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But of course. Observe:

Run (hold forward on stick) and jump (double-tap the A button) then slash (slash with the WiiMote) from the air.

Bonus note: if you do this when they are knocked down, you can execute a finish move from the air!

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Well, of course we looked at everything in the known universe for inspiration (Metroid Prime, Zone of the Enders, etc, etc), but hell yeah, Zelda is a great example of how to make locking in melee work, and I’m very much of the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” school of thought when it comes to interface. I prefer to take a hard look at what has already worked in the past, start there, and then evolve. Which is pretty much what we did.

Just so that you know, we have two selectable lock systems in the game – the default “auto-lock” system (that will do most of the work for you), and a “manual” system (that gives you full control over when and on whom you lock).

With auto-lock, the idea was that you can just jump into the fray and start swinging, without having to think too much about where you were looking. This is my favorite mode, FYI – my fighting style is berserker (for sure), and I love it when the game does its best to put targets in front of me.

Roman (my lead designer) feels differently – he’s much more a “style” player, and prefers to have exact control over his enemy selection. He’s always cautiously strafing around, getting behind people, dodging, looking for chances to take out more than one at a time… thus, he prefers the manual lock.

We’re continuing to make refinements to both systems even now. We will not rest until it’s frackin’ perfect!

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That would be a “yes”. The 360° attack will hit anyone standing next to you… in fact, your normal slashes will hit multiple enemies if they are close enough together (three with one hit is quite fun). The shockwave ability explodes when it hits, and will knock back multiple enemies… there are a few other powers we haven’t shown you yet that target multiple enemies as well…

Yeah. Most of them, I think. If not “most”, then “many”.

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Well, actually, our hero just always runs by default.

We spent a lot of time looking at the movement speed of the character, and decided that with this game, the number of times that the player wants to actually walk are few-and-far-between enough that it was much better to just set the movement speed nice and high (a-la Metroid).

I think that when you get your hands on the stick, you’ll find that you’re moving plenty fast. J

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Yes, yes, and no.

Running and strafing are part of our primary movement set. (See above for running.) Left and right will always strafe – circle-strafe when you are locked on, and normal strafe when you are in “aiming” mode.

Crouching didn’t make the cut this time – it being more a hiding / taking cover kind of move, we didn’t feel it was an essential part of the player’s move set in this game. Red Steel 2 is more of a first person brawler (FPB?), and it turns out you need moves like dashing forward and backward to evade attacks, jumping, and dodging more than you need cover or hiding.

That said, there’s some neat stuff possible with a crouch move in melee, I think. Maybe next time.

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Wouldn’t that be cool..?

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Hell yes. You’ll need to be careful, though, if one of them is coming in with a directional attack – if one of them breaks your guard open, the second guy can land his hit! So make sure to hold the WiiMote in the correct orientation if you see a big red glow!!

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We believe that the ability to block bullets with your sword is the sacred, God-given, inherent right of every katana-wielding cowboy samurai badass.

To that end, you simply hold the (A) button to block – swords or bullets, same/same.

Now, this won’t grant you 100% protection against (say) a machine gun or burst-fire – but it does help, for sure.

Further, there’s a feature in our counter system that lets you send bullets back at the shooter – if you manage an “active” block (we’ll probably talk about this later) with the right timing, you can kill ‘em with their own bullets.

Which, you know, saves ammo and stuff. Oh, and it kills them, too.

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Well, the final number is still a guess – we intend to keep adding moves as long as we can, and our polish window recently got a little bit longer. Lots! Lots and lots! I dunno – ask me again in a few months.

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Yes, you buy them.

Throughout the game there are these “safehouses” – places where your allies have set up shop to set about the business of taking their home back from the villains who have turned it into a warzone. There are four types, each one related to a specific character and a specific kind of player ability.

One of these safehouses is controlled by your old teacher. However, he’s not 100% sure that you can be counted on – and you and he didn’t exactly get along before you left the last time, so he’s a tad reluctant to just hand over his entire stash of ancient Kusagari wisdom. That said, for a fee (using the gold you ‘recover’ from your enemies ), he’ll teach you new moves and unlock new abilities.

