Hard Reset is a futuristic first-person shooter that isn't afraid to buck the trends of its modern-day counterparts. This PC exclusive harks back to a time when exploration was necessary and regenerating health was a luxury. The team behind it hails from all across the development landscape, including members from CD Projekt Red (The Witcher 2) and People Can Fly (Bulletstorm). We recently talked with Michal Szustak, CEO of developer Flying Wild Hog, about this upcoming shooter set for release in September.
Michal Szustak: For a new studio it's always easier to make a single-platform game, and we really wanted to create and use our own tech. Our engine was built with one thought--to be used in a first-person shooter that uses lots of physics and destruction, with outstanding graphics and also optimized to do the job well. There are many games published on PCs that are just ports from consoles, and we all know that today the power of a current-gen console is similar to a four- to five-year-old PC.
If you want to show some amazing graphics, it's better and easier to develop the game for PCs. Also, in the era of movie-like shooters almost "on rails," with player-environment interaction as limited as possible, we wanted to create a game for old-school PC players, raised on all those forgotten Dooms, Quakes, and Painkillers.
GS: With a release window of September 2011, there's not a lot of time between now and when your game comes out. How long has the game been in development? Why only reveal the game now?
MS: We started developing Hard Reset in April 2009, so now it's been more than two years. Why reveal so late? We believe that players don't like those two or three years of hyping, with lots of web site counters and teasing all the same assets. And after three years of waiting you finally get information saying the game will show up half a year later than promised! Then, after those six months, two more months of waiting! Personally, I really hate it. So we decided to show our game when it's ready. When it's literally done. No postponements. We want the players to trust us, and we will do our best to get them good games in the future.
GS: We understand that Flying Wild Hog actually consists of members from numerous other studios. Why form this new studio?
MS: I think most of our employees were tired of this corporate style of management implemented nowadays in all the "big" studios. We wanted to create a place with a flexible management system, sort of an old-school "garage" studio. For many years different people were trying to convince us that it's impossible to create a good game without all this fancy corporate structure, time sheets, almighty producers, etc. It's not true, and we will prove it. We are trying to create a place without everlasting, constant crunches--a place where every member of our team can and should add something to our projects, without the limit of a glass ceiling.
GS: What can you tell us about the story of Hard Reset? We understand it's set in a cyberpunk future reminiscent of movies such as Blade Runner.
MS: Yes, Blade Runner is one of our major inspirations, but of course not the only one. The thing that I really like in cyberpunk is that most of the protagonists aren't meant to save the entire world; they are just trying to survive in a world dominated by powerful forces such as corporations or authoritarian regimes. And our background story is just like that--you are not supposed to save the world or humanity; you just want to discover what's really going on and survive. So we have our hero, Major Fletcher, who is a "proud" soldier of the Corporation, and after a regular mission he discovers that he is unable to distinguish a friend from a foe and the other way around. It's a typical story, but adding to this, Fletcher is hiding his mental disorder--some pretty surprising stuff can happen!
GS: What type of game is Hard Reset? Is it more of an open-world shooter like the Far Cry series, or something more linear, such as the Modern Warfare games?
MS: Hard Reset is definitely not an open-world shooter like Far Cry, but it's also not a shooter on rails, the kind that Modern Warfare is. It's rather similar to old-school shooters like Doom, where you had to search the level to get a key card, and where you will find secrets--sometimes really challenging ones.
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