I discovered this game in the early hours of this morning whilst trying to find a decent game to buy to keep me entertained until Mass Effect 2 is released at the end of January. It looks absolutely phenomenal, check out the Developer Diary and videos/screenshots below, this will be a must be for me, but for XBOX or PC I don’t know, perhaps both!

Developer Diary

Paul Wedgwood
CEO of Splash Damage and Game Director on Brink.
Back in June I was on a flight to London returning home from E3 2009. We had just completed three days of non-stop, behind-closed-doors demos of Brink, to standing-room-only crowds of journalists and industry veterans. The response at the show was phenomenal and very humbling; at one point I had to ask someone not to sit between my legs while I was presenting! What really struck me more than anything was simple: “People get it, they want to play this way too, and we’re not completely mad!” Since the show, the interest in the game has continued to grow. All these ideas we’ve brought together into one game are resonating with audiences.

It’s been a fun road to get to this point.

Blurring the Lines

First up, we knew that we wanted to make a game that worked as a fantastic online competitive shooter (that appealed to our roots as hardcore shooter fanatics), but we also wanted to make an immersive and cinematic single-player experience. But, above all we wanted to create BOTH – in the same game.

So, for the first time in the history of Splash Damage, I stepped back and handed the design direction of our game over to someone else, and that someone was Richard ‘rahdo’ Ham. Richard had come to us after successfully completing Fable 2 (which we loved) but even before that, he was the lead designer on and co-creator of the Syphon Filter games – one of the most popular shooter franchises on the original PlayStation.

Richard presented us with a great set of ideas that built on our initial goal of blurring the lines between single player and multiplayer. It was through a combination of unique match making rules, branching narrative structures, rigorous anti-griefing safeguards, and robust AI, that the game would achieve this blurring effect. In the end, Brink becomes an experience that you can play online or offline, by yourself or co-operatively with friends or competitively with strangers, and get a seamless and contiguous experience as you advance your character’s skills, upgrades, and look. When Richard gets going about it, he talks so fast and waves his hands around so enthusiastically you have to fear for your life :)

Playing it SMART

It started out as a simple attempt to make a shooter that had the same kind of fluid motion you feel in a really good platformer, but when Aubrey ‘bezzy’ Hesselgren (our Technical Designer in charge of character motion, and a real life parkour practitioner) sunk his teeth into the issue, it became an even greater challenge. In the end, what he and our team put together with his “Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain” system (or SMART for short) is something we’re really excited about.

Of course, I was a bit concerned when I saw Aubrey skulking around the office basement, brandishing a real AK47 (modified to be un-shootable, of course) with a video camera taped to his head “for research purposes.” But then when I saw the footage he taped at home during weekends (again, all first person with the aforementioned camera and duct tape) wherein he had his Dad repeatedly knocking him over after scrambling up 15 foot walls and doing summersaults off of trampolines, I knew he was the right man for the job. His passion and enthusiasm for kinesthetics (the “feel” of a game) has all worked out for the best, and after having spent so much time with Brink, I now find it weird playing our past shooters where my progress is constantly blocked by obstacles that I should be able to jump, vault, or climb over.

Whether using an analog controller or mouse and keyboard, Brink uses those traditional shooter controls that you’re familiar with – walk, run, jump, lean, crouch, shoot, etc. – but without several frustrating artificial constraints. As a slightly chubby 200 lb guy, I’m pretty confident I could get over a five-feet-high wall, or vault-slide over our board room table, and yet in our past shooters I’d be stumped! SMART solves that – when you indicate to the game you want to get somewhere fast by using the sprint button, it will help you mantle, vault, slide, climb, wall-jump and step-up in a really intuitive way, taking in to account at all times the direction you’re looking in. This is not an autopilot, you’re in complete control at all times and there are no canned animations that you can’t interrupt. If you point up, you’ll mantle, or look down and you’ll slide, and if you want complete manual control, you’ve got it.

Persistence

One of the great things about partnering with Bethesda has been getting to work with the people who’ve made some of our favorite games of the last decade, including Oblivion and Fallout 3. Both of these games served as great inspiration for the persistent character advancement system in Brink.

First person shooters don’t traditionally allow players to have very much control over how their player looks while also advancing what he can do. In the rare case that they do, your character in single-player is distinct from those rewards you might earn online. We want to give players the freedom to advance their same in-game character, irrespective of whether playing offline or online. This is incredibly important to us because we want players to enjoy Brink for hundreds of hours. After the Resistance and Security story campaigns are over, you’ll find yourself enjoying new experiences, still earning XP and being rewarded with the next great ability, special item or cool piece of gear.

