Tron 2.0 Killer App

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We travel to Climax's Santa Monica studio to probe the Xbox iteration of the neon-fuelled FPS

Did you think about having more lightcycle modes?
KH: We thought about having different types of lightcycles. Essentially we wanted to blend the racing and shooting together - which is where we came up with Override - but obviously designs start spinning off and there are a lot of ideas about whether to incorporate more of the racing element or more vehicles in this kind of mode but we had to pull it back just due to time constraints and really focus in on what we had. It was a good marriage.
SC: Once you turn into the lightcycle, it's really overwhelming to run over people who are on foot and get so much extra speed. You can traverse across an entire environment in just 15 seconds as opposed to on foot, which might take you more than a minute. There's so many advantages to being on a lightcycle, we really wanted to try to balance that out. We didn't want one side to be able to overpower the other too much and really the bikes are there to get from one place to another, maybe get to a power-up really fast or to run down other opponents... or with numerous light cycles in the world at once you can almost have your own lightcycle game knowing that if I go on foot, I'm probably going to get run over.

With the levels being so big, do you think there's a risk of them feeling too empty, especially if there are only a couple of players?
KH: Definitely. We did look into that as a problem and that's how the radar came about. The radar just helps to locate people in big areas, that was kind of our fix. We have levels that can support 16 players but if you and I just want to play, you've got to use the radar.

What is it about Tron that still appeals to gamers?
KH: The thing is that the Tron universe lends itself to games so readily - we're talking about technology and being inside the computer and, for designers, the ability to take those ideas and put it in a game... that's essentially what we did, is give you a hint of being inside the Xbox in some of our multiplayer levels. So, for me, in the Tron universe you're only hindered by your imagination.
SC: For me, in addition to the technology aspect, it's also nostalgia. I grew up with the movie - I'd probably seen it dozens of times before I even came to work on this project. Working on this kind of a game it felt like it fit together... to really modernise the old movie and bring all the aspects to it that we would expect.

Is the movie introduced in the game? A lot of gamers wouldn't have been born when the movie was released.
SC: A lot of the characters you run into, a lot of the emails you get in the game, the story starts to develop in front of you. It's one of those things where, if you've never seen the movie, you'd be really intrigued to go back and see it after playing the game.

Tron 2.0 Killer App will be released for Xbox on 12 November