Homefront Interview
with Kaos Studios' David Votypka
To the rest of the world, we seemingly lazy and overprivileged Americans may appear complacent--perhaps even easily conquered. Anyone who thinks that may have forgotten that old World War II quote about "waking a sleeping giant" but developer Kaos Studios certainly hasn't. Homefront, its upcoming action-shooter, entails the invasion and occupation of the United States by Korean forces in the year 2027, and cranks up the emotion quotient to unheard-of heights by giving us so-called Ugly Americans a very personal reason to fight. At the recent opening of the new THQ Montreal studios, we caught up with David Votypka, Creative Design Director of Kaos Studios, and asked him how his team plans to make war hit home.
AtomicGamer: You collaborated with screenwriter John Milius of Red Dawn fame on the game's script. How did that happen? Did you seek him out?
David Votypka: It was amazing sort of, good fortune I guess on my part because Red Dawn was an inspiration for me and the original idea and then Danny Bilson came on board at THQ almost three years ago. We were very early in the phases of Homefront at that point and I gave him the first green light pitch of it and mentioned that it was inspired by Red Dawn and he's like, “Oh yeah, I know John Milius. He was my writing teacher—I've worked with him for years. Do you want him on the game?”
AG: So some game studios have in-house writers but a lot of the time they work outside the whole development process. How did your collaboration work?
DV: The way I wanted to approach it is kind of like, “here's our goals with the mission”. So he would give us mission ideas and tactics because he's this military historian. When you have a meeting with John, it's like, an eight-hour meeting and you probably talk about the game for about two or three hours and the other five hours is like him storytelling. It's always very educational. So it was more like, “John, here's our goals. How would you write this from a movie script standpoint?” and he would sort of give us a version of that and we would just adapt that for the gameplay. So instead of trying to make him write it for the gameplay—that's what we do—he's the great storyteller and has some great ideas. So it was more like taking his ideas and adapting them.
AG: Is it hard in terms of continuity, trying to get the story to flow and creating objectives within that? How often were you communicating with him?
DV: Yeah, it was more sort of on the bigger ideas, like the mission we showed at E3 this year was this resistance raid on a Lumber Liquidators department store and there was this white phosphorus that goes off and that was actually John's idea which originally started from an operation in Vietnam where they dropped this super-bright flare that blinded all the enemies and they kind of moved in and took advantage of that tactical advantage that they had. So we ended up using the white phosphorus flare but the goal we said to John was like, “So how do we get this small resistance to raid this big, Korean-controlled military outpost? This department store that's now used for military purposes?” So he talked to us about the tactics of those ideas but it wasn't to the level where like, “this is the objective, A, B, C, D”; it was more like how they would do it, and we just took that larger idea and broke it down into the gameplay.
AG: Since you mention Lumber Liquidators, how do you think people will react to that? Do you think people will see things like that as part of the larger fiction or merely as rampant product placement?
DV: It's an interesting question but I think the way we're doing it, it's just going to feel like part of the America we live in. We're actually not doing it—nobody's paying each other. The traditional in-game advertising which is dynamic ads streaming in that don't fit the world just didn't work for us, partially it didn't work for the advertisers because they want to advertise a movie that's coming out in three weeks but our game's set in 2027. Also, the crumbling of America, not all advertisers are going to be comfortable with their product sort of having gone through that. So it was really advertisers where we said, “We're not paying you, you're not paying us, but it's exposure for you and it helps us create a more believable America.”
AG: Even though the game's set in 2027, did either you or they feel their corporate image would be altered their image to fit the times or did they think it better to stay the same for the purposes of familiarity?
DV: I think one thing they probably liked is the idea that they're still around in 2027. (laughs) So it's a positive impression of the brand.
AG: Can you talk a little bit about the “magnetism” system? [Does interesting stuff that dynamically happens in the game just magically gravitate towards the player?]
DV: That kind of falls into the whole drama engine which is a design philosophy and set of tools. So some of it is design principles and some of it is actual tools we use in the game. As the player's running through we want to throw things at the player and knock the player down and you see your arms as you fall. In the E3 demo you're up in the tower and it gets shot down and you see your hands out in front of you...if the player isn't really being affected other than being shot as they run through these spectacle scenes, I think you lose a sense of presence. So we really wanted to realize and create dramatic moments for the player.
AG: How is that different from traditional methods of triggering events?
DV: Some of it is dynamic like if a helicopter gets shot down, it'll always kind of careen towards you. Overall though, it's really just a kind of mindset and philosophy that we're constantly trying to make sure the player is the center of the action.
AG: So, the hero. There's a hint in the demo that he's a pilot but there wasn't too much more information given about him. Who is this guy?
