Rebel FM
Rebel FM Game Club - Star Wars: Republic Commando - Episode 3
Greetings! Welcome back for our final episode for our series on Star Wars: Republic Commando. We're joined this week by Tim Longo, Director and Lead Designer for the title, who talks with us about the game's inspiration, it's development cycle, and how he feels about it almost 4 years later. It's a great conversation, and I think I speak for all of us when I say this might be our favorite episode of Game Club. We've also got some custom desktop wallpapers for you for Republic Commando at eat-sleep-game.com, so be sure to check it out.
[MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> What up, what up, what up, all right, what was there fun? [MUSIC] >> Hello, hello and welcome to the final Rebel FM Game Club for Star Wars Republic Commando. >> Awesome. >> I am Anthony Giggles of gamesbyneetsofgame.com joined by Tyler Barber and Arthur Gies of eatsofgame.com as well as area5.tv's Matt Changerney. And then also joined by Crystal Dynamics Tim Longo. I don't know what your title is, it Crystal. >> Creative director as well, yeah. >> Okay, creative director. And then Tim was on Republic Commando as the director and lead designer. >> Yeah, okay. >> Double, woo, woo, woo. >> Yeah, awesome. >> Thanks for having me, I'm really excited. >> Yeah, I'm so bored. >> So today we're going to talk about the third and final campaign of Kashuk, and then we're also going to kind of give our final thoughts on the game and take some user comments along with Tim's input. Since Tim obviously has intimate knowledge of the game. >> Can we talk about what Tim brought about, not just intimate knowledge. I mean, do we want to get into that now? >> Yeah, Tim, something pretty badass to talk about. >> Tim brought me a Star Wars, the saga collection, Scorch Republic Commando figure. >> That's so badass. >> Yeah, it's awesome. He's holding the rocket launcher weapons. >> Yeah, he's holding the heavy weapons. >> The anti armor attached weapons too. >> Yeah, it says actually that when the, wait, hold on, where is it? Where is it? Scorch's profile, I read it. >> Worst host ever. >> Yeah, okay. He's well known for his humorous mishaps, although he is a competent soldier with an excellence explosives technician, and I took V.O. lessons they're not paying off. >> [LAUGH] >> I was wondering who's going to say. >> Scorch earned his nickname after an ordinance accident that left him without eyebrows for a short time. Is that something you guys wrote, or is that something they made up? >> We didn't read, we didn't write that copy, I don't know who it was. >> It has wrote, it's finest. >> Is that canon? Is that canon? >> Yes, canon now. It's just kind of on the back of a freaking worded scorch, get his name then. So, I think it probably was Ryan Kaufman, who was one of our writers. He's also kind of like the content Star Wars guru guy, knew it all, and kind of everything in the studio had to go through him. But he's a funny guy. So between he and myself and our producer, I think we came up with seven. You know, the names are not that difficult to come up with for these guys, right? >> Right. >> Oh, seven, the numbers were the most important thing to me. >> I was actually interested 1138, does the number mean anything to you guys? >> Yeah, yeah, yeah, you didn't mention it, I mean that's 38, obviously. >> Oh. >> Oh my gosh, that's why. >> Cool. >> The head dude's number's 38. >> Got you, what are the other numbers come from then, what are they associated with? >> I think they just, they just balanced well with 38. >> I don't know, it's just a name. >> Yeah, no, they're totally pretty random. >> I didn't even pick up on that 38 reference. >> No, neither did I, that's cool though. >> It's like a stepper moved from a director. >> Yeah, it's a little subtle. >> Yeah, I think officially his number is 11-38 or something like that. >> But they don't, I don't think we say that in the game anywhere, so. >> Okay, so. >> I thought it was just something I missed. >> So did we just want to start this off with our general thoughts about that? >> Well, I want to ask something really quick, because you mentioned earlier, I want to ask him before I forget it, when we were looking at the action figure, he said like yeah, he's the heavy weapons guy, he's the heavy weapons guy. But it really seemed to me like all four characters, the player included, you're all jack of all trades, you can all do everything equally well. Was there ever a time where you guys thought that he's the heavy weapons guy, so that whenever you send somebody towards a heavy weapons place, he's the one that's going to go there? >> Yeah, there was actually. >> Yeah, and the original design was to have specialists that only could do that one thing. But the design evolved to a point where it probably would have been pretty frustrating, right? When you wanted three snipers and you only had one kind of thing, so. I mean, I think in general really quickly, the whole goal for us and for me, because I'm a big squad shooter fan, I love the Rainbow Six games from the first one, played them all co-op, I can talk about it co-op later, but what's that? >> Did you play Quake 4? >> No, I actually had it. >> That's a good squad shooter game. >> Is it? Does it have co-op on them as well? >> Did they have the whole campaign? >> No, no co-op. >> No co-op with the player, but you're always running around with the squad. >> Do you have splash damage or who? >> That's Raven. >> Raven as well? >> Raven as well? >> Okay, yeah, so, but we wanted, because the Star Wars fans were a little bit more mass market than the Rainbow Six fans, we wanted to make it more accessible, so. Having a specialist that could be only one sniper didn't seem right, so ultimately we made it so they all. >> Yeah, no, so you can set up cool things and have fun. >> Yeah, well, it's not just more accessible, I actually, like, I just assumed that, you know, that like, well, it's a good game design. >> I guess it's what it comes down to, because it's, you know, it keeps the action going. I didn't have to, like, oh no, you're, like you said, it would have been frustrating. Like, no, you're the wrong guy, don't go over there and do that. >> Yeah, it'd be too micromanaging, I think, you know, like, too fine tuning, and I think I can get frustrated. >> It creates a different kind of pacing that leans more toward the Rainbow Six side of things than the action first person shooter side of things. >> Right, yeah, so we were definitely inspired. I was definitely very much inspired by good squad shooters out there. Love Vegas as well. I think Vegas is a good step forward for that series, but we didn't want to be exactly like that. Too hardcore. You know, one shot kill from Rainbow, you know, wouldn't have flown with the Star Wars fans. >> Right. >> Were there any, well, I guess, I'll just, we can, we can talk about the third campaign at some point, but I'm just going to ask random questions too. >> I mean, we might as well start out talking about just the game in general. So were there any, like, particular Star Wars things that you felt, like, had to be in there? Like, whether it was, like, oh, you know, a common question we got actually was why the game didn't start with the scrolling, with the scrolling text intro. >> Yeah, so I, there are two things. I set you mail and I sort of challenged, challenged Anthony earlier to, like, there's two things that I think were the only Star Wars game to have ever done these two things, and I was wondering if you guys could think of them. What was the text crawl? >> I don't think there's another game that has not done a text crawl. I could be wrong and played every single Star Wars game. The other thing is that we don't have the Jedi in the game. >> Oh, shit, and you have an image, you have that hologram. >> I mean, I have a hologram, right, and there's maybe, now it's been a while for me too, so and I didn't, I wanted to try to play before I came, but I didn't get a chance to refresh my memory. Was there a dead Jedi something? >> There's a lightsaber. >> There's a lightsaber. That was a toll. >> But he's next to a clone trooper. >> Yeah, that was a total, like, you actually mentioned it on the last episode, like, that was a total gimme, like, we wanted to say that one, we wanted to make fun of the fact that you're not going to hold a lightsaber, and I was really adamant that you're not going to pick up a lightsaber, you're not going to be a Jedi, you're not going to fight a Jedi, and if anything, you're going to save Jedi, you know what I mean, because you're like the commando, like, you know, elite force blah, blah, blah, blah, and we just wanted to make a different Star Wars game, is really what it came down to, and I think, ultimately, we flew under the radar enough from Lucas that he didn't end up caring that we didn't have a text crawl and we didn't have a Jedi, because he would probably not like either of those things. I don't know. >> Right. >> He never said, but... >> Do it now, bitch! >> Yeah, so that was an intentional thing, yeah. >> Yeah, I actually liked the way that the text comes up, disappears, and it's always playing like the ominous, like, Imperial music the whole time, which I think always sits the tone. >> Yeah, definitely. >> Yeah. >> Did dark forces have Jedi in it? Like Star Wars dark forces? >> Oh, that's a good one. That's a good one. Well... >> You don't remember. >> Kyle eventually becomes... >> Oh, yeah. >> But... >> Yeah. >> That's a good one. You might be right. Oh, trying to think. >> Does Darth Vader or the Emperor appear in it? >> No. >> Only his holograms, I think. >> Yeah. >> Ooh, that's a good one. >> The executive producer on this was the director on dark forces, laid back. >> So, we're interested in it. It was a good guy. >> I mean, it could be wrong. My recollection is he at best. >> You're... >> You might be right. You might be right. >> So, when you guys were working on the game, did you guys actually, when you did the voices and stuff, you actually brought in the actor that plays Jango Fett. >> So, our sound guy, Dave Collins, went down to New Zealand and actually recorded him down there to Mora Mora. >> Mm-hmm. >> Sounds great. >> Yeah. >> We recorded him in New Zealand. Episode two had just come out, so he was at the peak, maybe, of his career at the time. >> Yeah. >> So, it kind of requests us to come to him. >> All right. >> And then I'll be the shoe mapping in there for these days, but... >> Um... >> Dang. >> Where did he at? >> Well, I imagine his voice is still in demand now that they're doing all of the Clone Wars stuff. >> Yeah, that's true. >> Yeah, that's true. >> Apparently, he was totally cool, like he loved doing it, and he totally got it. >> I mean, I'd have to imagine that there's got to be something that's like a cool ego trip to hear yourself, like, in all these games. >> Yeah, it's just like what we were talking earlier with the action figure, you know? >> Yeah. >> I mean, that guy, like, became more well-known because of a more, like, a sort of obscure indie movie called "Once for Warriors" out of him. >> Mm-hmm. >> Yeah, that was his first, that was the... >> Well, Maori Warrior Culture, like, in modern day. >> Yeah. >> Mm-hmm. >> He's probably, like, almost godlike in New Zealand, just because he's connected... >> I mean, Peter Jackson, man, they're like the biggest celebrity in the world. >> Exactly. >> So it was a Republic commando, a game that kind of got passed down to you by LucasArts, and you guys took it as a team, or was it kind of something that you had been wanting to do, or...? >> It was all less. >> Really? >> Yeah, totally. I mean, I was really thinking about the sort of, you know, the beginning stages of this, and I remember, like I said, we... I saw it since 1996, about when I got into the industry, a couple of buddies and I have been playing co-op game of some kind, almost weekly, this whole overall these years, so played all the Rainbow Six games, and I remember we were playing Rogue Spear, and we just finished a game, really intense co-op game, whatever, you know, terrorist hunt, and I ran into Darren's office, the guy's mentioned earlier, you know, who's the EP, he's like, "I got it, I got it." It sells itself. Squad game, stormtroopers, squad game, it's the best thing ever. >> We just finished Jedi Star Fighter, which he and I both were on Star Fighter and Jedi Star Fighter before this one. >> Which was the good Star Fighter game. Which one? >> Jedi Star Fighter. >> Oh, look, we worked on both. >> I liked Jedi Star Fighter. >> I felt like Jedi Star Fighter had its own identity. >> Right. We... >> Because there's definitely a lot of stuff in there that