Obscure 2 Submitted to Sony: French People seen Smiling Fondly

This picture was taken just after I burned a copy of my new Celine Dion CD. I’m just kidding, I absolutely hate Celine Dion. In a good sort of way - the type of aversion that doesn’t mean that I want to see her trampled by enraged Pamplonan bulls or shipped off to Guantanamo Bay (per se), but the type of hate that means that I don’t like the sound she produces on the public stage.

Much like I wouldn’t buy a CD with the mating sounds of the bearded vulture, I would not buy a Celine Dion CD. Well maybe I would buy the vulture CD just because I am kind of curious what sound they produce while mating, but I wouldn’t buy a soundtrack of Celine Dion mating because I imagine that it might be worse than her singing.

But I digress friends, of course the picture displayed is the first Gold Master of Obscure 2, the one that is being shipped off to Liverpool where Sony’s QA Rohirrim are going to try and trample it and test whether it is fit to adorn their banner or whether it has distinct orcish qualities.
I am fucking psyched obviously, and so was Francois, the development producer on the project: you can see his wide “thank-the-gods-that-this-isn’t-a-soundtrack-of-Celine-Dion-mating” type smile.

He is a very cool cat and a talented French person: the type of guy that would work at a company like Hydravision, which – as you understand by now – I hold in very high regard.

Submission time...without yielding to an opponent

Tomorrow something exciting is going to happen: I am going to submit Obscure 2 to SCEE QA in Liverpool for the first time. What that means is that Sony is going to test the game and see if it is fit for publication according to their TRC (Technical Requirements Check). I am so psyched! The game right now is in a really good state: everything is in there (graphics, sounds, voices, music) and it is virtually bugfree.

According to one of my colleagues it is really rare that a PS2 game goes through on the first try. Usually you get the disc back and there is stuff you need to fix, then you submit again: rinse and repeat until someone goes postal or the game is actually accepted.

But I have a really good feeling about this. The boys and girls (yes there are girls in game development) of Hydravision have done such a great job on the game, that I am almost tempted to think that we might make it in one go. We'll see.

Tomorrow I'll drive with Gog to Tourcoing, France, with the submission package for Sony; I'll pick up the Master DVD's, and a courier will whisk them away to the angry depths of the Sony QA bastion, where unfinished PS2 games are tormented for all eternity.

Wish me luck! Not only for the fact that Gog is driving (the last time he did that he ruined the first Ark of Noah: yes, there were two), but also that I've managed to jinx myself utterly by writing this post.

Shout out to the talented folks over at RelQ and Enzyme for the testing of build 188. Good job guys!

Girl on Girl action

Nothing special to report, except for this little fact (which, as a gaming nerd I cannot keep from you people): Marianne is kicking me out of the house tonight so she can play God of War 2 with a girlfriend. I mean...aren't there like, thousands of gamers out there who wish they could say "my girfriend is kicking me out of the house tonight so she can play GOW2 with another girl"? How utterly cool is that? Now I only have to figure out what I am going to do tonight...

This one is for Fantasy Nerds

I found a cute little webcomic that is called A Modest Destiny. If you are into RPG's and Fantasy and stuff and like webcomics, I heartily recommend it. It's very funny.

UPDATE: For some reason the link seems to be down at the moment. Maybe it will come up again soon. You could also check out the rest of the site, which is the home of the 300 project. No, it's got nothing to do with muscled guys screaming "Tonight we dine in hell!", it's a game design project.

At the Mountains of Madness...

...there you will find these two creatures. Names: Gog and Magog. Level: ?? Class: None (style neither) Profession: Gog (pictured left) is Lead Tester (known for his ability to make russian games suck less and on the right we have Magog, who is Executive Producer. His powers include, among others, the ability to make little children cry by smiling at them and to growl the word "fuck!" like the eye thingie in Lord of the Rings.

The Annoying Interview

While I was in Germany, I got asked the strangest questions. Most of them revolved around my name and why I was able to understand german but not speak it. In most of the latter cases they would - by way of experiment - try to discover whether it was true. Apparently it was a source of some scepticism - that I would be able to understand them, but not communicate that understanding back to them in their own language.
No, don't worry, I am not going to make geeky software protocol references.
At any rate, the people from geemag.de asked me all kinds of questions about Obscure 2, but promised me that I would be receiving some additional "annoying" queries to spice the article up. Now I am not sure whether the questions below constitute any kind of unpleasant interrogation. Rather than that, I think they are a way for me to be even more vapid and tiresome than I usually am.

