19-Feb-2003 In the 22nd century, playing computer games will be illegal. Mark Hill pays a visit to Rebellion to make sure its latest effort is out some time before then...
They look good, don't they? The buildings filling the screenshots over the next couple of pages, towering against the dark skyline, with hip-in-a-bottle detail and nightmarish vastness? Well, you should try walking around beneath them.
Yes, that's right. They're not part of some convoluted artwork to make the game look good to gullible magazine readers, they're physical presences that will take your breath away when you start exploring Rebellion's computerised version of Mega-City One, home of Judge Dredd and 400 million people.
"It's all built to scale," says lead artist and designer Tim Jones, pointing at one of the gargantuan constructions. "So each of those white dots is a proper, permanent-presence, size-scaled window." Not that Rebellion is trying to cram the whole city into the game. Given that it takes up the whole of the Eastern US seaboard, that would just be stupid. "We've broken it into sections because we wanted everything to look very polished rather than generic."
They've taken some of the most recognisable areas from the comic and translated them to the monitor in all their gigantic glory. At this early stage, though most of the architecture is complete, the swarm of movement and people that will make the city truly come to life in the player's imagination is still missing. But it's already coming together enough to see how incredible it's going to look. There are even giant screens ŕ la Blade Runner showing full-motion video, adding to the sense that this is a vibrant, living - if also dark, dank and scary - city. There will be news reports playing all over the city, helping to progress the story - about which little is known, by the way, apart from the basic premise of Dredd confronting his arch nemesis Death and the Dark Judges. Although you can get an idea of its scope by the producer Ed Woolf's words.
"There are 9,000 lines of dialogue and it's growing. The script is quite involved. We've got 25 years of the 2000AD comic to go on."
THE CRIME IS LIFE Ed tells us some of the things we can expect to see once the full noise and bustle of the crowded futuristic city is recreated: "There'll be flying robots coming down from the sky, cars sweeping past, a monorail speeding above." And, more importantly, a hell of a lot of people. As head of programming Kevin Lea adds, "We focused on visualising Mega-City One, and to do that realistically means having lots and lots of people on screen simultaneously. They've all got complex bone structures, animations and lots of polygons, but because of how scalable everything is, it will run quite happily on whatever PC you've got. It doesn't have to be state-of-the-art."
The issue of scalability is an important one. It means that although Dredd vs Death is also being developed for the PS2, it automatically looks better on a decent spec PC. In fact, Rebellion's Asura engine is so impressive it shouldn't be long before other developers start using it and, thanks to its user-friendliness and fast rendering, we can expect it to have a big impact with the mod community.
It might not have the ultra-realistic look of Doom 3, but it's perfect for the dark, comic-book style of Dredd. Not to mention all those other 2000AD characters Rebellion has lined up for videogame transfers.
THE SENTENCE IS DEATH Of course, it's not just the graphics that remain truthful to the comic original, and the gameplay itself is fashioned in true Judge Dredd style, rather than the generic move-though-corridors-and-kill-everything FPS we're so sick of seeing.
"You can't just go round shooting people," explains Ed. "You have to challenge them and try to arrest them.
If they resist and pull a gun out on you, then all hell breaks loose. But you have to stand by the laws you've sworn to uphold, which is why you have a law-meter on the screen display. It goes down if you shoot innocent people (or ones that have willingly surrendered) and if it reaches the bottom you'll get a visit from the SJS, the Special Judiciary Squad, who will try to arrest you." Their appearance doesn't signal game over though, it simply makes your life much more difficult as you try and get on with your mission objectives while simultaneously avoiding those damn Special Judges.
"If the meter reaches the top as you arrest lots of criminals," continues Ed, "You'll get special rewards, like unlocking skins for multiplayer and so on."
JUDGeMENT DAY There's no better way to give a taste of what the game will be like than showing a mission, which is exactly what the Rebellion guys did. The whole thing kicks off in the docks area of Mega-City One, a level which they originally thought would demonstrate just the kind of huge scale they were aiming for, but has since been dwarfed by all the other environments they've been building.
It's pouring down, as it so often is in this damp, dark city, and if you look up at the sky you can see the raindrops exploding on your visor. It's a good job there's no time limit, because chances are you'll be spending quite a while 'coo-ing' and 'ahh-ing' as you take in the full beauty of the Asura engine.
Your first mission is to arrest a gang of hoods. The bad news is they out-number you by quite a margin. The good news is when you find them, half of them decide to leg it. Still, enough of them hang around to make it a pretty hairy fire-fight. Elsewhere, you're informed of a group of punks spraying graffiti in a subway tunnel. As you arrive to bust asses and take names, graffiti-cleaning robots turn up to wash down the defaced walls. City life must go on, y'know.
The city is populated with all types of gangs, not all necessarily part of the main storyline, but adding to the atmosphere and immersion. You can even, if you're feeling particularly devious, lead one gang into another's territory and watch them slug it out, saving yourself precious Lawgiver bullets.