you never saw in other flight combat games. >> We were trying to push it, yeah, and we definitely learned a lot from the first one. >> Is Jedi Star Fighter the first one? >> It's the second one. >> Okay, that's what I thought. >> The Jedi Star Fighter. >> Right. >> And you do, like, force-lating and shit like that outside of the ship. >> Yeah, that was pretty. Yeah, that's a whole other story. But pitching force powers while you're in the ship was no one bought it at the time. >> Oh, I bet. >> It's like, that's where we got to go. >> I actually thought that, yeah, that's kind of the only thing that it did work. >> That was fine. >> Exactly, yeah. >> That's cool. >> Nice. >> So I don't know, anyway, yeah, it was just, we're like, "Yeah, wait a minute." And then when the new movies came out, was it kind of like, it just made sense, because like, I'm so, like, where did the idea for like, the Republic Commandos come from? >> Yeah. >> I mean, I knew that you saw like, the arc troopers or whatever, and like, the animated shorts and stuff like that. But, yeah, I've actually really heard of this type of, you know, clone trooper until this game, really. >> And the clone trooper, like, exceptions, you know. >> Yeah, right. >> Let me, let me ask you a question that sort of leads into that a little bit. What was the development time? Like, what was the development cycle on this game? Like, how long was it? >> We were, so I think the core development, I guess, would probably about 18 months, maybe close to two years, and then we had a pre-production and probably like, six to eight months before that. >> Okay, so the game came out April, between April and June 2005? >> Yeah, I was just looking, because I was looking at the credits to make sure I didn't forget it. A few people's names that I really wanted to call attention to, but I think it was March 2005. Yeah, like March 1st or something like that. It was around there. >> So was, I mean, so this was really sort of in the lead-up to Revenge of the Sith? >> Yeah, right, so it was kind of an opportunistic thing, because especially, and the same thing with Jedi Starfighter, which we started to develop in between one and two, episode one and two. So we're like, well, usually in both games cases, if there was a way that we could leverage the movies in some small way, or big way, if it really worked out, which it often didn't, then we would try. And so Jedi Starfighter, like, you know, we had some crossover with some of the battles that were going on, and we alluded to, you know, Mace Windu and all that stuff. >> In episode two is where they showed the Jedi Starfighter. >> Right, yeah, and so we leveraged the Jedi Starfighter thing, and we got some extra PR, sort of sort of out of that. And then with Republic Commando, we really wanted to make a squad Star Wars game. And well, okay, the new movie's coming out, how could we leverage that? And so the arctrooper was actually a little bit of a kind of a weird controversy, because other groups were working on the arctrooper, and they were like, well, we have this arc trooper, why don't you make your squad about the arctroopers? They're like, well, the arctroopers are kind of superheroes, like, they're kind of solo guys that go off Anthony Arden and Geek Out, probably, on arctroopers. >> [LAUGH] >> And Star Smora. >> I don't think you're the only ones, though, because I've noticed a lot of comments on Twitter and on the posts that people are like, man, all of a sudden, I want to watch a bunch of Star Wars shit all over again, like I've been working my way through Star Wars again. >> That's what I've been doing lately. >> So anyway, our trooper didn't make sense for us, so we had to make up the commandos for our game initially, but they kind of caught on, I guess, which, like I said earlier, do you guys, I'm kind of proud that our team was able to make a character that was loved enough to continue on and have some books written about them and toys and stuff. >> And interesting, canonically, a good niche. >> Yeah, so we basically created the commandos for our game, and I don't know how other groups really feel about it or what they're used in other forms. >> I really feel like it shows the, I think, one big reason why people are like, I'm going to go back and watch the movies now, I'm going to go read some of these books and everything is because there's such versatility in the Star Wars universe that it allows that sort of creative input to come in and not have everything fall apart. >> Did you guys have to consult with a Star Wars lore master to make sure they were crossing any streams? >> It's pretty, I'd say it's pretty crazy, actually, they have a whole department called Lucas Licensing that that's what their deal is, and like I said, Ryan Kaufman, who was sort of a content guy, internal to the studio, was also worked with them to sort of make sure we're staying in kind of like a really quick anecdotal thing, the sun-fat assassination in the very beginning of the game, just to get the approval to assassinate Sunfak who's a canonical character was a big deal, and he's a minor one, right, like who cares about Sunfak? >> You only seem like briefly in the second movie, yeah. >> Yeah, so there was some discussion in the comments, actually, is Sunfak the Trandoshan or not the Trandoshan, the G-Noshan, the G-Noshan that's meeting with the other separatists? >> No, that's Poggle the Lesser. >> Okay. >> So the leader is Poggle the Lesser. >> Sunfak was like just a henchman, like literally a henchman to that guy, the guy from the beard, you're talking about the guy from the beard and all that, Poggle the Lesser, whatever. So Sunfak was just his henchman, and even to assassinate him had no idea, we had to get all this approval. >> I thought he was that guy. >> Yeah. >> I thought he was Poggle the Lesser. >> While he missed the session, those two get confused a lot. >> All those bugs look the same. >> Well, that's because you don't think to yourself that you're going to go and assassinate somebody's henchman, you think you're going to go to assassinate the guy. >> Right. Well, I'm not positive, but we could have even asked if we could assassinate the guy first. >> First, right. >> And they said no. >> Right. >> Well, that's assassin there's henchman. He's got a name. >> It almost makes more sense that Delta Squad would be sent after someone that was like a sort of cog as opposed to the leader, because they're the guys that don't get any glory, they're the guys that get sent on the ship missions that need to be done for other things to happen. >> Yeah. There is a theme throughout the whole game that these guys are the enablers around the star of the show. >> Black ops. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Black ops. >> Black ops. >> Black ops. I love that whole mythology. >> I was going to say, did you guys have to sit there and kind of carve out, like to be a commando means that you are somehow genetically like this and you have a personality that is like this, like that somehow justifying the fact that I assume it was mostly just a good design choice to give them different voices and stuff, right? I mean otherwise if they all sounded like the clone guy, it would just be the most confusing thing I would have gone insane if that was the same voice. >> I would actually admit it was an evolution because, and it was actually one of the darlings I probably personally hung on to for too long because I was all, for whatever dumb reason, artsy fartsy reason, I was all into like the clone experience. What's it like to be a clone? That's how I opened that way, you know, when you're in the beaker. >> Yeah, we took it to the degree which was cool, I mean it was neat to do that, but in gameplay it would have never worked, right? I wanted them to be all automatons and just what is it like to break free of that rather than start that way, so the whole evolution of like they were genetically predisposed to be a commando or something, that actually came later because we wanted to kind of justify why these guys were commandos and so it wasn't the plan original right now. >> The other way seems like it would have been a really complicated story to tell too. >> Yeah, I've heard from people after the fact that the four squad members were more memorable than a lot of other squad games out there, you know, Rainbow Six is kind of hard to tell who's who and I couldn't tell you. >> I couldn't tell you. >> All the rights. >> Because they're all interchangeable, they all have the same demeanor, they all say the same shit just in different voices and they might be of different ethnicities, if they're all wearing the same gear whereas in a sci-fi shooter you have the luxury of saying okay well that guy's got a white outfit with green stripes. >> Well in that in a way it kind of also felt like I was telling everyone last time that they kind of had a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles dynamic going on, so. >> Yeah, which one do you think has done it's out? >> There's a debating about that, I will fully admit that TMNT didn't actually come into it. >> After the fact that was a totally funny part. >> Have you heard about the fact that they're supposedly I think is it seven tell me or three eight tell me? >> It's okay and the fourth only three eight tell me it can be found somewhere and some people are saying that that is, there's a rumor that that's sort of pseudo confirmation that there's at least plans in the works for Commandant. >> True or false? >> No idea. >> One million three twenty. >> No idea. >> Believe. >> Yeah, I haven't been there for, I haven't been Lucas for years, I have no idea but. >> There definitely were team members from Republic Commando on for some least and maybe, I don't know, maybe one of them put that in there as a fun Easter egg. >> Business wise, how did Republic Commando do for a Star Wars game? >> I think it did well, actually they didn't anticipate it to do as well as it actually ended up doing. And I don't know if it's cool for me to say any numbers but. >> I mean they're what's available by MPD I would think. >> It could be. >> It is but all that stuff, MPD numbers like that are actually not. >> They're not the same as internals. >> Are you subscribed? >> Oh, really? >> Yeah, you're not allowed to disclose stuff like that unless they say it's okay. >> Yeah. >> But I think it did well. No, I think it did well and of course I haven't been there for years and I don't know what the plans are but I'd be totally stoked if somebody did another one. >> Yeah, I mean I guess it did well enough for them to think about bringing it back out on Steam. >> It seems like now. >> That was an honor as well. >> Now would be a really good time for them to really consider it given that, I don't know if you talked about this last time but like the Clone Wars series on Cartoon Network is huge. >> Yeah, I mean I've never seen it. >> I guess it's Cartoon Network's highest rated show. >> Wow. >> Period. Like it's the highest rated show they've ever had. >> I actually never went and saw the most recent Clone Wars movie that I ever knew. >> Yeah, I mean it's the stylization of it's really cool and I definitely appreciate it. I haven't gotten it to myself. >> I like them better when they're drawn rather than. >> You have like a Samurai Jack. >> It's the Samurai Jack. >> Yeah. >> It was awesome. >> It's not even any more? >> No, it's a CG show. >> Oh, it's also a CG show. >> It's a CG show. >> And I mean to be fair it sort of has like a stylized almost Gendy Tardikovsky kind of look at the characters. >> It is, they still kept it in that style but it's still CG and not drawn the way it was. >> And I love 2D animation so like I was really into the 2D ones. And the 2D ones they had this sort of sense of minimalism about them and I'm not talking in terms of just the artwork because of course it does, but I'm also talking in terms of the stories themselves. There's lots of long moments of silence or like just movement, you know, and it was the kind of stuff that they tend not to do a lot in cartoons. They tend to like try to fill them up with as much stuff as possible. >> Which is especially interesting considering that they were like five minute long shorts. