We’re used to casual games based on films. But from time to time studios release good products. In 2004, unknown Swedish developers from Starbreeze Studios created not just a game in the cinematic universe about Riddick, but an innovative project on an engine that surpassed the technologies of id Software and Valve.
Developer Profile
Before I begin the story, I will introduce the interview participants.
Mikael Saker
Mikael worked at Starbreeze until Assault On Dark Athena, and then moved to DICE, where he had a hand in the Battlefield series. Currently taking time away from the gaming industry to finish his first novel.
Jens Andersson
Now Jens works on two fronts: he works in his indie studio Collecting Smiles and Villa Gorilla (which released a good pinball platformer Yoku’s Island Express). He recently successfully raised funds on Kickstarter for the Colors Live project, designed for the Nintendo Switch (the application allows you to use the laptop as a drawing tablet thanks to a special stylus).
Pete Vanat
Pete was the executive producer of Dark Athena, then produced other games, such as Lego Jurassic World and some projects of the Telltale Games studio. Afterwards he co-founded the developer of mobile sports games – Nifty Games.
Now let’s move on to the history of the creation of the hit
Introduction
You don’t have to spend a lot of time in Riddick’s shoes to understand how cool Escape From Butcher Bay is. After a short prologue, the player is thrown into the prison of Butcher’s Cove, an impenetrable structure of steel and stone on a desert planet in a forgotten corner of space.
For the first five minutes we move along “rails”, accompanied by guards, through the future place of detention. Dramatic music plays, the credits fade and we are introduced to the voices of stars such as Ron Perlman (Jagger Valance), Xzibit (Abbott) and Vin Diesel (player-controlled Riddick). Then they are thrown into a cell from which they must escape.
The scene is reminiscent of the famous prologue from Half-Life (that monorail ride). And such cinematic moments were rare in games of that time. The Half-Life comparison is there for a reason: just as Gordon Freeman’s ride ushered in a new generation of games, Riddick’s accompanied ride introduced a new era of game engines. The project was ahead of Doom 3 with the id Tech 4 core and Half-Life 2 on their Source Engine, demonstrating the latest graphics technology.
Birth of a hit
In 2002, Starbreeze Studios was just taking its first steps. The studio released its first major release – the dark fantasy role-playing game Enclave. The action role-playing game was well received by the public (to hell with the low ratings from critics – what do they understand about games…), but the lead screenwriter of "Escape from Butcher Bay" – Mikael Saker – recalls that the main thing for the team was the experience gained. “The game became more of a training or “battle-hardening” for us,” he admits. “After the release, we felt stronger and were ready to take on the next job.”.
At first, the developers wanted to do something original, but due to a lack of ideas, they liked a project in the Riddick universe. At that time, Vin Diesel’s anti-hero was known only from the cult sci-fi film “The Black Hole” (or “Pitch Dark”). The sequel had not yet been given the go-ahead, which gave Starbreeze a lot of creative freedom – the Riddick universe had just begun and it was not difficult to fit a new story there.
Butcher’s Bay producer and Starbreeze co-founder Jens Andersson says they were essentially offered the original intellectual property. “Everyone liked the film Black Hole,” he recalls. — There is an atmosphere of B-movies, but there is no detailed description of the world, which freed our hands. Riddick’s universe is like a “blank slate”.
Development began in 2002. The original concept was to make an "open world" like GTA. Vice City had just come out, and sandboxes then seemed like a genre with endless possibilities. The concept did not last long, since the studio did not strive to comply with trends, but decided to focus on its own tastes. The team introduced elements of stealth and role-playing, thanks to which the project is compared to such classics as Deus Ex and Thief.
However, the publisher, Vivendi https://21-casino.uk/login/ Universal, did not like this approach. The gameplay required a transition to first-person view, which meant that the star of the project – Vin Diesel – would not be “bald” throughout the game. “The solution was scenes of interaction with objects, for example, when you climb a ladder or enter a ventilation hole – the view switches to a third-person view,” explains Mikael.
Cinema
Vin Diesel’s own studio, Tigon Studios, worked on Escape from Butcher Bay with Starbreeze. Vivendi Universal producer Pete Vanath talks about Vin Diesel’s devotion to his anti-hero. “Vin considers games more than entertainment – for him it’s an art,” he says. — One day during recording, Diesel paused work to rewrite the dialogue with Flint Dille (the project’s screenwriter). It took five hours! And the team was “heated up”. But when you have damn Riddick in the studio, and not Vin Diesel, you have to humbly obey… And the resulting recording I consider one of the best in the game!»
“Vin understands his character better, so the recording often didn’t match the script,” explains Jens. Diesel is not just a voice actor. He got into character for the film and this hands-on approach showed through in the dialogue. Riddick is a quiet killer, so he says little and in a way that is memorable..
Gameplay
Meanwhile, Starbreeze worked on the game mechanics. “We literally had to “fight” with the code,” Jens compares programming to fighting. — The first test was hand-to-hand combat. It was necessary to offer players various options for fights without the use of firearms. Riddick is a prisoner in prison, so you can’t immediately hand him a gun. It was necessary to diversify the gameplay so that shooting became only an addition to the main mechanics".
Another element of the gameplay was the RPG component. Even now it’s rare to see a shooter with quests, puzzles, multiple routes to the goal and a dialogue system with NPCs (there must be a “Cyberpunk” joke here). “We decided to introduce elements of a role-playing game: a “tree” of skills advanced by NPCs who react to the player’s actions,” says Mikael.
