E3 2012: Sleeping Dogs interview talks Aggressive Cover, standing out and Batman praiseAfter a period of development limbo in a previous incarnation, Sleeping Dogs from Square Enix and United Front Games is officially due out on August 14th (in North America) and August 17th (in European territories) across Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.
Starring undercover cop Wei Shen in the open-world island setting of present-day Hong Kong, Sleeping Dogs aims to provide a unique action experience allowing you to run, shoot, drive and speed your way through an exotic location while immersed in the dangerous criminal underworld of the powerful Triad organisation.
E3 2012: Sleeping Dogs' Mike Skupa
Ahead of our hands-on time with Sleeping Dogs during E3 2012 (read El33tonline’s latest preview over here), we had the chance to speak with United Front Games design director, Mike Skupa, to find out more about the game and talk about ‘Aggressive Cover,’ Batman, Spikeout and standing out in the industry:
El33tonline:
Can you tell us a little more about Wei Shen’s backstory and motivation in Sleeping Dogs.
Mike Skupa:
Wei Shen is a cop and he’s been undercover for quite a long time. Due to his relationship with the Triad based on the fact that he grew up with some people who are now members of a particular Triad - that’s what basically gave him his connection to this assignment.
Sleeping Dogs Screenshot 4
El33tonline:
So he has friends and family in the Triad?
Mike Skupa:
Friends in the Triad - he grew up in the neighbourhood where the game takes place.
El33tonline:
So it’s basically his mission to clean up Hong Kong?
Mike Skupa:
That’s part of it, yeah. We know that, in a lot of these cases or situations, you’re not going to stop crime entirely, but it was important that we really looked at the way these organisations were structured and tried to make the scenario or setting quite feasible.
Sleeping Dogs Screenshot 6
El33tonline:
Following on from that, why Hong Kong? I know it’s an exotic location but there are other exotic locations around the world. What drew you to Hong Kong?
Mike Skupa:
I think Hong Kong obviously is grounded in action cinema so there’s a lot of reference for films, but there’s also a lot of stuff to see in the island, a lot of different options to explore, so it just made perfect sense for an open-world setting.
I mean the fact that we’ve based the game on Hong Kong island, which has natural water boundaries, means that we can really set up the area to work around our game flow and our game structure.
El33tonline:
I saw a couple developer diaries that spoke about going to Hong Kong to do research on the area…
Mike Skupa:
Yes, quite a few of us on the team went to Hong Kong to do research.
El33tonline:
Can you name a few movies and other things that may be inspirational for the setting of Sleeping Dogs?
Mike Skupa:
We’ve been influenced by a lot of undercover cop movies - movies like ‘Infernal Affairs’ which influenced ‘The Departed’ - and even North American movies with undercover themes like ‘Donnie Brasco’ or ‘Reservoir Dogs.’
Obviously with the action there’s so much to draw from - a lot of movies by John Woo, stuff with Jackie Chan, Jet Lee. We were also influenced by a lot of the more recent movies from Jonnie To and the ‘Election’ series, which was a big influence on us.
Sleeping Dogs Screenshot 4
El33tonline:
There are lots and lots of third-person shooters out there…
Mike Skupa:
Yeah.
El33tonline:
… and for Sleeping Dogs the main draw for me would be the Hong Kong setting, but what is unique about Sleeping Dogs that you could say is different to other similar games - to say that this is another game you should be playing?
Mike Skupa:
I think there are a lot of things but one thing that really stands out about Sleeping Dogs is the fact that there’s so much environmental interaction. In the combat there are so many different options you can explore with grabbing characters and throwing them into different environmental objects or other characters. You can sprint people across a room into an object.
In addition to that you can utilise a lot of that environmental interaction with the gunplay and I think just taking the wide variety of gameplay we have and mixing it all together is what really makes the game stand out.
Sleeping Dogs Screenshot 9
El33tonline:
In your research for Sleeping Dogs, did you find that the Triad has different groups and gangs within it?
Mike Skupa:
The important thing for us was to not make it so that a horde of different Triad gangs were fighting on the streets so we really focussed on this one Triad organisation [in Sleeping Dogs].
A big part of the game revolves around this political struggle that’s happening within this one organisation and that causes a lot of grief for the people around you, but that’s also one of the reasons that your character gets to advance as far into it as he does.
In addition to that, there are smaller Triad groups that the player interacts with but the big focus is on the major one.
El33tonline:
I’ve read a few comments in the past about Sleeping Dogs being more of a linear game, set in an open world. A linear story, but with lots of open-world activities dotted around the place - is this more or less true?
Mike Skupa:
It’s a very open-ended game and there are lots of different things you can do. Our narrative is fairly linear because we wanted to tell a very specific story, but that narrative can be pushed forward at the player’s desired pace, and there are also a lot of supporting elements that are optional that tap into the story as well.
El33tonline:
Things like customisation options as well…
Mike Skupa:
Yeah, there’s a lot of customisation, a lot of activities - even a lot of dialogue and things you can do in the game that are optional, but they help round out the story and flesh out a lot of the characters that you’ll meet during the core narrative.
Sleeping Dogs Screenshot 2
El33tonline:
In terms of combat, what other games have you looked at - I mean, Batman for me would be the best combat system - are you trying to approach that?
Mike Skupa:
We’ve been developing the combat system [of Sleeping Dogs] for a little over four years now, and we’ve been influenced by a lot of different games ranging from old school 2D beat ‘em ups to 3D games like SpikeOut.
Obviously Batman has really changed the landscape of combat - and especially working with Square Enix of London who helped work on Batman: Arkham City - I think Batman has raised the bar for combat out there, especially in making it so accessible to people that don’t normally play combat-oriented games.
Sleeping Dogs Screenshot 1
El33tonline:
Can you talk a bit about the cover system in Sleeping Dogs?
Mike Skupa:
We like to call it ‘Aggressive Cover’ - while you can go out and take cover and hide behind cover, we really want the player to utilise the environment to vault over objects or take a quick breather before advancing ahead.
Also due to the fact that the player doesn’t have an inventory and we kind of treat guns as power-ups, you’re often encouraged to disarm other enemies so you can actually utilise cover to help you disarm characters, launch off cover to perform special attacks and to just give the player a lot of options.
We also give the player better scoring for being more aggressive and flamboyant, so while there are scenarios where you can turtle up behind cover and that can be advantageous, most of the time you’ll get a better score or better rewards by spending only brief periods of time behind cover.
Sleeping Dogs Screenshot 2
El33tonline:
I noticed a few areas where slow motion is used to add cinematic impact to actions in the game - you shoot a car driving towards you and it explodes in slow mo - are there other ways you’re adding impact to interactions like that?
Mike Skupa:
For all of our slow motion we made it contextual, so in addition to being very cinematic, it’s also useful to help guide the player. So when you’re driving at high speeds, especially when you’re at the wheel of a car, we utilise slow motion selectively to make it easier on the player to take out enemies.
We also use slow motion as a means to let the player know, as feedback, when they’ve taken out a character or a vehicle, that they’ve finished off the last enemy in an encounter. We tried to make it as seamless as possible - tried to make all of those presentation elements fit a consistent gameplay language.
El33tonline:
Here’s a bit of a silly question - because everybody asks it - but in terms of downloadable content (DLC), what kinds of things would you imagine would fit Sleeping Dogs?
Mike Skupa:
I can’t really say much about the DLC because we’re still working out all the details on that, but I sure more information will be available in the near future.
