BeyondUnreal Interview - Glen Dahlgren, Project Director, Legend Entertainment
World Press Preview Event: November 7, 2002
Chantilly, Virginia, USAQAPete: ...and having a couple of drinks in between modifications?Glen Dahlgren: (laughter) He's supposed to be dry! And Aida, she's just crucial. She talks to you during the missions, gives you information you need. She's probably one of the more interesting characters to get to know.QAPete: Do you ever see her down with you on missions?Glen Dahlgren: No, the only person you see down with you is Isaak. He tells you all about the XMPs, the field generators, the turrets and stuff and tells you how they are used on the one planet. The idea there is to get you to know these characters, to get you to care about these characters, so that we have the ability to affect the player emotionally.QAPete: So this is the secret, illusive 'immersiveness' we find in the Unreal-series of games?Glen Dahlgren: Absolutely. That's what every designer wants to do. Entertaining is obviously key, every game has to do that, but when you get the chance to move the player.... we'll see if we're successful or not.QAPete: From my several hours of playing it, this is the kind of game you'll get on a Friday, play all night Friday, wake up early on Saturday, play all day and night Saturday and pick it up again on Sunday. You might even think about skipping work on Monday.Glen Dahlgren: (chuckle) Well, I hope so. That would be nice!QAPete: There is a level of interaction in the game, but it's not forced on the player. Even if you decide to go through the interaction, it's short and to the point.Glen Dahlgren: Absolutely. That was one of the directives we had going into it, making sure all of the lines were concise, and there wasn't a ton of stuff to wade through. If you want, you could go right into the control room, get a quick briefing on your mission, go right into it and start shooting creatures.QAPete: Were there some things in the game that you guys worked on, took a look at, and subsequently said, 'let's not use this.'Glen Dahlgren: Yes, there were a number of missions that didn't make the final cut, not because they weren't any good, but we simply didn't have the time to bring them up to the speed that everything else was at.