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> So when you guys made the game you clearly made it thinking there was going to be a possible sequel, right? >> Yeah. >> I mean the, as you probably don't necessarily remember there was sort of a restructuring of the company about the time we shipped. So the team was pretty much disbanded at the time and a lot of us left. But I don't remember that because that's happened a few times. >> It's happened a couple times. Yeah. I mean everybody goes through layoffs. >> The great perks for LucasArts everyone remembers now is the purge following the release of The Force and the League. >> Right. >> That was the first one. >> No. >> Yeah, it wasn't the first one. I mean we had high hopes it probably would have been predicated on the success of the game if we would have done a sequel. But we were, I mean to be honest, I think we were kind of building a shooter team. Like we knew the first one wasn't going to be stellar, right? Like we were shooting for as high in the 70s/ around 80 as we could, but we'd never built the shooter ourselves before. And as this team and we had some expertise but we were just trying to build a team where yeah, we hoped we could keep making them because we're all shooter fans, we're all squad shooter fans and it's like yeah, it'd be cool, you know? >> So it's kind of rebel commando and imperial commando like you just keep going. >> Was there a- >> Oh man. >> Did you guys write out a storyline at all for the second one? >> No, we never got that. >> Okay, I was going to say because you know the second one ends with Sev being captured and like the whole Master Yoda come in and I thought maybe there was like- >> Yeah. >> We just wanted to cliffhanger, we didn't know how it was going to- we had some ideas >> Sure. >> But it was like Sev was clearly the coolest one and to, you know, I don't know, maybe he goes solo and you know, they go save him years later or something, you know, kind of heart of darkness style or something. >> What got excited at us? >> Story wise. >> Ah, so as you could probably tell, I'm not a big story guy, I'm more of a fiction guy like it's not a big narrative game. But I don't know if really, I can't think of anything being that got cut but kind of a cool anecdotal thing is that the original concept for the game actually was going to take place all on Geonosis as sort of the longest day, it was going to be the day in the life of this squad and it was all during this one battle. But then we realized, well Star Wars is kind of about Planet Hopping, you want to go to different locations and that was another one of my babies that was hard to kill. And I kind of, I kind of fessed up that, you know, that it really was probably a better choice for the Star Wars fan to go to different places. And we could also, you know, kind of relate directly to the episode 3 by going to Keshek. And so I think the biggest thing that was probably cut was the fact that we left the Planet of Geonosis and didn't just stay there. It was kind of a neat idea though, I think it was actually our art director's idea originally who eventually became the producer Chris Williams and he was like, what if we make the whole game on one location in one battle, you know, and it's all of the Black Ops stuff that they did behind us. That really would have been hard to make interesting the end of the time. I know. Geonosis wasn't an interesting planet from the movies. And that's exactly, I mean we did some studies, you know, some art studies to see like how much variety could we get, you go to the depths of the planet. Underground Moskevrons. Yeah. So and even within the campaign that we have in the game that shipped, we tried to have some variety, you go into the, you know, the Joy Control Ship and you go into the Catacombs and the factories and stuff so, but kind of we stretched it as far as it could go. Yeah. And it was kind of like, you know, maybe an hour or so. A little further. Yeah. Tiny bit further. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't, I guess there have been other games that have kind of done that same thing like the First Brothers in Arms game kind of took place all in like the course of like a day. Right. So I mean, I guess yeah, it could happen, I guess it would just have to be like, like maybe if you had them leave the planet inside like another ship or something and get up inside an imperial ship or not an imperial ship, a trade federation ship. Right. Yeah. So there could have been a bunch of different devices we could have done, but ultimately we were super excited about what I'm trying to tell you, Tim, is that if you go and leave and go to design the second one, take me with you. Good idea. I think that's an enough person to solve problems. What do you think you are, Sean Elliott? No, not at all. What are you going to say, Tyler? Are you about to speak? No, no. Okay. I just didn't want you to feel left behind. Should we, uh, should we do like the final chapter? Yeah. I don't want to stay in the guy's way for it. And like I said, be honest. You don't. Can I, can I ask two questions? And this is, no, that's always pooping on my good time asking them questions. These are the same. These are, these are the questions that I got the most interesting answers from when we talked to the guys from gun, which is, um, usually most developers have just this one thing that keeps them up at night on their game that they just like that doesn't come together until the very end. They're never really sure how it's going to be received. There's also something that years later that they're really, that they look back and they're really happy about. So I mean, what looking back is the thing that kept you up at night on Republic Commando and then what are you most satisfied with four years later? Right. Hmm. Those are, yeah, those are good questions. Um, I guess off the cuff, the thing that I think we worried about the most, which you guys have mentioned and like I said, it's, it's not flawless by any means, um, is the way that the squad was going to come off both in from an AI sense, but also from a, from a mechanic sense, you know, the whole like marker thing where you, I was actually really interested to see what you guys thought about it because the whole like hard points, you know, that you click point and click. It's not actually very rainbow six, right? It's very, it's kind of limiting. You can only put a sniper guy there and you can only put, there was actually a point in the design where each hard point you had a choice, what it was going to be, or you could actually have a little radio menu or something come up and you'd be like, oh, it's a sniper this time. You're going to really quickly do that, but we ended up simplifying it. So you could just point and click and I thought people would, especially hardcore squad fans would feel that's too limiting and yeah, so that was one thing that I was worried about like how well received people would, would see that, you know, as a squad mechanic because it was kind of a, I mean, to boil it down, it was a little bit of a dumb down. It was streamlining. It was streamlining. Yeah. Well, we'll spin it in streamlining. But the dumbing down is bad. Streamlining is good. Right. But see, in a way that I actually felt that that worked well because then rainbow six or like ghost recon, you may be able to tell them to go wherever, but they don't have a weapon that can specialize, they're always stuck with one weapon. So having the ability to have them switch to a different weapon, those points, if it had just been like always, you can only go to these points and they'll do whatever from there. Yeah, that would have been a lot more broken feeling, but the fact that you had to choose between like, like the rooms with the spider droids are kind of a good example because anytime you fought a spider droid, there would always be like grenade spots or heavy weapon spots. And so, and so you had to kind of, uh, you had to kind of choose between the ones that you wanted. And I think those points kind of made like a more strategic in a way during those parts. The way I ran into problems with that was that it was almost like spoilers. Like, I knew that if there was these grenade slifes around, I was like, okay, I know what's behind that door. That's a good point. I know what's going to happen. Yeah. And then also it was, uh, I couldn't, there was no distinction, at least on the version that I was playing, I was playing, I got it on Steam and, uh, there was no distinction between the sniper spots and the heavy weapon spots. I didn't know until I clicked on it and the guy went up there and he would, and he would go, now time to use a real weapon, I go, oh, okay, that's a heavy weapon. Not a sniper spot. They had the same icon. Yeah. I mean, I guess that's like an, an eternal design problem, right? Like, uh, like you see it in this with, uh, you know, like you're saying it can be a spoiler, but it's also in other games like Hitman, you know, there's going to be a spot to get a guy when there's like a tub, you can open up and there's like a spot for a body. True. Yeah. Like, how do you get around those? Yeah. I have the answers. I have the answers. Hiding the mechanics from people, you know, because you want them to be easy to use and understandable, but you also don't, you know, you don't want to, you don't hide them. Did you guys see any spots in this last section where, um, you know, the icon to position, you know, your, your guys wouldn't necessarily be there, you know, if you're looking, but then if you hovered over it with your reticle, you would see the icon. Like I noticed there were some like downed wookies that the icon wouldn't be there. Yeah. Sometimes it was like it took it. I don't know if I, I don't know if I had to cross a trigger point or something, but the spots wouldn't pop up until like after we'd been in the room for a little bit, you know, like, Oh, now I can use those. It's probably some bugginess. Yeah. I was going to say that might, that might very well be our steam versions. I had the same thing. Oh, okay. And I don't, but I don't know. There could have been times when we had to script certain things. So you couldn't trigger ones before we wanted you to, you know, and it just didn't flow quite quite well, you know, I mean, I think this is the only game I can think of out the top of my head with the possible exception of the last game that irrational did before Bioshock that used Unreal Engine 2 is like a squad based shooting engine. Hmm. I can't really think of anything else. Was it the first Rainbow Six Vegas wasn't that done on like a Unreal 2.5 or something? No, no, like a Unreal 2.5 is just shorthand for what irrational did for Bioshock. I'm telling you, isn't I'm pretty sure the first Vegas is done on that. I didn't think it was three. On two or two point five? Vegas? Vegas was two. Yeah, Vegas was two. Yeah, Vegas was two. It started on two and then moved toward three near the end and Bioshock was developed on two and they added like library management and stuff like that from three into their pipeline. That's what I'm saying at the end. I think Vegas was also 2.5. We did a lot of unique tech for we use the Unreal Engine, but there was a lot of a lot of unique code that we ended up having to do because of the squad stuff. I actually remember when we started Republic Commando, ironically, early versions of Gears were starting to work on early versions of Gears at the same time. Yeah, it was a question that came to mind, but I wasn't sure if we were going to have time. Was there ever thought about pushing development back like six months and making it an XGen title? Yeah, the timing was weird and you guys mentioned that I think in the first episode. Really what ended up happening? Like I said, as the company was going through a lot of transitions and it was sort of like our fate was sealed, so to speak. We couldn't really do anything else other than ship at that point. A lot of the guys knew they were going to be laid off after we were done in a testament to this team, which was an awesome team. They stuck through till the very end to ship it. It had its flaws, but we were super proud of it. It does feel like a labor of love in a lot of spots. That's good. That's good to hear. Absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about the third campaign of Kashuk. Yeah, we were sort of pandering toward that anyway. Were you lower past the like 2,000 meter trees? I don't know if you guys noticed how long you're going to. Yeah, at first I was like, "Okay, yeah, we're descending into trees." And I was like, "Oh yeah, this is Kashuk where the trees are like skyscrapers and they're still going." Yeah, so it makes sense. Oh my god, the trees are not skyscrapers, just like in the movies and books. Wow. Yeah, so what was the reason you guys chose to go with like trans-dotions rather than just like fighting droids the whole time? Trans-dotions have always been like the enemy of the Wookiee, like in all Star Wars. They have, but they've played really not a role at all in extended fiction or books or anything besides like a couple of bounty hunters. This might