Godzilla Unleashed Designer Diary #6 - Factions
In our sixth and final diary, Simon Strange from Pipeworks Software explains the importance of monster factions in Godzilla Unleashed's story mode.
The fastest way to finish the encounter is to smash into the research compound, knock out the generators that keep the security fences up, and then enter the ocean. Knocking out the generators will incur a -3 affinity penalty with the GDF, but otherwise you'll get away with no affinity adjustments. On the other hand, if you take the time to destroy the crystals and free your two allies, you will get +10 affinity for each Earth Defender freed and possibly a +3 ED/-3 alien adjustment for smashing crystals. This will start you off solidly as a loyal Earth Defender, although you can always change that later.
If you free your allies, then attack and knock out them both, you will incur a total penalty of -40 affinity with the Earth Defender faction. Playing as a monster from the ED faction, your initial affinity with the ED is +70. So, depending on your actions in that very first encounter, your affinity with the ED might be anywhere between 30 and 93. That's just one encounter. Players will battle through roughly 20 encounters in each story mode game.
So what do all those numbers mean? Well, the composition of the various encounters is fixed. So if Godzilla's battle in Tokyo on day 5 ("Rumble in the Surf") contains Anguirus, Gigan, and King Ghidorah, you'll see those three monsters no matter what you've done on the previous days. However, coming into that fight with 93 affinity toward the Earth Defenders versus 30 affinity will be huge. In the first case, the fight will boil down to a two-on-two rumble between Defenders and Aliens. In the second case, it might feel more like a one-on-three battle, with you taking on all comers. Anguirus and the Aliens will probably battle one another if you hang back, so it might be interesting to see how that plays out before you actually engage anyone. If you want to, it's entirely possible to play through the game with a minimum of fighting, if you can build a few strong allies.
This means that although players have only a little influence over the set of encounters available to them, they have a very strong influence over how those encounters actually play out. There are several moments in special encounters where you can nab a huge bonus or penalty to some faction. Players will (hopefully) find themselves conflicted about gaining certain surges, depending on what might be required to obtain them. Would you backstab your allies just to have the fire surge all to yourself? Can you avoid destroying the city when you battle in New York? Do you have enough battle skill to alienate a majority of the factions? Will you help the invasion and thus increase the alien presence in the environments?
Some people will love these sorts of decisions and some will just smash everything that looks at them funny. Thanks to our dynamic difficulty settings, you can save your game at any time, change difficulty, and resume where you left off. We also let the story flow even when you are knocked out, so it's almost impossible to be "stuck" at any point. Playing the game in any mode, single or multi, still earns you points that can be used to unlock new monsters and environments from the store, although a few items won't be initially available until certain conditions are met.
We hope that in this version we've exposed enough of the inner workings--provided enough knobs to tweak--that gamers of all types will be able to get the sort of play experience they want from the game. If you want very difficult "throw the controller in frustration" style gameplay, you can probably adjust things to get there. If you want to be passive and guide the monsters toward the end with a minimum of fuss, that option is certainly there. The more you fight, the more monsters will attack you. That's the basic premise behind the difficulty curve, and it really lets people play the game they want to, even if they don't print out the possible affinity modifiers and tape it to the screen.
That wraps up this developer diary--hopefully all you Godzilla fans will be able to put this to good use in the coming months.
Godzilla Unleashed Quick Links
Summary | Reviews | News | Previews & Features | Images | Videos | Answers | Hints & Cheats | Forum | Check Prices
- GameSpot Score3.5bad
Check Prices: $28.99 – 49.82
| eBay | $31.4 | SHOP › |
| Deep Discount.com | $28.99 | SHOP › |
| Walmart.com | $49.82 | SHOP › |
Content you might like…
-
Godzilla Unleashed Official Trailer 4
Hot new trailer for Godzilla Unleashed.
- Dec 12, 2007
Users who looked at this article also looked at these content items.
Images
- Atari
- Pipeworks Software
- 3D Fighting
- Release: Dec 5, 2007 »
- ESRB: Everyone 10+
Games you may like…
-
Godzilla Trading Battle
(PS) -
Godzilla: Save the Earth
(PS2) -
Godzilla
(GC) -
Fighting Street
(WII) -
King of the Monsters
(WII)
Users who looked at content for this game also looked at these games.
See More Similar Games
26 Comments