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The answer is yes, of course.
…
What? You want to know how it works or something? Should have asked that instead!

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We call it the 360° attack.

To execute it, you tap the Z button and then immediately slash in the direction you want to turn. You can see the attack being used in the latest walkthrough video! My personal record is five hits in one spin. I tell this to everyone I meet. Which is sort of sad, I suppose, but it was an awesome moment.

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Well… as the core gameplay has changed pretty dramatically from a shooting-focus to a sword-focus, this has of course had a big effect on the control scheme. So, no, not even close.

Our controls are built around movement and melee combat. For navigation, you use the left stick for motion and point the Wii MotionPlus at the screen for turning, and during combat, you slash with your katana by swinging the Wii MotionPlus (not waggling! Swing! ), pressing the B button (the trigger) to shoot, and pressing A to block. Really, that’s the core – there are more controls available, but that’s the stuff you’ll need to master to play.

A key detail: there is no “weapon switching” between the sword and the gun. At any time, you can swing the Wii Remote, or press B to shoot, and the result is instantaneous. In Red Steel 2, you fight with your sword and your gun at the same time.

We’ve also spent a huge amount of time working on refining our pointing, turning, strafing, and aiming mechanics – those were a common complaint from the first game. We feel that there isn’t any room for compromise this time – the FPS controls for Red Steel 2 have to be great, period, and we think we’ve done that. You’ll have to tell us if you agree when you play it.

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I’m not 100% sure what this question means… but I think I get the general idea. I’m going to assume for my answer that you are asking whether or not there are features of the Wii Motion Plus that we aren’t using, and how much effort we have made to take advantage of the new hardware… if that isn’t it, go ahead and re-send a more specific question and we’ll answer that one in the next Q&A.

Under the hood, the Wii MotionPlus is basically a gyroscope. It tells us (to a pretty remarkable amount of accuracy) precisely what angle the Wii Remote is pointing in space at all times. We’ve constructed our entire gameplay combat input system around having this information. The basic “first-person slash” mechanic doesn’t function without the Wii MotionPlus. The Wii MotionPlus is so core to our experience that we made the (controversial!) decision to require it for play.

So, I’m comfortable saying that from a design and gameplay standpoint, we’ve absolutely fully exploited the Wii Motion Plus. Hell yes, in fact.

So, then what about development effort?

We knew from the moment we got our hands on the hardware that this would be a key feature for us. So, from the start we’ve had a core group of programmers, designers, animators (and, at need, anyone that team needs), dedicated purely to adding, iterating, and polishing Wii MotionPlus input and replication features. This group of super-wizards is adding and refining MotionPlus attack, defense, and basic interaction features pretty much every day of their working lives, and have been for well over a year now. So, again, hell yes.

Let’s say it this way: there are likely very few teams on the planet who have had a greater opportunity than the Red Steel team to learn, use, and exploit the features of the Wii MotionPlus hardware. In many ways, it’s what we do.

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Let’s see.

Well, to start with, we had to redesign the entire gameplay system. Since there were very few examples of this kind of first-person fighting out there (and nothing that used motion controls… except for Red Steel 1), we had to invent it, pretty much from scratch.

When we realized that we had something cool, we realized we needed to redesign the gameplay setting, all the enemies, the hero himself, the story, and make the (again) controversial decision to not use the same characters and setting as the first game.

Integrating the Wii Motion Plus meant that we had to redesign the entire game, basically.  But, I don’t think that’s quite what you mean: maybe you are asking about more technical integration issues?

It turns out that, really, the hardest part about using the Wii Motion Plus is deciding what to do
with all the data. Getting the data is straightforward (in programming terms, anyway), but then what?