be the first Star Wars game I can think of that had trans-dotions as a antagonistic. Definitely, a bunch of us are geeks, you know, and a lot of people at LucasArts go there because they are Star Wars fans. And so, trans-dotions, I don't know, boss because it's freaking cool. So we wanted to live with boss, and we did our own version, right, to, you know, they kind of had the little sort of semi-inquality to them, you know, as they kind of lumbered around and the commando trans-dotions are very much the mirror image of the Republic commando guys. But I think the idea was coming from the Wookiee side because we knew we were going to have Wookiee and trans-dotions sort of stuff going on in the final campaign. So we just kind of brought him into the middle campaign as well. And they were humanoid-like, but they were still a well-known, you know, at least by fans race. And we didn't see him enough, we thought, you know, there was, there were an enemy in dark forces, right, and maybe in Jedi Knight, and the concussion rifle, which I think you guys talked about, that's the sort of delayed effect area effect, like concussion rifle, the conch rifle, as we call it, was like one of the coolest weapons in Jedi Knight. And we're all like, I worked on the expansion pack for Jedi Knight, and we all tested it as testers. And so like, we bowed down to the Jedi Knight team, and some of the guys on our team worked on that game as well. Oh, right on. So, what did you guys in general think of the third campaign? Like the whole thing in general? Yeah, we'll just start with that and go from there. There's a punch in the balls. For some reason, like, even though it was definitely the hardest section of the game, and I died more than any of the other sections, I also had the most fun in this section of the game. Like, I think it was because I finally embraced the, well, I say classic shooter-ness of it, but it's not so much a classic because it's not like it's 20 years old or whatever. Yeah, but yeah, it feels like a PC shooter, you know, it's like there's hordes of enemies coming at me, and I have to do things like jump out behind the corner, attack, jump back, jump out, jump back, you know. And but the fact that I have a squad there that I could, then there were always more stations to put them on too. Like in this level, it always seemed like there was, there was, in almost every area that there was going to be a battle, there would be three spots to put my guys, so there was nobody I had to babysit. And almost always there were also, every, every arena was followed by a room that would have three health stations. Right. And I was like, oh God, finally, three health stations. Why did it take them so long to put three health stations next to each other, so I didn't have to have them go in line, you know. Yeah. And so it was, it just felt really well paced. It was like battle heal, battle heal, you know. And I think in some of the earlier parts of the game, it wasn't paced as well. This is definitely the one that I played the most aggressively. Me too. Like anytime I would enter a door, if I immediately saw a spot, a guy could go to him, like you there, you there, you there, I would immediately throw them on spots. I didn't enter like hesitantly or move in like that, so I paid to be highly aggressive. And this was also the first, this was also the first section of the game where I put them on aggressive the entire time, and I was like, just go kick ass, just go and I was always hitting F1 as well. Yeah, yeah. And then I noticed in many of the last missions, I was always hanging on to my fifth weapon, you know, I was like not using it, trying to save it for big guys. And I was always getting to the end of the stage and not having it anymore and being like, well screw that, like as soon as I get these, I'm just going to lay into them and use them. And that actually, I wish I had been doing that all along in the game because it was clearly designed for you to not hold these weapons, you're supposed to pick them up and you're supposed to use them. And once I just embraced that, I then like, yeah, I could be a fucking company. And this mission definitely gave you the most choice as far as the weapons you wanted to use to take it on, because I was always like, well, do I take a shotgun or a bowcaster or a homing rocket or just pick up what's ever in front of you and use it until it's good. And that way, it sort of, it reminded me a little bit of Halo, which is where like you take the weapons that are there and you use them as best you can in the situation given. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely was more aggressive on this level as well because like, I felt like the beginning of this campaign was really, really tough. And so I kind of got frustrated with it, but like, one thing I did to overcome my frustration and like, and I got better was I took my headphones off and I played without sound. Oh, really? And I did much better. Really? Wow. I was just, yeah, I was getting frustrated. There was like too much noise, like too much chatter and I was just like, fuck it, I'm going to take off my headphones. Oh, wow. I did much better without. There was a lot more cross talk happening on this mission than the other missions and I don't know if it was a bug or not, but the advisor would be talking and then Sav or Fixer or Scorch would be talking over him. So it'd be hard, it'd be hard to hear what he was saying. Yeah, I noticed that too. I'm almost, I'm almost positive that, that at least some of that or, I mean, I could be wrong, but it seemed like bugs a lot of times because I had the same things happen where they would be cross talking to be like so awkward though, right? Yeah. Which is going to be really fun when I'm putting together the last movie for this episode. And I have to try to isolate those things, but I think the things that there, there's like two or three things in this section that consistently drove me nuts, even though it was probably the best paced and best designed out of all the missions, which is good because a lot of times shooters fucking fell apart in the last third as opposed to coming together. Much of shooters. Yeah. Games. Period. True. One is fucking scavenger droids. I would like to know if the person who came up with scavenger droids is still at LucasArts and if they are, do you have their address? Right. Oh my God. Just because they're so cheap, like they're scripted, like it's like a James Cameron movie, they're on a fishing line just like falling toward you because that was the easiest way to do it. Right. I'm telling you, I still don't get hit by them like hardly ever. Well for me it wasn't getting hit by them, but the first arena where you fight a bunch of them, there's no ceiling. So they're just flying really, really high and like, I mean, all your shots are just banshing around on your shield and those fucking lights are on. Oh God. At least when there was a ceiling, they were right there and close enough for you to take one down. I also kept thinking fucking rocket turrets. I didn't have a problem with the rocket turrets. And finally, one ball's play sniper shot can take any of those turrets. It's just getting in a position and taking that shot. Yeah. Well, that's why you've got to just be like, you go over there and get shot at while I take this. Hey, I mean, Sev, go over there. Yeah. And the other is, I kept either getting shot from behind by my squad or Wookie would run in front of me right as I was throwing at their old detonator. Well, the Wookie part with the thermodynamic, I understand you getting shot by your squad. That's like when you're in any other game and you get shot from behind because you step in front of someone's gun like Lifford did. Well, I just walked through a door like I would be first because they always follow me and I would open the door and there'd be like four or five million battle droids. And all of a sudden they would open fire and instead of hitting the battle droids, it would all go into me. Oh, the only time that happened to me is if I set them up in their stations and like they were, you know, snipering down a long hallway and then I went charging down the hallway all rambos down and they're all shooting me in the back because they're trying to hit the droids in front of me. Yeah, I was going to say, I think part of that comes from me and you being different type commanders, you're like, I'll lead the way you follow behind me. I'm always like, you guys show me where they're at bullets, Munch, I mean, it was a, it was a, I remember vividly the pretty controversial decision to do the whole, I mean, for lack of a better term, collective health where basically the whole squad was your health bar. You know, even though you had your own health bar, right? So they don't die permanently, like basically you don't die permanently and unless everybody goes down or you're by yourself or you're by yourself. And so that was a very controversial sort of decision because from, at the time, squad games didn't do that. Right. You could lose a guy and that was important. It ended up being a very important thing because you could let them go ahead and not worry as much as you would in a rainbow six game and actually use them to your advantage in that way. Or you could go forward hopefully and go down and then they could come heal you. Well, it's funny because later squad based games, like one thing, if there's like one thing Republic commando did that I think these other squad based games later did too, which was great, was that if you went down as your main guy, your squad could bring you back. Yep. Whereas like the first Vegas and the first ghost recon advanced war fighter, like not both of those games came out after this. Yeah, it's true. But I'm saying both of those when you went down as the leader, you were dead. Yeah. And then in ghost recon two and rainbow six two, your guys could bring you back. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like they added that. I remember that in Vegas too. But I'll take a word for it. I was like, I mean, I was like such a, such a nice thing to have, which that's another way that is maybe how you play as a commander because the first thing I do anytime I go down, come get me. I don't care what you're doing. I'm like, come get me. Well, yeah, I do that because I just don't trust them to take stuff down. It's not because I think the AI is dumb necessarily, it just, it just seems like I do more damage. And I don't know if that, if that's actually literally true. Or if it's just that I'm actually aiming for spots where they'd take more damage. Yeah. I don't remember exactly how they were tuned. I mean, I know we fool around with the balancing for the guys, you know, a lot. Because you, I mean, you, I understand why I would do more damage to them from a gameplay perspective because you want, I'm the leader, I should feel like I'm the one that's, that's really leading the team that's like, making sure that should, it gets handled, like in ordering them around as opposed to, I don't even need to play because they're just annihilating everything. Right. That's a tricky balance that I know, I remember us having trouble with because obviously we could make them pinpoint accurate every shot if we wanted to. Right. And so we kind of had to fudge it so they didn't like take over for you. And I remember, I vaguely remember times when they were just too powerful, you just couldn't play the game. You felt like you were, you know, backseat. Plus it just might be that you're really good, Arthur. Yeah. How? Doing your guys. No, I always did the same thing to myself as I was like, come pick me up because otherwise you're going to stand there shooting until you die. They fought me a lot on this one for reviving me. Like the consequences. Well, they also says I have to kill these enemies first. They always say that, but they still come and get you. I had to fucking pound on that thing more than once for the head to go. It seemed like they protested my calls for revival a lot too, like try to die at a better time, sir. We need a replacement for Delta. Yeah. Which, by the way, I love like all of the, there is a lot of variations of the stuff that they would say. It wasn't like the same line over and over and over again. Who did the right? I was going to mention, because you guys mentioned that last time too, there are some classic lines. Yeah. Ryan Kaufman, who I mentioned, who's a content guy, but also one of our writers. And Mike Stemly actually came on as well. And actually our AI, our squad AI programmer wrote some lines and Justin Lambros. But Mike Stemly, really funny guy, contemporary Tim Shafer, worked on the fourth Monkey