Haze - interview with Free Radical

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Dave Doak attacks the FPS

What do you think of the game from what the Beta gives away?

Doak: I really liked the High Ground map and it really feels like a nice place to fight in. My experience of it is that I suck at Halo 3. I don't know whether that's because I'm getting old or because I'm walking into an ambush with people who've got two years of experience playing Halo 2. But it's a good game.

You've now got four-play co-op. How important to do you think co-op is now in the genre?

Doak: The story part of a game like this takes up an enormous part of the development process. And the idea of having some environments and set-pieces that people just run past and never go look at again, is a huge waste of time and money. Having co-op in a game like this is more like a shared experience and people will always go back and revisit different areas that they liked.

Doak: Its strengths are obviously that is has a lot of processing power. Its weaknesses are that its processing power is locked away at the moment. But everyone's going to hit that wall across all platforms at first.

But as people continue to make bigger and faster games, this will change as the technology isn't scaleable anymore because everything's going to be multi-core. It's not going to be two or four processors; it's going to be 64. And everybody is going to have to learn to make software for that and that's the big challenge that everyone faces.

Developers are looking for skills that you can't get off the shelf anymore. Our best developers at Free Radical have leant those skills at the company, not anywhere else.

Are you surprised with how the console war is currently panning out?

Doak: I don't think anyone would have guessed a few years ago that the layout of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo would be what it is today. Nintendo said it was going to do something that would be great fun out of the box, and it was. And even my mum wants to play it and nobody reckoned my mum would ever be a possible consumer. The games will come on PS3 though. The games will come.

Check out the latest Haze screens righthere.