Legendary Sneak Peek at EIEIO 2008

By: Eric M. Martin

Sunday March 30, 2008

John Garcia-Shelton spills the goods on an up-and-coming first person shooter of mythical proportions.
Everything was perfect. Blue-grey sky threatening rain, fire towers at random locations, roller derby babes passing out buttons and a completely open bar. What would have made this scenario beyond all describable shades of awesome? Someone answered by parking a folly-stocked game testing trailer in the backyard of Stubb’s BBQ for EIEIO 2008.

No way are we going to let this game just walk on by without taking a good long look and giving it one of those low fox calls. This game reminds me of Bioshock, but not in the sense that it’s a clone or a copy. It’s more about an essence of anticipation that Bioshock had. Legendary shares that same feeling in spades. . It’s almost like that piece of wedding cake that you constantly crave, yet can only get at weddings.

This was the only title that we got a fair amount of playtime on while at EIEIO and we pretty much monopolized the giant bench seat once it became open for free play. I must have seen that minotaur boss fight about a dozen times and not a single one was the same. Dynamic, unscripted creature AI is Legendary’s Golden Fleece and may end up setting the standard for future first-person shooter adventures. Chances are that the Xbox 360 is going to get the most sales, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this makes a large impact on PC sales.

Enough of what I’ve got to say on it, let’s hear it from the Trojan Horse’s mouth. While my colleagues were soaking in the sweet rays in front of the tubes, I was able to score a quick interview with the Producer of Legendary, John Garcia-Shelton of Spark Studios.

Static Multimedia: What systems will Legendary be for and what's it about?

Garcia-Shelton: Legendary is available for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. You play as Charles Decker, a person who has released the creatures of myth and legend back into the world by opening Pandora's Box. It's set in the modern time and it's a conflict between the modern world and the mythological. In Legendary, you start off in New York. By opening the box, you release the creatures into the world and the effect is profound. They destroy the entire city. As you start out, you learn how your actions were caused by an organization called the Black Order. Reinhart Le Fay, one of the high-ranking members of the Black Order sent you to open the box. Now he's betrayed you and he's trying to hunt you down and kill you. Not only do you have to fight these creatures, you are also fighting the Black Order.

What's up with the AI for Legendary? We hear that it's different from most first person shooters.

Our AI is very dynamic. Creatures are going to move on their own. We have taken a lot of time to ensure that everything is live. We have some scripted introductions of creatures in order to dramatically “punch up” the entrance, but from then on the creatures are live. Creatures are not scripted to fight you. Their behaviors are very real and very present in their behavior sets. They're going to track you, avoid your line of fire, path on all surfaces in order to get to you, and they have a lot of tools to use.

Talk to us about how damage states figure into Legendary.

You really want to create a reward for the player, because we want the fight to be a rich and deep experience, but we also want the player to feel that they're making some sort of progress. Damage state really feeds into that. By revealing the underlying muscle structure of the creature, you can see the physical progress of your fight against it. It's not good to have a fight go along and have a creature there, but you're not getting any response that you're hurting it. You need to feel the progress of the fight, and the damage state reveals that.




Legendary isn't just an “us vs. them” setup. Can you describe what exactly is going on during combat?

It's what I like to call the combat triangle: you, the Black Order and the creatures. The creatures are the X factor. Who are they going to target is purely based on what they want at the time. Are they angry with the person shooting at them, or did they already identify something that looked tastier? How you play against what they're targeting is a major ingredient. On top of that, you get health from creatures. When you kill the creatures, you are able to absorb the animus left behind. In short, you get health from creatures and ammo from soldiers. A creature that at one time is an obstacle can become an opportunity. It's a nice dynamic to help the player plan what's really important to them at what time.

What led up to the ideas that went into the creation of Legendary?

The inspiration came from a trip to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. When looking at the statues, we thought, “What if those statues came to life and started trashing the museum?” A big draw to Legendary is the fact that it's set in the here and now. Most first person shooters are either World War II, futuristic, or about hunting demons. It's hard to find connection to that. If we take creatures of myth that we all recognize from stories we have, there's a conflict. Everyone knows what a werewolf is, or what a gryphon is, but they still see it in their own mind's eye. Having that conflict butt up against the reality of the here and now, that's unique in gaming for us. We wanted to take our world and change it.

Although there was no specific date, we were informed that Legendary will be released during either Q2 or Q3 for 2008. Just remember, we don't want you to know that you're opening the box, but we still want you to open it. Then we can hunt you down and kill you before we get turned into werewolf food. A special thanks to Spark Studios and Gamecock Media Group for granting us a pre-release glimpse into what could be considered a contender for Game of the Year 2008.