IT'S ALL A BIT FUZZY The thing is, all this atmosphere and immersive detail would go out the window if it were not backed up by equally realistic NPC behaviours. I've always said that an FPS should be judged above all on the quality of its AI, and in this case things appear to be well on track - which is especially refreshing given that it's usually the last thing the developers get round to.
In most games, the programmers try to make it look like your enemies are acting intelligently by having them run off or shoot at you intermittently from a position of cover. These are usually just scripted patterns and path-finding routines rather than proper responses to an active situation. In Judge Dredd, enemies will take cover behind any object they find in the environment. And if you drop a new object in, they'll recognise it and use it to their advantage.
As Ed explains: "The fuzzy logic AI system we're using means that each character makes a decision based on the environment around him and the actions taking place. For example, if the enemies out-number you, they start firing at you.
If you kill a few of them, the others are much more likely to surrender or call for backup." When the criminals do surrender (by kneeling down and putting their arms behind their back) you can go up to them and cuff them, while an on-screen message will relay the penalty for their heinous crimes.
And with the fuzzy logic comes other benefits: "Every time you play the game it will be slightly different. Different gangs will have attributes they always adhere to, but they will still make decisions based on what's going on around them," says Ed. "It's not random," adds Kevin, "Because they won't do things that are completely out of character. But they're still unpredictable. And the larger the group of people the more chaotic it can all become."
But it's not just perps who behave realistically. All the citizens thronging around you have their own lives to get on with. "A bit like in The Sims," says Kevin. "They can interact with things in their environment, like if they see an advert coming on a TV screen they'll walk over to watch it."
SUMMARY EXECUTION Another element designed to make each game different from the last is the lack of pre-set death animations. Instead, Rebellion has gone for the ragdoll effect where the body of the victim falls according to skeletal physics, the environment and where they were hit. It also means they'll slump against walls and assume unnatural positions on stairs rather than lie rigidly as most computerised corpses do. This is especially effective when using the high-explosive ammo, a sort of grenade that sends bodies flying in all directions in a magnificent explosion, with limbs twisting in midair and landing in the most painful of positions.
Of course, setting off explosions in the middle of a crowded street and causing massive civilian casualties isn't usually a good idea. But this is Judge Dredd remember, and protecting civilians at all costs has never been high on his agenda. "Because you have this law meter," explains Kevin, "there's some room for manoeuvre. You can say, 'well, my law meter is pretty high and there's one innocent guy and three bad guys. I'll take out all of them.' And that's the sort of thing Judge Dredd does on a daily basis. His basic thinking is that a hostage deserves to die for being stupid enough to get caught in the first place."
And as for multiplayer? Well, they're not supposed to talk about it. But you can tell by the twinkle in their eyes that it's going to be special.
With 2000AD, Britain has been producing some of the world's best comics for some 25 years. Now, it looks like we're finally going to start producing world-class first-person shooters too. Justice will be done.
The helmet may make him look like some kind of an ancient Greek spear-carrier, but Judge Joseph Dredd has little time for democracy. He is, on the other hand, a perfect antidote to all those touchy-feely superheroes that populate American comics, with their moral dilemmas and obsession with saving civilians. The difference between the good guys and the bad guys in Judge Dredd lies simply on which side of the law they operate. In fact, the Judge himself is barely human, hardly ever portraying feelings other than anger and never taking off his helmet, thus remaining heartless and faceless. The whole thing shouldn't be taken too seriously though, because more than anything else he is a dark parody of American heroism. Dredd was inspired by the likes of 'Dirty' Harry Callaghan and Charles Bronson in Death Wish, and he has, in turn, helped inspire such caricatures as Duke Nukem. But where the humour of the Duke was restricted to spouting toilet humour and Arnie-esque one-liners, Judge Dredd has every chance of introducing a bit of blacker-than-black British humour to the world of ultra-violent shooters. Which probably means the Yanks will be left scratching their heads.
// Straight And Narrow
But with some bends... It's not a free-roaming game by any means, but each section of the city is big enough and full of so much stuff going on that you can just spend some time wandering and getting involved with events that have no consequence to the story (like arresting the myriad lawbreakers). And Rebellion is making sure that even straight mission objectives can always be completed in a variety of ways. "There are different ways you can try to get into a death cult's headquarters in one level," begins Ed as one example. "Go up to the gates and blow them open, in which case all the guards will come pouring out and attack you, or you could arrest a cult disciple in a different part of the city who might give you the codes to get in. You could even create a diversion by using your high-explosive ammo and wait for the guards to go and investigate." It's not quite GTA III in reverse - arresting criminals instead of committing the crimes - but Judge Dredd certainly has plenty of room to roam.
If the main storyline starts to drag, just go AWOL and arrest some perps.
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