The short version is that we do an extensive amount of analysis and filtering of that data to try and predict what you (the player) are trying to do with your sword (the Wii Remote). Everyone moves the weapon a little bit differently, and we have to have a system that works for everyone. That’s complicated. As an example , when you « swing » your weapon, do you « whip » it ? Meaning, do you pull it backwards in the opposite direction briefly before you swing ? Like, a little wind-up ? Turns out that about half of players do… and half don’t . So, we have to handle that sort of thing in the code… and that’s not simple.

But, making games isn’t simple. That’s why we love it.

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The short answer: we have awesome programmers.

The long answer: a lot of fuss has been made of the recalibration requirements for the Wii Motion Plus – it turns out that the issues sound much worse than they turn out to be. The libraries that Nintendo provides us do a pretty damn good job of keeping the data stable, and with a few (very clever) programmer tricks on our end, we have eliminated most of the problems that can arise around desynchronization.

Just so we’re all clear on exactly what we’re talking about, the problems generally center around the fact that “wild” motions with the Wii MotionPlus gyroscope add a little bit of error to the data… which accumulates over time. “Recalibration” in this case means getting the Wii MotionPlus to “correct” this error by telling it what direction it is currently pointing, instead of asking it. The easiest way to do this is to wait until the player points at the screen, and then use the sensor bar as an “anchor”… but this isn’t the only way to correct the accumulated “error”. And, fortunately for us, we have super-nerds on our team who’s favorite hobby is finding clever ways to correct for error.

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See next answer

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Yep. Our controls are fully customizable. We’ve got a complete controller customization system that gives you total control over your sensitivity settings. The game will come with three levels of presets, but if you want to tweak all the settings, you can.

Currently, you can tweak the following:
o Pointer sensitivity
o Pointer acceleration
o Inner bounding box (dead zone)
o Outer bounding box
o Rotation acceleration curves
o Rotation speed
o WM+ off screen rotation on / off
o WM+ off screen rotation speed
o WM+ sensitivity

We may add more as we focus test and polish.

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Maybe…

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We’ve been looking very closely at this issue, and focus-testing around it. The core issue for us centers around the visual representation of the weapon matching the player’s hand position – the inputs are actually identical regardless of which hand you use. That said, it is very strange for some players to hold the Wii Remote in their left hand and see the sword being held on-screen in their right…

So, we’re currently looking at the best ways of tackling the problem from a technical standpoint. Stay tuned on this.

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Yes, of course. This is core to the experience – we measure the angle of your slice, and represent that exactly on-screen. The angle of your impact determines the enemies’ hit reaction and direction of movement – they will move in the direction you hit them. We’ve invested a lot of time and energy (and memory and CPU) into making this work well – since it’s sort of the whole point.

Also, your enemies will take defensive stances (in the same way the player can) that guard against horizontal or vertical attacks. To penetrate such a defense, you’ll need to attack in the appropriate direction.

As a side note, it’s surprising how effective a simple mechanic like this can be in practice. We’ve experimented with giving the player a higher bar to meet for their attacks (such as high or low attacks, or attacks requiring a more exact angle), and we’ve found that at the end, while this is more “accurate”, it’s much less fun. At least, as we’ve defined ‘fun’ for this game.

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Oh yes. Yes indeed. Look for more info on this kind of attack soon.

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You turn by simply pointing the Wii Remote towards the edge of the screen, like in most Wii first-person games.

I think I understand your confusion, though: it may not be clear how I can attack with the Wii Remote by swinging it if I also have to use it to turn! The trick is that when I am in combat, I am locked onto my enemy. When I’m locked, I can use my sword to attack, and the left stick gives me all the movement I need. When I’m not locked, I can then use my Wii Remote to navigate normally.

This might sound tricky, but in practice we’ve found that it feels pretty natural to players.

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Yeah, this is a tricky issue. Wouldn’t it be cool if the Wii Remote had force-feedback so that we could stop you in mid-air? Sigh. I suppose we’ll have to wait until anti-gravity is invented or something before we get that experience. When it happens, believe me: the Red Steel team will be there.

