XIII - Exclusive shots and interview

XIII - if you havn't been paying attention at the back, those are Roman numerals that mean "Thirteen", and this is an impossibly stylish looking first-person shooter coming to every format bar Colecovision this October 24(or December 5 if you've got a GameCube). Cel-shaded visuals in an FPS? Bonkers.

Based on a popular Belgian comic (think hard-boiled, shotgun wielding punks rather than be-quiffed boy detectives), XIII takes place in the US, after the assassination of the President (and in the interests of diplomacy, we choose to make absolutely no jokes of a gleeful nature about that premise).

Not that you're primarily concerned with that - you begin the game by waking up on a beach with a serious case of amnesia and the number XIII tattooed on your chest, and a bunch of lowlife sleazes attempting to wipe you out. Curiouser and curiouser.

We've scored "XIII" (see what we did there?) new screenshots of this ace looking shooter, and were also fortunate enough to snag a brief but nonetheless illuminating chat with the superbly named lead game designer Jean Zappavigna. Hold on pilgrim...

Have you found XIII's cel-shaded visual style enabling you to introduce gameplay features we've never seen before in the genre? If so, could you tell us about these?

Zappavigna: We've introduced new gameplay features to compliment the particular visual style and story in XIII. One example is the Sixth Sense that XIII has - when moving slowly or stationary your sixth sense is triggered which allows you to visualise enemy movement through walls via the "Tap, tap, tap" which is very useful in infiltration, and when you want to sneak up on opponents.

Another feature, is pop-up windows. These comic-book type captions appear as a visual player reward for precise head-shots, all of which are fully motion captured - so will change depending on where you strike your target's head/face.

The captions also act as clues/tips to how a player needs to progress through a level (i.e. by showing escape routes, or a keycard on a desk), and also as information to other things that are going on in the game (i.e. the enemy boss escaping on a speedboat).

We're expecting something along the lines of an interactive novel, which suggests XIII will be linear with scripted sequences and cinematics - is this the case?

Zappavigna: No it's not - as well as the character of XIII, we make use of lots of well-developed and individual secondary characters and a strong detailed storyline. These are derived from the actual graphic novel series, and features such as XIII's memory loss has allowed us to add really new gaming sequences such as the interactive flashbacks that the player will experience.

How have you found working with the Unreal engine? What influenced your decision to choose this engine for XIII, and what things has it allowed you to implement into the game that you wouldn't have been able to do with another engine?

Zappavigna: The Unreal engine is a really cool and very powerful tool. It's really strong for level design, and Ubi Soft has developed a number of special functionalities for the engine. Another strength of the engine is that it has allowed us to develop across all platforms using one engine.

From what we know of XIII, it will be a combination of stealth and action. Will it be a 50/50 split between the two, or is it more stealth than action or vice versa?

Zappavigna: Very much a 50/50 split.

Aside from the visual aspect, why will XIII be a unique first-person shooter experience?

Zappavigna: XIII combines a number of features that will make it unique, the most obvious, being the visual appearance of the game and the genuinely unique comic style, such as the pop-ups and use of onomatopoeic exclamations [the visual representation of sounds, like "Boom!" - Ed.].

Then, there is a highly developed cast of characters, a complex story that forms the overall conspiracy, and all the other special gaming features like the Sixth Sense, flashbacks, and the 'anything-to-hand' type fighting with chairs, bottles, brooms and... anything to hand!