Island game. He was one of the directors in, yeah, he's a telltale now. And he's a funny guy, but he and Ryan are hilarious. I mean, that'd be general. You said that that was one of the things that you were worried about was how the squad would be received and stuff, because I mean, I guess it's always the potential for just to come off as like cheesy or something like that. I actually felt, I mean, of course, there were the cheesy moments. The moments of bravado. But there's, but that's the thing is that I think even if you look at our comments and stuff that people still, it was pretty well received, like just the little things from when they do fist bumps to wherever, because I mean, I only saw the fist bump once, but it was in such a perfect spot. But that's what I'm saying. It's just the little things like that. Like it doesn't happen all the time, but it'll just be the little exchanges that they do. And you can still pull up like the, there were just lines that actually made me laugh. Yeah, which I didn't expect at all. And like in this, in this last campaign, there was one in particular and like, I don't know if Seth says this one or if he was just scripted to say it at this one time, but like you're going through all these doors after this big major, I just got through with this hellacious battle and like, I was feeling pretty good because like we got through it with only like a couple downs or whatever. And we go through the doors and and then it's Seth's voice is like, Oh, damn it. Like what's said? What's wrong? I lost count of my kills. Yeah. I think I can't, I think that comes at the same time forever, but that was awesome. That probably was Mike here. Yeah. Ryan's actually a planet moon now and what are they doing these days? I don't know. I don't know what they're working on recently. Is it safe? Is Planet Man, is that the same people who did a armed and dangerous way back? And then he's part of a fucking game on steamy giants, citizen cabuda. Giants since Brian Giants was before. Yeah, before armed and dangerous. Yeah, they're funny. They're funny group too. Giants. Yeah. I've been giants as a testament to like how funny those guys can be. Yeah. So Ryan do armed and dangerous for a game club sometime. That'd be good. Shark gun. Anything with a shark gun. Yeah. And also there's just some really fucked up exceptionally weird British kind of humor in that game. Yeah. Yeah. Got a lot of notes. Yeah, we didn't want to take, ultimately we didn't want to take ourselves too seriously. So the fist bumps occasionally and the humor, I think we, at one point we realized we were taking ourselves too seriously, you know, the whole clone thing, like I was saying, like we went too far. And so we added in a lot more humorous lines and even halo, right? Like the grunts are kind of comical, right? Yeah. That's a little something. Yeah. I think we officially won. You know. Those are great lines. Yeah. I mean, it's still like the tone is much more serious than most of their Star Wars games. It is. It's not. It's something we brought up in the beginning. Yeah. I mean, as far as it being so grim and... Right. That was fully, like that was the number one goal for us. We wanted, we wanted to make a darker, it sounds cheesy, but darker, good here. Star Wars. I don't know, we were fans, we grew up with the movies and stuff, but we're older now and we want to see that side of... And in some way I think that, you know, there's something less, it's almost more glamorous all these games about Jedi's and stuff. And so there is something more about a guy, like just a guy in the field. It's the blue collar, so... Right. And that's why... The blue collar Star Wars game. Like I said earlier about not having a Jedi present in the game, and even the only lightsaber we had was that tongue-in-cheek was that we didn't want it to be super heroic. We wanted it to be the dude that cloned no less on the ground, like making shit happen. And so that was a big goal. I don't know if you guys played Medal of Honor, Allied Assault, the first sort of big PC game with Normandy, marching the beach in Normandy. I mean, I played the first Medal Honor game, I believe it was a PS2, but it still had the assault. Yeah, similar stuff. But Allied Assault specifically was sort of that was where... And actually a lot of those guys formed Infinity Ward. So that was like... That was... Allied Assault was the first big PC shooter where that sort of sense of the common soldier was really captured. That was a big influence for us. And I'm super happy for the Infinity Ward guys, still doing going strong after they left EA and stuff. And that was, yeah, that was... They left to join the Empire. The Empire of Activision. So also in this final campaign, it was really cool to have the Wookiees fighting alongside of you. Like every time I ran into one, I was doing everything I could to keep them alive as long as possible. They're just so aggressive. They are. But that's what's so great about them, is they'll walk up and they'll just start tossing around super battle droids like they're rag dolls. And that's the point where this battle droids get funny because I'm pretty sure I heard a super battle or I'd say something like, "Put me down." That would be great. Oh man, I wish I'd heard that. Or this is unacceptable. Yeah. But yeah, I was doing everything I could to try to keep the Wookiees alive. And it's like, sometimes they were scripted to die, but there were other times where it was just like, no matter what I did, I could not keep that. Like, I would even reload sometimes. Okay, there's a Wookiee, quick save. I would reload several times trying to keep them alive and he just couldn't stay alive. But it was still awesome just to be next to them and have them, because they're not like Chewbacca Wookiees where they're really tall and slender. They look like they're monsters, man. They're the beef cakes of the Wookiee. Yeah, that was another controversial. I'm trying to think of what they look like in episode three. They kind of look like the ones you guys have with the hand armor. Yeah. Yeah, and so there was a, because we started developing ours before we knew what they were going to look like in episode three. Really? Because, does that mean like, I just have to nerd out for a second, because Tarfool at least looks like identical to the way he looks in the movie. Yeah, and so we ended up being at one point a back and forth. So we started early and we, they're admittedly pretty tight-lipped about how the movie stuff is going to go before it comes out, so they won't even tell us everything. But we were like, well, we know about Chewbacca, like, do they all look like that? And they're like, no, no, they don't look like, so we started fooling around. It's like had, like, Knights of the Republic, I don't remember Knights of the Republic one. The first one you did go to cash, yep. Right. I mean, so, like, did you go back to some of that, like, for reference? Well, the Knights of the Republic was, was that Post Republic command? That was 2002? Was it? Yes. It was Xbox One. Yeah. Yeah, so were we, but, um, yeah, so I don't remember. I mean, it was also BioWare, so, I mean, their, their assets aren't necessarily shared with the LucasArts team. Right. And they, they, basically, we started stylized and we weren't sure how far we could go, but then I think there was a bit of a back and forth from our directors, as far as, like, how beefy we could make our movies. I mean, the Transosions are pretty stylized in a lot of pieces. Yeah. That was intentional as well, yeah. Because we didn't want them to all look like Bosque. I was going to say, you know, in like, just turn that nerd out for another second, like, to transition weapons and creation of weapons in general in the game. A lot of these, as far as I know, are like, you guys made originally for the game. So how did that work as far as, like, getting those into canon or into lore? You know what I mean? Because I'm pretty sure, like, in other books about commandos and stuff, they talk about those things, you know? So. Yeah. I mean, the, like, the Concussion Rifle, like I said, was, was back, I think, developed for, for Jedi Knight, or actually, it was in Dark Forces as well. So, like, that one was kind of a, a gimme. But the shotgun was like, we needed that, we wanted that gameplay. And... It's hard to have a shooter without shotgun. Yeah, exactly. And Ryan, or, you know, probably just wrote some good copy for it, like, describing what it was, and the ranch kind of bought it, you know, like... I mean, and the dialogue in the game that sort of broke it down, it almost broke the fourth wall a little bit where it's like, Jesus Christ, I can't believe someone still uses a shotgun. You know, it's an energy weapon that looks like a shotgun. Yeah, an energy weapon that has the outputs, like... I didn't think trying those ones were that nostalgic or whatever, I mean... Yeah, maybe we'd try a little hard on that one. So, it was a little heavy-handed, but I mean, it did make sense, like, it fit it within the fiction. So, how much, just, you know, since we, since you just mentioned the ranch, like, how much of a, of a word did someone, like, George Lucas, or someone, you know, some direct Lucas underling command and be like, "Yes, this'll fly now, there's no way that this could ever be existing in the Star Wars universe?" They're pretty good, actually. I mean, he isn't as involved. I think he was way more involved as I understand with the Force Unleashed, for instance. But we, like I said, I think we flew under the radar enough to where we're... Yeah. Where the quirky, you know, squad, Star Wars squad shooter, like, you know, and so they kind of left us, admittedly, alone, but the, but Ryan, because he was on the team, and the content guy for... Ryan, is it Kaufman? Kaufman, yeah. Yeah. He, he was kind of our conduit to the ranch, so he could actually talk to them directly and massage, you know, anything that would go on. And I'm trying to think of if they declined anything that we wanted to do, like, Yoda's pretty sacred, for instance, right, and so, and so we had, we didn't show him, but we had him at the end of the game as in voiceover, and we just, that was like our only, you know, little, like, star character. Was there a mandate going in that this game could be more violent than a lot of previous Star Wars games had been because Revenge of the Sith was definitely, like, the darkest Star Wars movie? It wasn't, it wasn't from the ranch. That was a goal of ours as well, that we wanted, we wanted to be as close to mature as we could. I just saw, we've seen some Jedi and, like, lightsaber maiming in the, in the other movies and the other games, but, I mean, I've never seen a droid tear someone apart or a trandoshan tear someone apart than what they do in this. I didn't know that it wasn't a mature game, actually. I thought it was just-- I know human blood. Yeah, I don't think it was. Okay, yeah, just because, like, it's not like you don't pop the heads off of guys or blow them into pieces. You can shoot as many aliens as you want and get a tear rating, but you, you kill a person and then it's-- That's the key. That's the key. The Trandoshan, you know, or Geanoshan, or Geanoshan. Hot Trandoshan on Geanoshan action. Exactly. So the Trandoshans were actually the only, the only enemies that I kind of had a problem with in this game and it wasn't like the basic Trandoshans or the, or the commandos. Well, the commandos, like, the, I actually ended up mistaking those for my teammates a lot. Like, if, once, once we got into the thick of the battle, if they ran into the four of us, I would turn around and I would be not shooting at somebody thinking he was one of my guys. But a few turns as well, for sure, especially this last thing. Yeah. I was just, I was just shoot first and if they, they glow blue, then I know that, that I know their friend like me. I, I actually would have done that except a couple times I ended up downing a couple of my guys because like I shot them thinking like, oh, that can't be one of them because I had them standing back there and like, no, it was one of them. It was an introduction. And it's funny because like, I don't usually make those kinds of mistakes and shooters, but in this one I did. And I think it's because like this game would throw so much at you so at once and it's not the kind of gameplay that I'm used to these days, you know, I've had years of where the shooters are very deliberately paced with a very fixed number of enemies with a very clear line of sight. I'm not used to the, to the chaos of everybody running around together and kind of this, you know, melee range kind of stuff. So it was