So, the answer to your question is this: we build those kinds of “rebound” interactions with strong on-screen feedback for the player, so that even though the physical sensation of being stopped isn’t there, the gameplay sensation is (FX, audio, animation, actions, etc). Gamers have been getting by on that kind of feedback for a long time now – turns out it still works.

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Yes! The lock system (discussed briefly above) resolves this issue nicely. If you are locked to an enemy, you will automatically face him, so you don’t have to worry about keeping the camera pointed at him… and the need to turn is eliminated. You are then free to use the Wii Remote to slash without confusing the system. (Players will also have the choice between using our auto lock system and using a more precise manual lock system, but more on that later!)

As a side note, when the player is not locked to an enemy or an object, we have found that (through clever programmer intervention) we can also, with a great deal of precision, detect the difference between the player slashing and trying to turn. So far, in playtest we are finding that players generally don’t unintentionally move the camera while navigating.

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Well, it was certainly a tough call. The fans and the team had a lot of affection for the setting and characters of the first Red Steel, and it was certainly tempting to pick up where the first game left off.

However, as we developed our gameplay and art style for Red Steel 2, it became clear that what we were doing would work much better in a new setting: a setting that was built around this new type of combat we had built, and a setting that better fit what we wanted to do with the game visually.

So, we took a good hard look at what was really cool about the first Red Steel (guided by a mix of our own gaming tastes and our quite passionate feedback from the fanbase). From this, it became clear that the strong Asian-style setting and the mix of modern action gun combat plus katana-based sword fighting is something that resonates with a lot of people, us included, but that there was room to take the franchise in a new direction while still keeping that “Red Steel” core.

So, we started there. Then, we began to build what would become an entirely new world, story, characters, and visual style around those core concepts. What you see is the result.

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The answer to the first question (above) deals with some of the reasons for this, but let me add a little bit more detail here.

We want this game to be great. Towards that end, we spent a lot of time, effort, blood, sweat, and tears, really digging down into what worked and what didn’t in the first game. This is often a difficult process for game developers: examining your own work is challenging, but it’s really necessary to make the best possible title.

So, we felt that, at its heart, “Red Steel” was all about two main ideas: physically-immersive first-person combat with a sword and a gun, and a modern “East crashes into West” style of setting. We figured that if the new setting and characters were cool enough, while still retaining the core ideas, players would embrace them.

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Red Steel 2 is Wii exclusive, and Wii MotionPlus exclusive. The core gameplay of intense, 1st-person swordplay simply doesn’t function the way we want it to without the Wii Remote.

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We intend to make the Red Steel franchise bigger than Pokémon.

Just kidding.

…

But not really.

Honestly, I would love nothing more than if everyone with a Wii bought and played our game, and then went out and convinced all their friends who didn’t have Wiis yet to buy one and do the same thing.

The team and the company, of course, are determined to give players something great. At the end of the day, though, the fact is that how big the Red Steel franchise becomes really depends on how much you guys like the game when you finally get your hands on it. We’re going to do everything we can to make that be “a lot”.

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Red Steel 2 uses an in-house engine called Lyn. It suits our gameplay and our development style very well, and lets us take advantage of the efforts made (and being made) by other teams inside Ubisoft that are using the same tech. Quantum3 does look like a pretty cool engine, though.

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This is less a question of what is more important to the team than it is a question of what is important to the game. A first-person game with quick, exciting melee-attacks and precise shooting gameplay simply must run at 60fps, and that’s what we have. Thus, every decision we make is colored by the requirement to keep the gameplay smooth and responsive.

But, of course, we all also want the game to look spectacular. Paradoxically, by having agreement about the 60fps principle from the beginning has liberated the art team: it has allowed them to focus 100% of their effort on getting the absolute most they can out of that 1/60th of a second, instead of looking for other compromises. As a result, Stephane Bachelet and his team have developed a look that is exciting, suits our gameplay, runs very well on the Wii.

So, to the team, both are important. But we all know that for a first-person action title, gameplay comes first.

