitting there in a computer somewhere. I think for us it was very important to capture the visual style and the flair and the nice design we had for Lords Of Shadow that MercurySteam had brought to it, we really wanted to replicate that for the 3DS game. Whether we were successful or not, that's not for us to say, but I'm really pleased with the look of the game, I think it looks really beautiful.
CVG: The result is an extremely detailed game. Was it difficult to get that level of detail on what's a relatively modest powered handheld?
DC: It was, yeah. We had a lot of help from Nintendo at the very beginning because we originally showed them a prototype and they were saying: "Wow, this looks really good, you guys really know what you're doing", and we were like: "Well, actually, we're struggling with it, can you help us in some way?" And they sent some guys over who worked with us for a bit.
I think we got some really good stuff out of the machine. We found some things about the hardware that we think we could improve on - for example, we used Nintendo's rendering system and we think if we'd have built our own we probably could have improved the graphics even more, but nevertheless we're very happy with it.
It's because we've approached it like a next-gen project. From the beginning we didn't say: "Oh, it's just a handheld game, let's not really focus on it." We approached it as if it was a big next-gen project. We had all the main artists and key team members working on the game and coming in and out of the team, and obviously working alongside the Lords Of Shadow 2 team was good because we could share resources and that kind of stuff.
So it's been a really good experience and we're really happy with the result, to be honest. It feels like a mini Lords Of Shadow game.
Full interview here
CVG: Was it difficult to take a third-person Xbox 360 and PS3 game and turn that into a side-scrolling action platformer, while still retaining the Lords Of Shadow feel?
DC: It was. On paper it all made sense then when we started to put it together we thought "hmm, we're going to have to simplify things somewhat". We did struggle with the combat right up until the end - it just didn't feel right, we just couldn't... at E3, the combat we had was different to what it is now.
Now it's much smoother, faster, more solid, but at E3 it wasn't at that point and we just weren't happy with it. That's one of the reasons we delayed the game, actually - we just weren't happy with the combat, it just wasn't working, and that's supposed to be one of the main focuses of the Lords Of Shadow series, its strong combat element. So we simplified the combat.
That's really the only thing we did kind of compromise on, I guess. We created everything in high definition - all the textures, all the levels, high-poly models, everything - and we kind of shrunk it all down into the 3DS. Then we lost bones from characters, you know, we dropped the resolution of the textures and everything to make it fit.
At MercurySteam we have an HD version of the game sitting there in a computer somewhere. I think for us it was very important to capture the visual style and the flair and the nice design we had for Lords Of Shadow that MercurySteam had brought to it, we really wanted to replicate that for the 3DS game. Whether we were successful or not, that's not for us to say, but I'm really pleased with the look of the game, I think it looks really beautiful.
CVG: The result is an extremely detailed game. Was it difficult to get that level of detail on what's a relatively modest powered handheld?
DC: It was, yeah. We had a lot of help from Nintendo at the very beginning because we originally showed them a prototype and they were saying: "Wow, this looks really good, you guys really know what you're doing", and we were like: "Well, actually, we're struggling with it, can you help us in some way?" And they sent some guys over who worked with us for a bit.
I think we got some really good stuff out of the machine. We found some things about the hardware that we think we could improve on - for example, we used Nintendo's rendering system and we think if we'd have built our own we probably could have improved the graphics even more, but nevertheless we're very happy with it.
It's because we've approached it like a next-gen project. From the beginning we didn't say: "Oh, it's just a handheld game, let's not really focus on it." We approached it as if it was a big next-gen project. We had all the main artists and key team members working on the game and coming in and out of the team, and obviously working alongside the Lords Of Shadow 2 team was good because we could share resources and that kind of stuff.
So it's been a really good experience and we're really happy with the result, to be honest. It feels like a mini Lords Of Shadow game.