actually a relief, you know, that's, that's a compliment to the game. It's just not quite a compliment to the, to the, to the, uh, turned ocean commandos. Yeah. And those guys specifically full, like full disclosure, like developer disclosure, those guys were literally like saving and reusing assets in a way, because they used the same animations as the commandos, skeletons, right? Like, and so it's like, well, weren't they, were they taller? What's that? Were they, they, they could have been, but it was like, when I run up to him, it's like my, I, it's, I'm like the guy from Killzone. I met nipple height. That was probably just your dude. I don't know if you, if one of, one of your commandos was standing next to them, I bet they were pretty similar. Yeah, the goal was to reuse the animations to be frank, and so they could do anything a commando could do. And maybe if we had time, we would have reanimated them, you know, so they didn't, because animations do a lot, right? Yeah, definitely. To the distance, if they move the same, you're going to mistake them for your guys. Yeah. Especially if you're quickly turning back, turning rounds and stuff, you know, like, yeah. And the, uh, the only other, then the other syndotion guys I had a problem with the, the damn mini guns. The chain gun. Yeah. The chain gun, because like they, they murder you instantly. They were a late addition. I don't even forgetting why. I mean, basically the only way I ever took him on is I specifically saved my flash bangs, like the flash grenades for those guys because it's awesome when you, when you hit them with it and they've got like the stars in front of their faces pretty much literally. But yeah, like you, if, uh, unless I could do, unless I could do, you know, the peak fire, peak fire around the corner with like a heavy weapon or something like that, then, uh, yeah, the only other way was flash bang and walk up and just melee them like 10 times until they go down. I don't want to look with the sniper rifle in those guys. Yeah. So I read a comment on, on the guys aside, this is somebody was saying that sniper rifle was the, and I actually forget how I used to take them out. There's probably some good tricks that we ended up learning. And I think the difficulty curve is, is also a good example of the typical developers got too comfortable with their own game kind of thing. And we should have toned it back, you know, ultimately, because we were too good at it. The part where you're, where you have to blow up the bridge, that part is a fucking nightmare. Really? With all the walkie bodies strewn across the thing, because ordinarily when you tell someone to take a grenade position or a head and web position, they're safe, right? Whereas there's a rocket turret that will annihilate anyone that takes up those positions. Oh, see, that was the thing is like I sniped the guys out of the rock. I kept sniping those guys, but the droids just did not stop coming in. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, they don't come, so what I did is I sniped and took the rocket turrets. Right. And then had one guy take out the droid machines because the rocket turrets were covering. The battle droids come toward the rocket turret. And for some reason it just doesn't, I don't even, I don't remember if the rocket turret or a normal turret, but it does not destroy the battle droids like that. Well, what I would actually, what actually worked out really well for me on that section, and like, this is, this isn't like some brilliant inside of mine. This is just the way that it happened when I did it, was that like I, I sent one of my guys to take over a rocket turret and I noticed that he wasn't firing very fast. And I'm like, I know these things can fire faster than this. So I was like, get out. And then I got in and I put him on the droid dispenser and then I was on the turret and I was able to take out anything that emerged from the dispensers and he took it out. One thing I noticed hacking the battle droid dispensers is that they, they will almost always completely ignore you as you're doing it. And you only get away with that in this game because of the fiction, because everyone knows the droids are stupid, even the super battle droids are not very smart. And the other game where I'm taking out the thing that makes more enemies, I'm thinking, these enemies should be attacking me, but with the droids it's like, these droids, there's no way, they even know I'm here. I would, I would see it sometimes though, like I'd send somebody up to go, to go, you know, plant the explosive and here's a super battle droid just like beat on, like, like swinging his arm and beating on the guy and like, so then I took Anthony's advice, like we talked about the last episode and I was, I would take the shock grenades and I just start throwing those because the hacking is still counting down even though everybody's there going, yep, that's what I did, I shocked my own guys the whole time. Yeah. I remember the, the LDs for the last campaign especially started getting a, a little puzzling, like, there's some really kind of ideal ways, like the bridge I remember in particular, like, again, another example of us playing our own stuff too much and not doing enough play testing maybe is that it's like, there was some couple right ways to play that and wasn't much of a problem, but it was because it was a little too puzzling, right? And a little bit of a hitman way, like, there's a right, there's the, the ideal way and that's kind of unfair. How did you guys fill up the, um, the first time you fought the droid with the staff and you had to keep-- Oh, they're the three best personal guards. As long as, as long as I had some kind of heavy weapon, which by the way, the, the Wookiee heat-seeking rocket launcher is not heat-seeking, it's just a homing launcher. But it's not even homing, like it, I can't, it, it goes in a straight line, right? Yeah. You're never far enough away from anything where it would actually be like, well, maybe if I paint this target line, if it would go. Well, like, I would wait for it to turn red, I would fight, because I know it's because it was these guys that reminded me of this is like, he would be there on the ground, usually attacking one of my guys and I, I would wait till the reticle was red, I'd fired at him and he'd jump away and the rocket would just keep going, I was hoping it would follow it. For those guys, I never used heavy weapons, I always set my guys on post and then what they would run up and start meeling him, I would run up and start meeling him from behind. I figured that out on the last one of those, I thought. Like, I was always fine with them until they started running at me, as soon as they had as soon as I had their attention, I was always like, oh, this is going to be a problem because they run faster than I back up. But if you have, if you have the heavy, if you have the, the heavy weapon attachment, every time you hit them with that, it stuns them. I'm sorry, I use that on the 8 million super battle droids like far before I saw that. I held on to those, like, they were fucking precious gold, I would never use those unless it was like, the absolute worst. Or I may have used it on one of the 17 spider droids, they were also in that mission. The spider droids are the other thing, any time I had my full squad, I never shot spider droids myself. Yeah. I just didn't tell my guys, killed it. I've seen, I never had problems, but you do a way of getting two guys, or one guy. Oh, when it's just you and Scorch. Or there's a hand. Yeah. Great. I'm stuck with the knucklehead against the spider bot. It's awesome. Yeah. As long as, as long as he's in a, a grenade perch, he's cool. Yes. I appreciate that I, at first I was confused when you get the spider bot description at the very beginning of the game and to shoot him in the eye and that damages them, and it does. But I also didn't realize until later that the little thing that pops out of their head that fires the laser around, that you can shoot that off. Oh, you can? Yeah. And I think that that prevents them from shooting the main, like their double rocket attack or whatever. You might be right. I never figured that out. Never had that. That was a fucking lifesaver. Again, I just hit it the whole time and I just let my guys do it. I mean, was there ever talk at some point that some things just took a really long time to do? Yeah. You guys were talking about the minute long. Well, I mean, the minute long things at the end of the, the second campaign seemed a little excessive when there were three of them. But also, I mean, super battle droids take a lot of ammo to kill, even if you're shooting them where you're supposed to, like the red dot on their right side and then the red dot on their head and then the head again, like, it still takes a shit ton of ammo to kill those. Like, it seems, it seems comical at moments. Yeah. Yeah. Like, especially if your point blank, you're just like, and I mean, we, we, we did make fun of the pew pew, but it makes sure, it makes your blaster seem even more pew pew when you're like unloading 200 rounds to kill us with a little droid. Yeah. But I guess the only thing I'd say there is that one of the super important lessons that I learned on the public commando and been trying to carry with me since is the importance of play testing is so critical. And in that, I mean, there were only a few studios that were really doing, I think, a good job at that at the time. And, you know, Microsoft has stepped it up a lot and they have their own usability labs and stuff. But we didn't do enough. I mean, frankly, like I said, we just got too used to things like and how big was the development team? Because it doesn't see, this was one of the last, this is at the end of the last cycle where you could do a game with like 30 people. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. No, we were, we were, I think our core was about 30 or 40. And then we peaked maybe at about 60, but it wasn't for very long. How big was QA? Our QA department, I mean, Lucas has their own QA department and they worked on multiple games. So QA was probably, on our project was five on average and then maybe 10 at the peak, you know? That was common. Yeah. So, and that's, that was just the nature of it. You know, right when a game's about to ship, they just put the whole QA department on it, which gets up to about 20 guys, but they can only do so much in a month or so. Right. So, yeah, I mean, it's become more of a science these days and that's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah, the battle droids, like another thing at the end of the game when I was talking about like going ahead and using all my weapons is the levels also had a lot of extra grenades in them. Yeah. Well, not really extra because I started using them all the time. So I was always grateful when those just show up because I was throwing grenades like mad. Like whenever, if there was a group of more than three droids standing together, grenade, like every time. Yeah. Even the standard battle droids can hurt you if there's like seven like the standard, like just the standard droids like started to ship away. Yeah, there's like eight, seven raid of them that'll just be a boom, that's what it is. It just seemed like they were doing more damage and they were smarter and they were bigger bastards in this campaign than they were in any of the others. Yeah. 100 is the numbers. I don't know. Yeah, but I like this campaign the most, particularly just because exactly like what Matt says, just how much ammo there was during about the entire level. And even, you know, I even felt your little rocket launcher and everything that was always rockets for that. There was super battle droids all the time. It was very generous with the ammo for the third segment. Which is funny because this is when I finally started using the pistol a lot. Yeah, me too. I used this one. Although, I mean, I actually enjoyed using the pistol in this mission. A lot of headshots with the pistol. Yeah. I enjoyed using the pistol in general against anything except super battle droids. Like against standard droids, it could kill them in like one shot against ten doshions, it could get them in like two shots if you were good. What are the, what's the gene oceans that fly with the laser beams? Are those gene ocean warriors or is there a different name for that? I think we call them gene oceans elites. Okay. Gene ocean elites. What is the trick to killing those motherfuckers because I've hit them at times and they just explode right away? Oh, see, anytime that's ever happened with me, it's because I had my gut. It's like specifically during