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Our look is what we think of as a “game look” – it looks like a game. We’re not trying to make a movie game, or a simulation, or anything like that. We want every piece of what we give the player to be focused on having fun fighting with a sword and a gun. Of course, the limited resources on the Wii were a factor for us, but our main focus was finding a look that fit our game feel and setting, that really excites us (and then, hopefully, our players).

Additionally, we wanted our look to give our designers the best tools to make the game really fun – and for melee combat that means strong feedback, big effects... we didn’t want the look and the gameplay to fight with each other. We wanted a look that made the game design better, and a design that made the look better.

We think we’ve found what we were looking for with what we’re currently calling a “graphic novel” approach. Our references are very diverse (Frank Miller, Bill Sienkiewicz for Elektra Assassin, Akira, Gunm...). We’ve pulled out some of the details from the world, but left it a grungy, dirty place: a look with strong contrasts but with a good dose of reality underneath. We don’t want to over-spend on details that don’t make the game better, but we still want the world to seem real.

It’s a difficult balance to strike, and we will no doubt be working on it until the day we ship, but we’re pretty excited about it.

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We started with our gameplay: the sword and the gun. Everything comes from that, really. We asked ourselves, with these weapons, where do we want to be?

The katana itself made the first part of our answer simple: Asia will always be one pillar of any Red Steel experience. So, we asked ourselves: if the “natural home” of our sword is the Far East, what is the “natural home” of our gun?

We could have gotten into a chicken-and-egg problem here - because, of course, we can choose what gun the player uses. But, for us, the classic .45 caliber revolver is such a great weapon that this part was easy, too. What’s the “natural home” of the revolver? The Far West – specifically places like what you find in the films of Sergio Leone (A Fistful of Dollars, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, etc…). So, our setting: Far East meets Far West, in a modern time. The more we worked with these ideas, the cooler we felt it was… and here we are.

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One of the advantages of using the Lyn engine is that there is support in there for a certain amount of data streaming. We are using this to our advantage to create much larger spaces than the Wii could normally support. We still load from time to time for specific transitions (and these load times are quite manageable), but we intend for the majority of the experience to be largely load-free.

Of course, this means a certain amount of ‘portaling’ of the environment, but we think that’s a pretty fair trade.

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We get asked this a lot. In fact, we asked ourselves this question at least a thousand times before we made the final call. I’m going to hit a few major semi-philosophical points (very briefly, I swear) to give you some background, and then give you the direct skinny.

First of all, let’s be clear: blood, decapitation, dismemberment, etc, is clearly a big part of the swordfighting fantasy. Plenty of games have done it, many quite well. However, it’s not the entire fantasy. It’s not even really most of it. Swordfighting for me is all about power, skill, and movement – not necessarily gore.

Second: a lot of people out there have very strong opinions about this topic. We knew that blood (or the lack thereof) would be a make-or-break issue for many players – the debates around violence in games (pro- and con-) can get pretty extreme. Even so, our team isn’t focused on those kinds of issues, really. Instead, we’re trying to make something entertaining, something truly fun to play, a game where you play a real hero, a badass with a sword and a gun.
Third: it’s a lot harder for me to believe that the guy that I’m playing is a true hero when he slices his enemies up for fun before killing them.

So, now the actual answer: building our game with realistic violence in it would, for many players, interfere with just having a good time with a sword and gun. And, that’s sort of the whole point of all the work we’ve been doing. Blood and gore just isn’t what this game is about, and we want to be true to the game we are making. That won’t necessarily make everyone happy, but we believe that at the end of the day, if you like the idea of swordfighting, we’ll have a game that is worth your time.

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Well, let’s first say that the enemy death effects that you’ve seen so far aren’t final, and so what you see in the final version may very well change some. We’re big fans of polish and details, and that sort of thing will certainly get a second, third, and fourth look before we press the discs.

That said, it’s certainly safe to say that the core gameplay experience in Red Steel 2 has taken some of its influence from arcade-style aesthetics. We’re striving to create a fun, fast-paced, legibile, and exciting game: that’s something we have in common with many traditional more ‘arcadey’ games, so it’s only natural that you would see similarities there.