These RPG mechanics do not stand out, complementing the gameplay intelligently. In between action scenes where you’re shooting guards or being chased by mutants, there are long stretches of Riddick living the life of a prisoner. You can perform favors in exchange for weapons, participate in hand-to-hand tournaments, and earn reputation among fellow inmates. Of course, all this is not for fun, but to arrange an escape.
This approach is very bold – a game that could be an excellent shooter suddenly deprives the player of weapons. But hand-to-hand combat, stealth and open-world simulation can outshine the more mass-appealing shooting game, which is impressively entertaining but still quite linear and monotonous.
Jens and Mikael admit that they prefer the slower phases of the game rather than the shooting. “We like this kind of gameplay better,” Jens does not hide his preference. — When you develop a game, you have no idea what you will get until you get closer to the final stage. Therefore, we worked on the balance between different genres at the very end of development".
The powerful proprietary engine pleased with its capabilities, but programming on this core was difficult. The team put so many different ideas into Escape From Butcher Bay, but they couldn’t convey the “coolness” of the project to the publisher. “Even the direct participants in the development could not provide Vivendi Universal with a vertical slice and tell what would come of it,” says Jens.
Oh, these publishers are always “clipping” the wings of the creators!
In 2003, the studio worked on two more projects. But their publishers went bankrupt, and Starbreeze suffered the same fate. This forced the developers to ask the publisher Escape From Butcher Bay for additional money to complete the project. “We had to confront them with the fact that additional funding would be required, otherwise the game would not be completed,” Jens recalls.
By the end of the year, the release date of the film “The Chronicles of Riddick” was confirmed, and it became obvious that the game was not keeping up with the release of the film. The project was in alpha testing stage. In other words, the game was broken: low performance, faulty melee system and a bunch of bugs.
Jens recalls that at one point the project was almost cancelled… until Piet Vanath intervened. “There was a moment when one particular executive at Vivendi Universal really wanted to cancel the project,” recalls Pete. “The publisher was more concerned with the games Van Helsing and Fight Club, which were also in development.”.
As a result, the team had to make sacrifices – the PS2 version was canceled. Sony’s console was (and still is) more successful than the Xbox, but due to weak hardware, optimizing such a technically advanced game would drain too much of the studio’s resources. “Many design elements are not available there, such as shadows and dynamic lighting, but we found a different way to implement lighting,” says Jens. — I’m sure that a version for PS2 could have been made and it would have been an excellent port!»
Technical development details
The team spent most of its time working on its own engine, which was created by Starbreeze founder Magnus Hogdahl. Jens describes Hogdahl as a technical genius who became obsessed with John Carmack’s id Tech engine and took everything he could from it.
Mikael remembers how Magnus showed employees videos demonstrating the capabilities of id Tech. “I remember one time he showed us a clip explaining real-time tessellation. If you have a model of a curved pipe, you can build it with a large number of polygons, but limit the number as you move away from the object, says Mikael. — The very next day Magnus implemented this in our engine. Hogdahl is a very purposeful person!»
Despite the complexity of working with the engine, about six months before the release everything finally fell into place. The team fully mastered the core and applied its technologies and mechanics. For example, on Xbox the engine is only capable of displaying four to five characters on the screen at a time. “That’s why the courtyard in Prison Zone 2 is divided,” explains Mikael. “We tried to make it look natural, and the reason for this distinction is to limit the number of characters on the screen.”.
Release is just around the corner
The code began to take shape, turning Escape From Butcher Bay from a broken game into a groundbreaking one. “Visually simple tricks like dynamic light maps started to work, and melee combat was very exciting,” says Jens. A breakthrough in the mechanics of fist fights prompted Starbreeze to add an entire location to the game focused on this type of gameplay (“Aquila Territory”). “This is my favorite location in the game,” Jens shares with us. — It corresponds to the prison mentality and creates an atmosphere of confinement!»
Jens and Mikael admit that they don’t really know if the release version they sent to press is as good. The fact is that by the end of development, Starbreeze’s staff had been reduced from 80 to 18 employees, and all attention was focused on finding the next project that would keep the studio afloat. After the failure of The Chronicles of Riddick at the box office, there was no talk of continuing the game in the universe… Until 2009, when Assault On Dark Athena was released. Now such projects are called a remake: multiplayer and the Dark Athena location (a rather linear chapter that does not correspond to the gameplay of the main game) have been added to the reworked original.
In the remake, the “blurry” picture hits the eyes, so it’s better to find the original with patch 1.1, and then take on the sequel Assault On Dark Athena.
In the remake, the “blurry” picture hits the eyes, so it’s better to find the original with patch 1.1, and then take on the sequel Assault On Dark Athena.
The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay sold well (although most of the money earned went to the publisher) and became one of the best games of its generation. Thanks to the port of Half-life 2 and Doom 3, it became the first project to demonstrate innovative graphics technologies that gamers only later saw in games based on the Source and id Tech 4 engines.
Best comments
In the remake, the “blurry” picture hits the eyes, so it’s better to find the original with patch 1.1, and then take on the sequel Assault On Dark Athena.
Therefore, you need to disable DOF, Blur, Bloom and anti-aliasing if it is blurry :/
And stay away from the Russian Gog version, something is buggy in it at a certain stage of the passage
The article deserves a plus, but, plz, put the photos of the developers in the spoiler, otherwise they are too high resolution and the text is very difficult to read. Thank you!
Great blog, one of my favorite games. I bought it everywhere I could, there’s also a disc like this from Akella somewhere in a box and I bought it on Steam. 🙂