that part where there's like a series of four computers you have to turn on to get the lasers up, I think, again, is that what this is? Which have conveniently placed explodable balls. Yes. Exactly. And as a rebel FM host, I really appreciated explodable balls. The thing is, as soon as I saw those, I would just shoot them right off the bat. I wouldn't wait for them to get blown up. I'd just be like, give me my, give me my gun spots, but uh, no, not the tanks. Like there are like these balls in the air. Yeah. Like those blow up real good, but the whole thing is that I never was able to take on the g-notion elites unless there was at least one to two sniper spots. Like if your guys are on sniper guns, you're pretty much good to go. But if they're in sniper spots, you're a man, those things are for some reason. For some reason, I remember, if they get close, I remember meleeing a lot. I don't know if that was it, but there, I just could swear that there's a way to single shot them and I never, I could never do it twice in a row. The other thing that we tried to leverage, which, which it was a little bit of an influence from, from Halo for sure was damage types. We tried to really leverage so you could find the weapons that would work well against certain enemies. Right. Like you guys were talking last episode about, you know, the shotgun not working good against droids, you know, one more projectile oriented that was intentional. And I think maybe the g-notion rifle that, that uh, machined in one, uh, the trandoshan rifle. No, the one, the, the one that has a sort of the area effect that's, that's got a green like, you know, like, verbally like thing, I think that works against a good against those guys. I don't think I ever used that. I never found that. Yeah. Yeah, that's, well at least in the g-notion campaign, I don't know if it was in the last campaign, but, but uh, it was a, yeah, it has kind of like a, a round cylindrical effect. Yeah, I mean, I just watched episode two. Yeah, it's based on that rifle. I, bitch, I don't think I, I don't think I, I don't think I ever used it either. They'd drop it in the first. I don't know if it was in the second. Then again, I mean, it was only this time that I realized I could actively select the pistol. So I might not. Yeah. You mentioned last time you didn't even know about it. It's because it never, it never said on, on the, on the Xbox version that you had to double tap down. Yeah. I think you selected. We ran out of buttons. That's never a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no. I mean, someone said, well, why don't you read the manual dumbass? I'm like, first of all, no, you can only find this game used and it didn't have no manual and second of all, we're just at such a point where, where we're just spoiled as console gamers where everything is just painted like on the side of a building now. In the case of an explainer sale, literally. Nice. Nice. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. It just harshed my mellow mat. Thanks. Thanks to that. Which looks cool. I mean. Yeah. No, it looks awesome. It's going to look awesome next March with 18 million other fucking triple titles. They're all Christmas part two. Yeah. That's crazy. Did the development of a repellent commando slip at all or did you have to ship when you had to ship? I mean, it was timed perfectly to come out. I think it was like a month before the end of the Sith. Yeah. Yeah. That was eventually that became intentional. I think early on, our schedule was a little different though. I think we shifted the schedule, you know, before we got into full production or something like that. Yeah. But like I said, the team was good. I mean, it was a good team about execution and so they did a great job at hitting their dates. No. That was a day one purchase for me and my roommate at the back of the day. Shocking. Yeah. But I didn't own an Xbox, so I had to talk to my roommate in the time to pick it up. That's a question I have. What was the motivation to doing an Xbox and PC title? Because this is not this gen where it makes sense to start on 360 and port everything else. Yeah. I mean, it was uncommon for it to be. I mean, it was a big deal for a lot of people. This was an Xbox and PC game. Mm-hmm. Like I'm pretty sure it was the only licensed Star Wars game last gen that didn't come out on PS2 or GameCube. I, I, for the most part, I think that the only reason was the engine. Because at the time, there was no way in hell that was going to get onto the PS2. I think. I mean, if we could have, and we actually considered trying to, if we could have, we would have put on PS2 because their install base was insane. We talked, I don't know if you remember, but Secret Level did a port of, of Unreal, one of the Unreal's, and they did also a, another Unreal game. Yeah. I think it came out on Dreamcast and PS2 at the same time, the version of Unreal that was on PS2. Yeah. So, I mean, there were some companies that we actually worked with. We worked with Secret Level before they started, you know, they got bought by, saying it. Mm-hmm. We moved off to have some success. Like, the Splinter Cell games were. Yeah. And just for our time, there wasn't, like, there wasn't a one-stop shop where we could just go to Epic and say, "Give us the PS2 stuff." Right. Like, we would have had to have done it ourselves, and we would have never made a simultaneous. From what I hear, that's kind of sort of how it is now, too. Yeah, for PS3, you mean? Yeah. Or just that Epic's like, "Hey, if you can get it working, we are totally willing to pay you." Yeah. No, they were cool. I mean, but we just, we knew it was just too far outside of what we could do. So, we just targeted the two platforms that the engine did well on, and look at that. The PC version, a port of the Xbox version? They were fully developed at the same time. They weren't ports. We did them. We had, you know, we had daily builds of both. Wow. I played both every day. Like, we tried to make it as lock stock as we could. But like, for instance, we didn't redesign the HUD for both, right? I mean, I would have probably made different PC decisions for the PC, if we had time to do two different HUDs and things like that. Why was I in a widescreen support? Ooh, that's a good one. I don't know. A different time. I mean, different time. I mean, different time. Like, man, I didn't own a widescreen TV until, like, 2007, I'm just saying. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely different time. The only reason I ask about whether or not it started on the Xbox is just because I was curious, based on the compatibility issue that most people have had issues with, is just that, like, the graphics, the driver issue, or just a video card issue. On the 360? Yeah. Well, the 360's problem is frame rate on backwards compatibility. Because it's probably software. Yeah. It is software. Yeah, it is. I haven't played them on 360, so I don't know. It's playable until there are points where there's just an insane amount of stuff going on on the screen. But it dips into about 10 to 12 frames a second, which is definitely not a problem on the PC version, which is running at, like, 140 the whole time. Dude, yeah, the PC version was silky, silky smooth. The only issue that I ran into was, like, in the first episode, there was a bump mapping problem or something. Which is why I was curious as to if there was a particular, like, technical issue that caused that, or if it's just an Unreal Engine 2 thing. Yeah, I don't recall. It's a Unreal Engine. Let's just blame it on Unreal Engine. So I said, I think we should work towards our closing thoughts about the third chapter in game in general. I thought that this chapter had the best pacing gameplay-wise at any of the chapters. Like it was the most consistently exciting with enough good breathing room, which is something that a lot of shooters don't do well, but this one actually started to do. And the third section is that there are extended periods where you're walking without fighting. But it sort of ended very abruptly. It's like, you hit a point and you're like, and it felt like there was a design decision made that, okay, well, we've got two months to finish this and, like, another hour of game, Spider Droids. That is our solution. Hangers and Spider Droids. Right. Well, they even make a joke, though. Another hanger? Oh, I guess the Wookiees like hangers. Yeah. And you know what? Hangers in a Star Wars game? I can't know with that. Yeah. Spider Droids inside the base, and for them to say, I guess they assembled it in the base. Yeah, that was really funny. They were like, how did the Spider Droid hobby kit from Waco built it? Yeah, that was funny when they walk into that room, like, how did they get that in here? They must have brought it in unassembled. It's like right on just to be dicks. Yeah, exactly. That was Mike and Ryan, really. I mean, the last 45 minutes is when it started to feel like, okay, now I am really slogging through to the end. And the SEV thing came out of nowhere. Yeah. Yeah, we had-- I don't remember if we had alternate endings or not, but it wasn't very well scripted because the whole time that we were like, SEV, SEV's gone. I had the sniper rifle looking at the fucking turret he was sitting at, and he was still there. I found you out. SEV is a traitor, SEV called in sick. Yeah, we had a hard time ending it. I mean, we wanted, like I said, we wanted to have a little bit of an opening for something in the future maybe, and again, we were self-emitted. We were less into the narrative and more kind of into the fiction, if that makes sense, you know? And you don't have a mission, and sometimes guys left behind and done, you know, like we didn't get to nitpicky about it, but I think in retrospect, people expect, I think, more out of a narrative for Star Wars game, you know, and so maybe we could have worked harder on that. I mean, sometimes. It's not a Pirates of the Caribbean, too, by any stretch of the imagination, but you just-- Yeah. I was going to say, I mean, you were saying that people sometimes expect more of a Star Wars narrative, but that depends on the game. And when I played the Jedi Academy games I did, but when I played the first Star Wars Starfighter game, I was like, eh, the narrative that really didn't matter to me at all. You don't expect much of a story from Super Bonbad Racing. Yeah, you know? Or you know, seeing Star Wars Masters, Taricazzi, you're not expecting to. There was a lot of story in that, and it was all bad. But I think that this game, it must have been really hard to balance as far as the narrative and the gameplay shooteringness of it, because you do have these four squad mates, these four cloned brothers, and then they do have a lot of character to them. So it would make sense that people get attached to them, and they want to know what happened to Seth at the end of the game, you know? Yeah, we hoped for it. Like I said, that was one of the things that kept me up, you know? Yeah. It's like we didn't want to make the faceless squad, you know, we wanted to have something there, and we want them to work halfway decent, which is as John Hancock, our squad AI programmer would tell you, it's one of the hardest types of AI to do is squad, because they're friendly. They need to look like they're players. I mean, that was one of our goals for the game was because I'm such a big co-op fan, like I wanted to bring a co-op experience that was quick and easy, like, to people who didn't work at the time co-op wasn't that common. Right, yeah. How early was the development cycle? Did you guys cut the idea for four-player co-op? So that is my biggest regret, and I'm going to call Brett DeVille out our V programmer on air now. I just wanted no one had done it, though, and no one had done four-player co-op in a game. Well, Halo had two, but it wasn't online. Yeah. No, it wasn't online. No, it wasn't. And four-player split-screen co-ops. Split-screen, like two-player, like, anything co-op, I heard my soul. And Brett, finally, he finally convinced me and the rest of us who wanted to do it that we wouldn't have shipped on time, blah, blah, blah. So I'd say it was maybe halfway through development, because, of course, that impacts your single-player design tremendously. Of course, yeah. You got to count through all the yahoos, or you're going to do whatever the hell they want. Yeah, total of nightmare, and it's probably going to be my biggest regret of my career. [LAUGHTER] It's like, well, we made that squad game with no co-op. I was wondering, going back, if you had to choose between the multiplayer component that's in it, that I have not had a chance to play it at