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During that intro, the player can use the cursor to look around. Of course, you’re being dragged along behind a motorcycle through the desert, so you can’t actually turn around, but you can shift your focus towards things you are interested in (as they hurtle by).

As I’m sure you have realized, the whole point of this sequence is of course to just toss the player right into the fire. We believe that without some kind of interaction, this sequence would be just watching a movie… and this is a game, see. So, we put in the extra 10 million man-hours required to make it interactive.

Here’s a secret, though: part of the hidden design goal of that sequence is also to give the player something cool to see while they are (unconsciously, perhaps) experimenting with their interface and beginning to gain comfort with pointing and turning, so that by the time they are standing in front of the fire, they already have some basic familiarity with the way our controls work.

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We love making these – as long as they are amazingly cool, we’ll put as many of them in the game as we can manage to build. Try and stop us!

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Well, in that specific case, I was using the word “achievement” in its literal sense of “having done something incredibly challenging”. I was trying to convey the idea that I want give players who can beat this game on the hardest setting a sense of real accomplishment, both in the sense of gaming and in the sense of physical motion and dexterity. Being able to swing a sword around with skill and accuracy is something a lot of people think is pretty cool, and I want our best players to have something to be proud of.

As far as an actual system of achievement goes, we like the concept of rewarding the player for pushing themselves to attain difficult goals, so you never know what you might see. Stay tuned for more info on that.

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Originally posted by disBjeFFixD:
Red Steel 2 looks great and i am planning on getting the game, but i still have a few questions to ask.
Is Red Steel 2 going to allow you to set up a plan to take out multiple enemies like in red steel 1?

About how many guns/swords/upgrades are there going to be in the game?

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Originally posted by asli1991:
hi, i'm playing red steel.I'm in front of a geisha house but I can't get in. I open the windows and I try to jump in but I can't. what am I going to do?
thank you

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Originally posted by Ubi_Wuzzi:
So, now the actual answer: building our game with realistic violence in it would, for many players, interfere with just having a good time with a sword and gun. And, that’s sort of the whole point of all the work we’ve been doing. Blood and gore just isn’t what this game is about, and we want to be true to the game we are making. That won’t necessarily make everyone happy, but we believe that at the end of the day, if you like the idea of swordfighting, we’ll have a game that is worth your time.

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Originally posted by massk2:

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Originally posted by Ubi_Wuzzi:
So, now the actual answer: building our game with realistic violence in it would, for many players, interfere with just having a good time with a sword and gun. And, that’s sort of the whole point of all the work we’ve been doing. Blood and gore just isn’t what this game is about, and we want to be true to the game we are making. That won’t necessarily make everyone happy, but we believe that at the end of the day, if you like the idea of swordfighting, we’ll have a game that is worth your time.

Sorry to say that, I think this is BS! Where the heck did the developer found this theory? I think the developer is just trying to sell it as Grand Slam Tennis and Tiger Woods for Teen rating. This is because Red Steel 2 a MotionPlus-only game, they assumed this will make it through the mass audience for some "Finacial Consideration". This is the true story behind that PR statement.

Do they know they were two pure artistic violence games that called No More Heroes and MadWorld which included blood, decapitation, dismemberment, etc on Wii? I've bet they had forgotten it!

I wonder which would sell more at the end, maybe they should do some survey or poll for the public. Or maybe they could even do something more innovative and had never done it before because of the 1st third party Motionplus-only game, releasing two version on the market, "Family Oriented" and "Core game" version.

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Even if you're right, and they have only excluded blood and gore for more mass-market appeal, what's the harm in that? Taking out those things doesn't seriously make the game any worse, any less enjoyable. If you're someone who absolutely needs to have blood, then you probably have some mental issues. Besides, No More Heroes and MadWorld more or less failed sales-wise, so why would you purposely make a game that follows their route? Maybe Ubisoft just doesn't like money?

