The Moonlighters: Heist Cinema comes to Gaming - Preview
by Karl Koebke , posted on 15 June 2012 / 3,838 Views
Heist movies have always been one of my favorite flavors of cinema. Watching a group of professional sneaks, actors, and planners go through a convoluted set up all with riches in mind is always fun to watch. A new indie title called The Moonlighters hopes to give gamers the same feeling as watching one of those movies while giving you control over the action and how things play out.
It's the 1950s and a “Rat Pack”-like entourage of entertainers have found themselves out of work due to floundering popularity. Rather than get real jobs like I assume all their parents wanted them to do, they decide that if they can't be successful entertainers then they'll just have to start pulling heists to make money. There are 6 members to your pilfering Rat Pack with 13 heists they'll commit throughout the game. You won't always have access to all 6 members, but then where would a video game be if it didn't change things up and force you to adapt.
You begin each heist just like in the movies. First you have to figure out what job each character is going to have to perform. Each job comes with an ability required to get past the objectives, like a hookshot type instrument for the Mechanic or dodgeroll for the Greaseman. Another layer is added on when you take into account every character's specific talent like the Debutante who can seduce guards or the Stage Magician's hypnosis. Once you've decided who's going to do what the characters start to talk out the plan, and in true heist movie fashion as they explain any given step the game cuts to that step.
The gameplay features classic Sims-like models with a 1990s JRPG inspired top-down camera. Most of the time you'll be trying to work your way past guards one way or another in order to get to your goal. Of course not everyone in the heist has such a dangerous mission; some will just serve as distractions. I don't know if this will stay in the final game but the demo I saw had an adorable animation for distraction where the character would bounce up and down like a little kid on a sugar rush, and as they passed by people any that they distracted would start bouncing up and down as well. Before too long you've gotten the entire room of civilians bouncing up and down, which looked a lot funnier to me than it probably should.
The Moonlighters boasts a dynamic narrative in which your actions change how the heist goes down and what I saw fits perfectly into the heist movie motif. Burglary is tough and it seems like those movies always have the would be crooks adjusting their plans as one thing or another changes mid-job. Based on your actions and who you choose for the mission your crew will be presented with different mid-heist objectives. Once the job is over the gang will all sit around and talk about these moments since obviously the things that you don't expect are always the most interesting in retrospect. The heist that the developers were showing off was to rob a casino and bring jewels back to a duke. Near the end of the heist two of the characters had to fake a fight in order to serve as a distraction, animated once again by madly hopping at each other. It's things like this that will hopefully greatly increase the replay value of the heists when the game eventually releases.
This is all still early days, and Rad Dragon has only actually finished one of the 13 planned heists for the final game, but what I've seen is promising. Here's hoping that the final release is sooner rather than later, and they succeed in capturing the fun and intrigue of a true heist movie.