For non-german speakers, here's the interview (that was done in english):

Q: Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. They are not meant to be taken too seriously. Don’t feel offended. Have fun answering them. Please introduce yourself.
A: My name is Jesse America, I am the Producer for Playlogic on the teenage survival horror title Obscure 2.

Q: In the game we will experience a hangover of one the characters. Please let us know about your personal worst hangover ever (and of course what happened in the night before) and – even more important – what’s the best cure for such a hangover.
A: My worst hangover was after I drank 7 Purple Leprechauns (really, it is a drink) in an irish pub in Calella, Spain. I blacked out and people claimed to have seen me wandering around the town and it’s beaches for 2 consecutive hours – which I can’t remember anymore. The day after was absolute hell. My head felt like part of my brain had been removed with an egg-scrambler, and without an anaesthetic at that. The best cure for that turned out to be a few beers – at 10 ‘o clock in the morning.

Q: There will be some minor drug use in the game and one of the students will experience a bad trip. Please let us know about your worst drug experience so far. And what about the best?
A: My worst drug experience would probably be that while under the influence of something I kissed a girl that looked pretty hot, but in reality – wasn’t. Quite the opposite actually. I actually never had a good drug experience (but mine are limited) and I guess this should be the part
where I say that kids shouldn’t do drugs. Don’t do drugs kids, seriously. It’ll get you killed. Just play Obscure 2 and you’ll see.

Q: Although Obscure 2 will be vanilla flavoured mainstream horror rather than disturbing hardcore horror à la Silent Hill it will scare some people. What are you personally afraid of?
A: Camels. They are terrifying. I am thinking of doing a horror game that features zombie-camels.

Q: Having sex in a teenage horror movie typically leads to death. Lucky us it’s different in real life (if you take the proper precautions). Still it can be a sensible topic – let us know about your most embarrassing sex experience ever. If you don’t want to talk about that you can revive the memories of your first time and share them with us instead.
A: For that I have to go back some 18 years. I vaguely remember a dark alley behind a discotheque, too much beer and a girl I hardly knew that wore the world’s most securely clasped bra. It’s all a big blur because of the alcohol, but what stands out in my mind was her sighing: not of passion or ecstasy, but of utter boredom.

Q: All the main characters in the game are stereotypes of American teenagers and their angst. What kind of teenager were you and do you have good or bad memories about that time? Which?
A: I was a total and utter dork. I played D&D, read and drew comic books and listened to hard rock. So I guess you could say that I was the nerd. My best memories of that time are that I didn’t care I was a nerd: I had fun anyway. The bad times were that I had a friend whose grandma continually sat on my glasses when I was over at his house and destroyed them utterly with her weight.

Q: In the game we will see monsters and supernatural phenomena. Do you believe in these things yourself?
A: Monsters, yes. I absolutely believe in monsters. They are all around us: just open the newspapers and you’ll see them. Serial killers, rapists, dictators, lawyers, CEO’s of big companies... Supernatural phenomena...hmm...I can think of the election of a certain US president that fits that description.

Mad Tram Driver

I can think of a cool new game: it's called Amsterdam Tram Driver. You play a fifty-year old female tram driver in Amsterdam, making her way through the city of sin, drugs and clogs, as she verbally abuses her passengers, scares other tramdrivers into driving too fast, and over-abuses the tram's warning signal.
Really, it would be quite special. It happened to me this morning namely: I was trapped in tram 5 outbound from Amsterdam Central Station, with this total madwoman behind the steering wheel. Well - trams have no steering wheels of course, only a gas pedal and brakes, but she was using the latter one sparingly. Instead, she scared everything and everyone on her path by continuously using the tram's warning sound - which, on a dutch tram, sounds like a hyperactive funeral bell. Also, she verbally assaulted almost everyone daring to enter the tram through the front side passenger entry. It was quite...Burtonesque, if you get what I mean.

Obscure 2 PS2 Demo

Last week we learned from SCEE that the Obscure 2 PS2 Demo would be included in the August edition of Official Playstation Magazine. It passed the first submission round effortlessly! Now, for those of you who aren't in the know about these things, all products released through official Sony channels (which OPSM is), needs to go through a quality check. If the product isn't up to Sony's standards, then they will send it back to you and you will have to fix whatever is wrong with it.