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Originally posted by SMBX2J:

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Originally posted by massk2:

quote:

Originally posted by Ubi_Wuzzi:
So, now the actual answer: building our game with realistic violence in it would, for many players, interfere with just having a good time with a sword and gun. And, that’s sort of the whole point of all the work we’ve been doing. Blood and gore just isn’t what this game is about, and we want to be true to the game we are making. That won’t necessarily make everyone happy, but we believe that at the end of the day, if you like the idea of swordfighting, we’ll have a game that is worth your time.

Sorry to say that, I think this is BS! Where the heck did the developer found this theory? I think the developer is just trying to sell it as Grand Slam Tennis and Tiger Woods for Teen rating. This is because Red Steel 2 a MotionPlus-only game, they assumed this will make it through the mass audience for some "Finacial Consideration". This is the true story behind that PR statement.

Do they know they were two pure artistic violence games that called No More Heroes and MadWorld which included blood, decapitation, dismemberment, etc on Wii? I've bet they had forgotten it!

I wonder which would sell more at the end, maybe they should do some survey or poll for the public. Or maybe they could even do something more innovative and had never done it before because of the 1st third party Motionplus-only game, releasing two version on the market, "Family Oriented" and "Core game" version.

And let's take a look at No More Heroes and MadWorld. When you start talking about the game or read a review, what's one of the first things you'll hear? It's ultra-violent! It's exactly what he was talking about, that when games are very violent, they become about the violence. That might not completely be the case for No More Heroes, but it definitely is for MadWorld.

Even if you're right, and they have only excluded blood and gore for more mass-market appeal, what's the harm in that? Taking out those things doesn't seriously make the game any worse, any less enjoyable. If you're someone who absolutely needs to have blood, then you probably have some mental issues. Besides, No More Heroes and MadWorld more or less failed sales-wise, so why would you purposely make a game that follows their route? Maybe Ubisoft just doesn't like money?

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Originally posted by Iron_Warrior:
Not sure if we're supposed to post responses in here, but other people seem to be doing it, and if everyone jumped off a bridge...

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Even if you're right, and they have only excluded blood and gore for more mass-market appeal, what's the harm in that? Taking out those things doesn't seriously make the game any worse, any less enjoyable. If you're someone who absolutely needs to have blood, then you probably have some mental issues. Besides, No More Heroes and MadWorld more or less failed sales-wise, so why would you purposely make a game that follows their route? Maybe Ubisoft just doesn't like money?

I couldn't agree more. There's lots of games that greatly benefit from blood-like Resident Evil 4, but Red Steel 2 doesn't look like it really needs it...

The problem is there's no reaction to the finishers...there's no satisfying sound or effect. It doesn't have to be blood, just some sort of exciting-looking thing. Smash Bros has no blood in it, but when you hit something you get a terrifically satisfying sound and smacking effect.

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<font color="#ECB827">How come there is no blood in the game? [from Bigburito and halimaw96] </font>

From Jason Vandenberghe, Creative Director

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We get asked this a lot. In fact, we asked ourselves this question at least a thousand times before we made the final call. I’m going to hit a few major semi-philosophical points (very briefly, I swear) to give you some background, and then give you the direct skinny.

First of all, let’s be clear: blood, decapitation, dismemberment, etc, is clearly a big part of the swordfighting fantasy. Plenty of games have done it, many quite well. However, it’s not the entire fantasy. It’s not even really most of it. Swordfighting for me is all about power, skill, and movement – not necessarily gore.

Second: a lot of people out there have very strong opinions about this topic. We knew that blood (or the lack thereof) would be a make-or-break issue for many players – the debates around violence in games (pro- and con-) can get pretty extreme. Even so, our team isn’t focused on those kinds of issues, really. Instead, we’re trying to make something entertaining, something truly fun to play, a game where you play a real hero, a badass with a sword and a gun.
Third: it’s a lot harder for me to believe that the guy that I’m playing is a true hero when he slices his enemies up for fun before killing them.

