AquaNox Q&A
Project manager Wolfgang Walk gives us some new details on Massive's upcoming underwater shooter.
While AquaNox has been in development for nearly three years, it certainly doesn't suffer from the dated graphics found in most games with an extended development cycle. That's because German developer Massive Development (not to be confused with Swedish Massive Entertainment, developer of Ground Control) has taken great lengths to ensure that the game's visuals remain on the cutting edge of graphics technology. When the game was first unveiled at CeBIT in 1999, it was optimized to run on the Voodoo3 chipset from the now defunct 3dfx. Since then, the game has been constantly revised to take advantage of the latest and greatest video cards, and Massive is now developing AquaNox to run on Nvidia's GeForce 3 chipsets. We sat down with Wolfgang Walk, project manager at Massive Development, to discuss some of the technical aspects of AquaNox and to learn more about the game's plot, control, and gameplay mechanics.
GameSpot: The fact that the game takes place entirely underwater is perhaps AquaNox's most distinguishing element. Tell us a little bit about the underwater world you encounter in the game.
Wolfgang Walk: This world we call Aqua has developed since the surface of the earth became uninhabitable in the late 21st century. A small part of mankind had the possibility to flee underwater and started to build huge settlements and new states--what we call aquatories. In A.D. 2666, those aquatories still are a representation of the main cultures today. We have the Atlantic Federation, the Shogunat, the Arabic Clansunion, and something that doesn't have a representation today: the anarchistic Tornado Zone. But Aqua is far from being a peaceful place. Mankind still hasn't learned to share tight resources--so there's a lot of struggling and fighting going on until a bigger threat shows up. Our author developed nearly every technology necessary to survive in such a hostile environment--from a special breathing gas to algae whiskey, everything's there. Scientists from the Arabic Clansunion even developed surface simulations with only one bar pressure and breathing gas without helium. So it's an absolutely believable and stunning world down there.
GS: From what we've seen, the game looks something like a space shooter. How would you describe the style and pacing of combat in AquaNox?
WW: A space shooter is not so far off, but there are also elements of a first-person shooter. The fact that we have a ground, which you never have in space shooters, adds a lot of tactical possibilities and atmosphere.
GS: What does AquaNox's game engine do to re-create the experience of being deep in the ocean?
WW: Besides all the graphical stuff--plankton, bubbles, sun rays falling through the ocean's surface, etc.--you feel like you're in a thick media. You have currents and inertia when flying curves, there's a decompression zone where you can't get higher without being damaged, and the sound effects are changed so that they sound like you're underwater.
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- Release: Nov 19, 2001
- ESRB: Teen
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