Imagine my surprise that, yesterday, when I went out to buy groceries, I found the Obscure 2 demo attached to the June edition of Dutch version of OPSM! Yay! (see image)

It isn't totally unheard of for a PS2 Demo to pass the first submission round, but it is pretty special. My hat is off to Hydravision, who are such expert developers. Cheers guys!

Now remember people, if you happen to check the demo out: it is still a Work In Progress. It was actually submitted to Sony mid-april, and since then a lot of things have been polished on Obscure 2; graphics, sound, voice-art, gameplay, balance, etc.

Hmmmm...Beer A.K.A. German press tour for Obscure 2

I know all of you share the same kind of discomfort right now, looking at the picture on the right. Or maybe you are day-dreaming, thinking of what I am holding in my hand? Yes friends, that's ein mass, a litre of cold, delicious german beer. Well, to be eaxact, it's not beer, but a noble brew of natural quality that is called Pillsner.

So what has this got to do with Obscure 2 you might ask? Well, it's kind of like this: you come back from a holiday in Crete with girlfriend and kids. You've done nothing but drink beer al day long and sit in the sun. You arrive home and are called by your office: "Your tickets are ready". "What tickets?" you ask, innocently.

"Your airplane tickets to Germany."

"Germany?" You wonder out loud, "I'm not going to Germany am I?"

"Yes you are," the voice on the other side say, "on monday. You are flying from Amsterdam to Hamburg, you will do 25 interviews in 4 days, then you'll fly back from Munich. The PR agent from the german agency will pick you up on the airport. Have fun."

click says the phone.

So that's how I was united, in holy matrimony (if only for a short while - but really hot affairs are usually shortlived anyway) with this 1 litre glass of beer.

And I did some interviews - in case you were starting to wonder - with german gaming magazines and websites about Obscure 2. You know, who have subscriber numbers that make elitist UK gaming rags pale by comparison (not to mention, snobbish dutch ones), like 450.000 for instance. I also did several video interviews, one of which for MTV Germany, who were like, the coolest and nicest gaming press people I have ever met.

Thanks to Ingo Horn from IMC (Interactive Media Consulting), the press tour went very well. Afterwards he called me "the best and most professional producer..." [he had] "...ever been on a presstour with," so I'll return the favor and publicly state (so that I don't have to pay him actual money for that statement about me) that he was the best and most professional PR man I have ever been on a press tour with in Germany. Which has only ever happened to me once in total I must admit, but nevertheless Ingo and his comerades (who were the brains behind the Y-Project by the way) come highly recommended.

In case you were wondering, all of this happened a few weeks back. I actually haven't been touring through Germany and recording voices for Obscure 2 at the same time. I could have if I wanted to (especially after a few more litre glasses of German Pillsner), but I chose not to. When I will reveal my extraordinary powers during the End-Times, I wil pull off much neater tricks than that. Trust me. And I'll be drinking more than ein mass while doing it.

Voice Recording on Obscure 2 wrapped!

Finally, after a few long weeks, the voice recording of Obscure 2 has wrapped. WOOHOO! I want to give a shout out to the cast that did an excellent job on the voices of the teenagers and other characters of the game:

Buster Cox – man of the hour, who kept returning to the studio when we asked, to do more screams, more gurgles, more bit parts; ploughing time after time again through the morning traffic of Miami. Good man and dedicated to the max! He's the real deal: asking me whether he could please do another take to "get it just right"! If you want a good male lead voice for your game: use Buster.

Ayme Sanchez, who – among other parts - did the part of Amy, the stereotypical blond cheerleader (in the game), and who managed to keep her good humor during my directions in spite of my (graphic) descriptions of what was happening to her characters. She also sings in a really cool band! Check her out!

Alicia LaForce for lending a sexy voice to a sexy character in the game (Mei), and being so kind to appeal to my ego by calling me “the easiest director she’d ever worked with”.

The truly remarkable Nikki Rapp, disembodied voice of cuteness (veteran of games like the Sims, Psychonauts and various cartoon shows), who had us all in stitches with her contagious laughing. If you search for it, her laughter is featured prominently early on in Obscure 2: it won’t do justice to the actual experience of sharing a joke with her and then hearing her giggle, but it’s the best next thing! Finally, to all of the other actors who did such a fine job on the game: here’s to a future cooperation!

I also wanted to thank Damon Fries, Liliane Goudriaan, Hans Bakker and Michaël Reijenga of Voice Agency Inter Voice for the sound engineering, the casting and the localization. You guys have been great to work with!