So, now the actual answer: building our game with realistic violence in it would, for many players, interfere with just having a good time with a sword and gun. And, that’s sort of the whole point of all the work we’ve been doing. Blood and gore just isn’t what this game is about, and we want to be true to the game we are making. That won’t necessarily make everyone happy, but we believe that at the end of the day, if you like the idea of swordfighting, we’ll have a game that is worth your time.

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Originally posted by disBjeFFixD:

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Originally posted by Coolgerb:

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<font color="#ECB827">How come there is no blood in the game? [from Bigburito and halimaw96] </font>

From Jason Vandenberghe, Creative Director

quote:

We get asked this a lot. In fact, we asked ourselves this question at least a thousand times before we made the final call. I’m going to hit a few major semi-philosophical points (very briefly, I swear) to give you some background, and then give you the direct skinny.

First of all, let’s be clear: blood, decapitation, dismemberment, etc, is clearly a big part of the swordfighting fantasy. Plenty of games have done it, many quite well. However, it’s not the entire fantasy. It’s not even really most of it. Swordfighting for me is all about power, skill, and movement – not necessarily gore.

Second: a lot of people out there have very strong opinions about this topic. We knew that blood (or the lack thereof) would be a make-or-break issue for many players – the debates around violence in games (pro- and con-) can get pretty extreme. Even so, our team isn’t focused on those kinds of issues, really. Instead, we’re trying to make something entertaining, something truly fun to play, a game where you play a real hero, a badass with a sword and a gun.
Third: it’s a lot harder for me to believe that the guy that I’m playing is a true hero when he slices his enemies up for fun before killing them.

So, now the actual answer: building our game with realistic violence in it would, for many players, interfere with just having a good time with a sword and gun. And, that’s sort of the whole point of all the work we’ve been doing. Blood and gore just isn’t what this game is about, and we want to be true to the game we are making. That won’t necessarily make everyone happy, but we believe that at the end of the day, if you like the idea of swordfighting, we’ll have a game that is worth your time.

So, what you're basically trying to hide, in lots of words; the Wii can't handle the blood.

Because honestly, who in his right mind thinks that adding blood distracts from the experience? Hell, the game is even called RED Steel.
And indeed it is not the 'entire' fantasy, but it IS part of it. You're saying here that you're aware of not giving the full 'fantasy'.

Oh and... You give your 'true hero' a sword (and a gun), and your only argument is that if you see blood, it means he slices his enemies up for fun? What? Sword = Cuts = Blood.

No More Heroes is a perfect example. The developers were so stupid as to censor the game in Europe and Japan. So most of the people imported it from North America, where it wasn't censored.


You shouldn't lie about things like this. You should just admit you're unable to create blood or something, and not create some kind of story that you actually don't want blood in a violent game which revolves around swords.

Here's a prediction for you, and if I'm right, you can hire me as your new designer:

The game won't sell great, and a lot of reviews will state that the game feels incomplete. Not just because of the blood, but if you make decisions like this for blood, I am sure you have made several other strange decisions for other subjects too. I have seen this way too often in games.

How come I - who is not a games developer - DO learn from other developers' mistakes, but you, part of Ubisoft, a renowned games developer, don't?

Now, I'm not talking about the entire Ubisoft company, for example the Assassin's Creed 2 team is doing a fine job so far, having improved every point of criticism of their last game.

WOAH WOAH WOAH... that's a little too much there dude. First off, I am pretty sure The whole Red Steel 2 Dev Team makes the decisions, not just the creative director so don't blame him completely.
Secondly, The Wii can definitely handle blood, but it would never look as realistic or cool as the PS3 or Xbox 360, so why waste time on putting blood in this game when the theme is based around sword and gun gameplay.
Third of all, adding blood to a gam doesn't make always make it better, but it does take up a lot of time from the team especially since they are probably almost done with the game and just adding some small touches and features.
Fourth, if you don't like this game, don't post ridiculous remarks criticizing The Red Steel Dev Team.

Oh and although adding blood does take away some experience from the game, I and many other people probably agree that there should be a little bit of blood maybe when you shoot someone or get shot, but no gore in this game.