The Too Human Side of Denis Dyack, Part Two

A candid chat with the president of Silicon Knights
3/13/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 3

We tracked down Silicon Knights President Denis Dyack post-GDC get details about the development of Too Human and more; read on for Part Two of the interview. Go here to read Part One.

Crispy Gamer: Originally Too Human was going to be a five-disc PlayStation game, then it was moved over to GameCube, and now its final spot is on the Xbox 360. How has the original vision fared throughout the years?

Denis Dyack: I think the themes about technology still resonate strongly within the game itself. Beyond that, it's metamorphosed several times, and what it is now is the result of the collaboration between Microsoft and Silicon Knights. The online play, the idea of the trilogy and the online hunting and gathering were pillars that really worked well with Microsoft's Live and the way that the online functionalities worked on the Xbox 360. So, we took the concepts that we had in our previous incarnations of Too Human and molded in -- I'd say perfectly for the 360 and in a way that really took advantage of the faster hardware -- all the things we could to tell a story.

There's a ton of story... We originally envisioned Too Human back in the day when we created Legacy of Kain, which was 120 hours' worth of game. I really don't think people want to play that much anymore. [laughs] So breaking it up into a trilogy was just the right thing, because the story -- I am such a believer in the story right now -- really is told in a trilogy. Each part of the trilogy is self-contained, but the story arch is very, very tight. We'll see. I don't think that we'll see any stone unturned. To be able to do a trilogy on the 360, quite frankly, is pretty exciting. We can take advantage of downloadable content, we can continue to balance multiplayer -- we can just do so many things that we couldn't have done on the previous platforms. The other thing is that there really hasn't been this type of game in a really long time -- not a really good one, anyway. Similar, perhaps, but not done at this level. There certainly hasn't been this type of game on a console before. The closest is PSO, but we're very different from PSO because of the action elements you saw yourself, and I think it's going to resonate a lot.

Crispy Gamer: How far into development on PlayStation was the game when you decided to move it over to GameCube? How far were you into development on GameCube when you moved it over to the Xbox 360?

Dyack: It was pre-Alpha. Not as far as people think, actually. It stopped on the PlayStation because we became a second party of Nintendo. We had intentionally planned on bringing it to the GameCube all along once we became a second party; the timing just never worked out. Once we stopped the PlayStation version, we were never really actively in full development until the 360. We kicked some ideas around, and we did a couple of technology prototypes on the GameCube, but there was really no point at which I would say we had a full team on it, and it was definitely starting to move forward. Canonizing and talking about the story over the time has been just fantastic, and I think that gives us a real leg up as far as content goes. But as far as the actual full production goes, once we stopped the PlayStation version, we really didn't think about it nor was it ever in full production again until we moved it to the 360.