A whole new world

If someone were to ask me, “Why make a game set on a city, floating all by itself hundreds of miles out to sea, cut off from the rest of the world, whose look is inspired both by the soaring architecture of Dubai and the favela slums of Rio de Janeiro?“ I’d answer, “because it will be completely unlike anything players have ever seen before!” and I’d add, “And it will be cool!” But even with a compelling story, the city still needs great art, and I’m no Art Director! :)

So we hired Olivier ‘nosebone’ Leonardi, the Art Director behind Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones and Rainbow Six Vegas, and he’s taken that idea and really ran with it. As a result, I think we’ve got a game that looks like nothing else (I hope that’s a good thing!). And our character designs, developed by our Concept Artist Laurel ’Tully’ Austin, our Lead Character Artist Tim ‘spacemonkey’ Appleby (the man behind the lead character of Mass Effect) and his team, stand out too!

Olivier and I didn’t all see eye-to-eye at first, and heading to E3, ready to show the world the look of our game for the first time, I was still a little nervous. Would players like our stylistic direction? Was it okay to be different? Did everyone just want realistic art? I’m happy to say, my fears were completely unfounded as Brink’s unique look appears to be a success and one of our strongest features, and of course, Olivier was right all along! In the coming months, you can look forward to Olivier talking more about the inspiration for his designs.

What’s Next?

If you watch this space in the near future, I’ll be asking other members of the team to bring you new and exclusive info about the game. We have a great team working day in and day out to create what we hope everyone will find to be a unique and really fun experience.

But for now, I’ll just say that when I think about how successful E3 was, and how excited everyone was to get their first look at Brink, it was all I could do to bite my tongue at the show and not spill the beans about every cool and special feature we’ve got planned. The same is true for this diary — and I hope I’ve wetted your appetite for more details on the game.

Do let us know what you want to hear about in the next entry. We know that no matter how much love and sweat we pour into this game, it won’t be a success unless we keep you in mind while we’re burning the midnight oil.

Well that’s the end of my first diary entry for Brink. I’ve just landed in Dallas for id Software’s QuakeCon 2009 – the ninth year I’ve attended! And I can’t wait to give the first ever public demo to all the attendees!

Fact Sheet

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks®
Developer: Splash Damage
Release Date: Spring 2010
Platform: Games for Windows®/ Xbox 360™ / PLAYSTATION®3 system
Genre: First Person Shooter

Description

Brink™ is an immersive shooter that blends single-player, co-op, and multiplayer gameplay into one seamless experience, allowing you to develop your character across all modes of play. You decide the role you want to assume in the world of Brink as you fight to save yourself and mankind’s last refuge for humanity. Brink offers a compelling mix of dynamic battlefields, extensive customization options, and an innovative control system that will keep you coming back for more.

Story

A man-made floating city called the Ark, made up of hundreds of separate floating islands, is on the brink of all-out civil war. Originally built as an experimental self-sufficient and 100% “green” habitat, the reported rapid rise of the Earth’s oceans has forced the Ark to become a refuge for humanity. Crammed with the original Ark founders, their descendants, as well as tens of thousands of refugees, the Ark exists in total isolation from the rest of the world. With 25 years of social unrest, the inhabitants of the Ark have reached their breaking point. It’s up to you to decide the future of the Ark and the human race.

Key Features

• Blurring the Lines Between Offline and Online – Advance your character’s development across every gameplay mode: single player, co-op, and multiplayer. Gain experience points that you can spend on customizing and upgrading your skills and abilities, designing an entirely unique look and feel for your character.
• Groundbreaking Kinesthetics – Brink uses the familiar shooter controls that you’re used to, without frustrating, artificial constraints and takes advantage of a new feature: the SMART button. When you press the SMART button, the game dynamically evaluates where you’re trying to get to, and makes it happen. No need to perfectly time a jump or vault, the game knows what you want to do.
• Context-Sensitive Goals and Rewards – Objectives, communications, mission generation, and inventory selection are all dynamically generated based on your role, your status, your location, your squad-mates, and the status of the battle in all gameplay modes. You’ll always know exactly where to go, what to do when you get there, and what your reward will be for success.
• Virtual Texturing – Brink’s proprietary technology, Virtual Texturing, breaks new ground on current-gen consoles and PCs with an even greater focus on highly detailed characters, realistic environments, lighting, effects, and atmospherics,. This competitive lead on the squad-combat genre helps thrust players into the gritty reality of the Ark’s epic secluded arcology.

Videos

Screenshots