DV: He's a former Marine pilot, the Koreans want him for that reason and the resistance also want him for that reason. The overall goal in the campaign is to capture some jet fuel in Colorado and bring it to the fractured U.S. military in San Francisco. Part of the plan requires you fly a helicopter to capture those fuel trucks. Later in the campaign you'll get to put your piloting skills to use and make good on the reason they recruited you.
AG: So you as designers aren't making the hero just, Joe Schmoe. This guy has a military background. It's obvious from the start that you're not fumbling around. You're familiar with weapons and you get right into it.
DV: Yeah, the pilot has some combat experience but he's not like Rambo, he's not super soldier, he's just capable.
AG: Why was Montrose, Colorado chosen for the setting?
DV: Interesting question. A little bit of it was calling back to Red Dawn which was set in Colorado as well but then there's also, one of the reasons the Koreans are in the western United States is that in the year 2027 oil and gas prices have risen so much and there's this energy crisis and it's become economically viable to mine oil shale. The United States is basically the Saudi Arabia of oil shale but it's too expensive and hard to extract right now. In 2027, the Koreans, that's part of what they're doing is extracting that and it exists in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming.
AG: Who's composing the soundtrack?
DV: We have a great—our audio director Matt Harwood does all of our sound effects and music composing. He did that for Frontlines and we released that soundtrack and this time we're actually going even bigger. He's done all the composing and we're doing some sweetening and then we're recording it with an orchestra so it's a much bigger production this time but he's really talented and he's written it all himself.
AG: How did you choose voice talent? Where does your voice talent come from? Are they experienced game voice actors?
DV: Various casting agencies. In New York where we're doing the casting, there's a lot of TV, film, Broadway actors and lot of different talents. We didn't say, “We need celebrity X, Y and Z.” Part of it is when you play Call of Duty 5 for example, it was Kiefer (Sutherland) talking to you. Like, I've watched a lot of 24 and it was kind of like, “Well, this is weird. Jack Bauer in World War II?” It's a little weird. We're about who sounds right for the role.
AG: A question about the single player and the multi-player—are there significant differences between the two? We'd heard that the multi-player was much as you've come to expect mult-player to be, aside from the Battle Point system where the single player employs more of a guerrilla approach. The latter made us think of Red Faction: Guerrilla. Do you see any similarities between the two games?
DV: Well, Red Faction, there's the idea that you're the resistance and there's the storyline that flows along that but their focus is really about destruction. Our focus is really feeling like a resistance member, having that sense of being hunted and chased, get in, get out, that kind of guerrilla warfare side of it. Even in the first mission here, you know, you get captured in the bus and then the KP (Korean military police) are chasing you for the rest of the mission and you're just running and trying to survive. I think in Red Faction they focus less on the narrative elements of being that resistance and focus more on the gameplay element of destruction. Homefront focuses on the narrative and the human cost and the emotion. In the second level which we showed at E3, you come to the resistance headquarters and it's these three back yards with women and children and families there. There's this deeper level of emotional depth that I think most shooters aren't doing these days.
AG: Are you coming at the gameplay then from a position of limited resources? What makes it guerrilla? What are your objectives and what are you using to achieve them?
DV: The idea is that the resistance has some weaponry because a lot of civilians in the United States do carry guns. You're raiding KP bases and raiding existing U.S. military bases and getting what you can. The Goliath vehicle that you use at the end of Mission 1, that was captured from a U.S. military base that Koreans were now controlling.
AG: How do you anticipate the PC version is going to differ from the console?
DV: Yeah, good question. So we have a lot of PC background. We worked on Battlefield 2 and Desert Combat and the roots of the studio revolve around that. So we have Frank Delise, he was the first GM of Kaos and he's the executive producer on the PC sku. It's really—it's not a port. We're really spending the time to develop features for the PC specifically and Digital Extremes is the developer in Ontario working on it so it's not being developed at Kaos. We're overseeing it but we really want to put in the clan systems and tournament systems and things that the PC gaming community really wants, including dedicated servers which is also going to be on PS3 and 360.
AG: So is the Battle Point system the main way you differentiate yourself from other titles in the genre?
DV: That's a big one for sure. The vehicle gameplay is a big differentiator between Call of Duty for example and Homefront. Battlefield has vehicle gameplay as well but in addition to the Battle Point system and the spawning vehicles so you're not running around trying to find one. If you can afford it and you want one then you can get one. There's another innovation that we're announcing probably in December on the multi-player side that we're not talking about just yet but we're pretty excited about it.
AG: Well it looks like our time's up. Thanks for meeting with us.
DV: No problem!