all. No, don't. Yeah, without a doubt. I mean, the guys worked really hard on it, and we did our best, but having a multiplayer component separate was hard to live with the big boys in that, right? We did our best, we had a team devoted to it, and we made our own levels for it, right? And we had some modes and things, but the thing is, is those two don't even equate the amount of effort to do the co-op versus the multiplayer component. Oh, man, I'm sure. Because the multiplayer was just separate, right? It can be its own thing and not impact the rest of the game, so without a doubt, I would have chosen the co-op. [LAUGHTER] If they were equal. Oh, man. Especially as hot as co-op is right now. Yeah. And co-op is hot right now, area5.tv. [LAUGHTER] Nice. No, but I mean, seriously, I mean, you can't fucking throw a stick in GameStop and not hit a co-op game. It's the best way to do this. Unless we do this. Unless the story ends on Kane and Lynch. I'm going to plan. I'm going to plan someone to put that to the test. I want you to go and do your other things. [LAUGHTER] Throw a fucking stick. It just starts up. Oh, look, it hit Vampire Rain. God damn. [LAUGHTER] Well, that was the one-- that was like in episode one of Half-Life 2. When you're playing alongside Alex, she felt like a co-op player while you were playing. Those are such great moments and you can't deny the power of co-op. Yeah. Like I said, since 1996, we've been playing almost weekly, give or take, some co-op game and-- So great. Back then, we knew. What is the game of choice for co-op? These days. Yeah. So we're actually playing-- We're actually playing-- I'm going to geek out. We're actually playing Lord of the Rings online through the books because it's a very co-op centric MMO. Right. Because it's so story focused. So that's actually our current. We're trying to play through. And obviously, this is going to take us a long time weekly. We only play weekly. Yeah. You want an MMO that holds a knife to your throat and forces you to play with other people, Dungeons and Dragons online. That's another good choice. Same studio. Yeah. Actually, we couldn't convince everyone to go for D&D online. We need a fucking thief. You don't understand. We'd die every dungeon. Yeah. Because if anyone didn't play that week, right, we'd be screwed. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, we've played everything like Baldur's Gate back in the day or whatever, all the Rainbow Six games. Anything you're playing with because I can't ever get anybody to play Baldur's Gate all the way through with me. This was a core. Like I said, this was a core game. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. That's awesome, dude. Yeah. How do you guys feel about some of the modern shooter co-op games, like Left 4 Dead? You know, it's one of the more popular reasons. Resident Evil 5. Yeah, I haven't played Resident Evil 5 yet. And that's two-player only, right? Yes. Yes. Might as well be. Yeah. Yeah. I think they're great. I mean, especially, I mean, Gears pretty much streamlined it, right? I mean, it's like the penultimate sort of co-op right now. The question is whether or not it'll introduce 4-player co-op for Gears 3. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Which I think would be smart. I'm just wondering if the engine can pull it off. Yeah, that's a good point. We played Halo 3 co-op 4-player legendary all the way through. Nice. You know? So I think the trend is awesome. Left 4 Dead. As you can say, the penultimate co-op game for me these days is still Left 4 Dead. Yeah. It's just as far as we love it. Getting the 4 people. We just had to turn them in at work a couple weeks ago. Ah, cool. Are you guys excited for the second one? Yeah. Are you pro or anti Left 4 Dead 2? I'm still undecided. What is Christo Dynamic's stance? No, no, no, no, no, no, Christo Dynamic's stance. No, no, Christo Dynamic's stance. No, no, Christo Dynamic's stance. Oh, no, Christo Dynamic's stance. That's the record. G.F. Keeley was talking about how you went and saw it, went up to Valve, and he saw New Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 content. That's good. I've seen Left 4 Dead 2 a lot, and I think it's going to be fantastic. Yeah, but you're missing the New Left 4 Dead 1 content part of that equation, so people might not need to be as upset as they are. Yeah, that's what I'm hoping that they stay true to their commitment to Left 4 Dead 1. I don't know. They are. Left 4 Dead 2. Yeah, yeah. So the cynic in me is like, yay, applied some pressure, they wanted a holiday release, you know, like that's just, I have no information on that. I have no idea really makes that much from their partners' program. Yeah, maybe not. Maybe not. I'm kind of, I was hoping Valve would be more iterative with their Left 4 Dead 1 stuff. Fair enough. Um, do we have any fun? Um, will you post it on Twitter? Uh, yeah, but I don't, you know, how am I supposed to give me that computer? Create a diversion for a second. Someone talk about something nerdy. Something Star Wars nerdy? What is the most ridiculous bug that you saw? Because I actually, playing through the third campaign, I saw a pretty funny bug, which was a, a trans-ocean got knocked across a room, or I knocked him across a room with an explosion, and his bottom half stayed put, and his top half, lodged into a wall, and he stretched like a slinky. Happened to me. And then... During the prison campaign. His rocket went off, and flew him through the ceiling, and then there was another time when I, I killed two trans-ocean, one of whom I had a rocket pack, and the one with a rocket pack went shooting off through the ceiling and just disappeared, and I'm like, oh, okay, I guess he just, he just bugged out, and all of a sudden the body fell from the ceiling a minute later. I ran into the same bug twice in this, in this last section, and both times, um, Sev, Sev Scorch, and who's the third guy? Fixer. Fixer, yeah. Both times Sev and Fixer completely disappeared, and I was just running around with Scorch, and like, I could, and I would, and I would be, and I would be like, I would be like, you know, cancel order, follow, and they would be like, yeah, we're coming, you know, we're like, we're not here, lose them a lot, and I, and I would have to, like, in other, in, in other levels, they would do things like get stuck on a wall or something, and I'd have to go back and find them, but in this stage, they actually totally disappeared. Like, I wouldn't really, I realized that suddenly there's only one guy with me, and I'd run like, all the way back through the stage, and there'd be nobody. Yeah. I have, I remember, I vaguely remember that one. Yeah. An entire section where my gun disappeared, and I could, and I could do nothing but issue orders, I couldn't even revive people if they were down, but actually, I actually thought it was kind of cool. Like, there was a little section that for some reason, yeah, you know, you couldn't have a gun at all, you could do this give orders, I could, I could tell guys to go to emplacement, I could tell dudes to hack things, and I could say, hey, he'll that guy, I couldn't do anything. It's him, it's pretty Star Wars, Force Commander. Yeah. Yeah. And then we were talking also earlier about, you know, the hacking terminal, where the, the flying elite guards, you know, two of those terminals, it was sort of happy accidents for me, but it seemed like the guards got stuck below the platform, they, they would never fly up. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, hey, it works out for me. Because they were doing the flying thing, I think they were a guy that was a lot harder to figure out. Yeah. Oh, I bet. So, wasn't upset if that happened at all? So were there any other, I'm sorry. We answered all the questions, except for one, which was a, this is from a Twitter user named Asmar, A-S-S-M-A-O. Sucks to your Asmar, it's only Lord of the Flies reference. Yeah. And, and, but the funny thing is, is that his, his avatar picture on Twitter is a gizmo with the hammer and sickle on his chest. I don't know what that, I don't know. Like gizmo, gizmo is a kind of Mogwai? Yeah. Gizmo the Mogwai with the star and a hammer and sickle on his chest. A brother, brother, gizmo? I don't know. Is that a hammer and sickle or is that the astro's lego? No, I blew it way up. It's a hammer and sickle. I think he likes baseball or communism. But, you know, my eyes are pretty bad. Um, isn't Texas all communist anyways? Totally. Totally. So, Asmar says, uh, communist is racist. They're all about socialism in Texas. Asmar says, were you guys happy with the reception at the time of the release and have you seen any figures after the steam deal? That's a steam deal. Oh, no, I wouldn't know anything about that because it's so late. I imagine the only feedback we'll get on whether or not it's selling well on steam is if we see another Republican man doing it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, steam's pretty tight-lipped as far as numbers anyway, I think, right? Right. Well, they give numbers to the publishers. Yeah. Yeah, right. Which is one of the reasons why publishers love them because they can pinpoint exactly how well their game is doing. Yeah, and I wouldn't. I wouldn't know. But like I said earlier, the reception, as I recall, was better than they thought. The estimates were pretty actually pretty low, because they weren't sure. Well, for an Xbox and PC title at the end of a console generation. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like your estimates also for like how the game would review were pretty low, too. I remember reviewing really high when it came out. We were happy. Yeah. Yeah, like what? And I mean, you know, this game has a multiplayer component to it, but a lot of games this cycle, you know, the dev team sort of has to do, you know, updates and, you know, DLC. But it's like, what was sort of the studio like post the release? I mean, was that... Non-existent. Pretty much. Yeah. That was the kind of crappy thing is that we like literally we shipped and the team disbanded essentially. Like was it Friday is hell Friday and then the next Monday there was just nobody? It was not far from that. A few people. A few people are still there. Like there's a couple guys, but I mean, I don't know, 95% of the team isn't there. But well, maybe there's more than that. The sound guys are still there. Jesse Harlan, by the way, I wanted to throw out there to original music by Jesse. It was great. Good music, right? Yeah, it's really interesting. Like I read an interview with him and his like using like male coral voices. Yeah, I know. And for Anthony, a total geek flash moment, Jesse actually had to write basically, I think his girlfriend or his wife is a linguist and she helped him write Mandalore language for the chorus. Which is what it's, yeah. And before then, it had never been written. Like the chorus is all sung in Mandalorian. Yeah. It's sung in Mandalorian because clones come through. That's so awesome. Yeah, so he... I have this book at home. I couldn't find it. Otherwise I'd bring it there. But there's all of the Mandalore stuff that they did. That's some token shit. Yeah, that's great. And so he was super proud of that because he's a geek too. And Dave Collins, the music, I mean the sound, you guys mentioned Skywalker sound earlier. Skywalker only did the Foley. All the other sounds were by Dave, our internal guy. So did you, you know, once the studio is disbanded and stuff, did you guys get to like take home like awesome art assets and stuff like that for like concept art? LucasArts was never disbanded. It was there, just kind of restructured under new leadership and stuff. And so the team itself, they had, you know, they had downsized so much that this particular team didn't continue on, so... You know, I was just saying, like, you know, you don't have any trinkets. You were like, "Oh, I got laid off." Huh. I have this badass poster on my wall. But you know what this like makes me think of it just, don't condone stealing. Just with the video game industry in general, how a lot of studios disband after a game is released, it kind of brings me back to, you know, I'm watching the wire and how a lot of times at the end of the season, this team of investigators will be, you know, they're doing really good work and then through bureaucracy, they're broken up. And so it's like, they could have gone and worked on cases further and, you know, build a better partnership as a team, but, you know, they were broken apart. And I feel like game development's the same way, like, how do you, you know, how do you amend the fact that you had this team that worked so well together and, you know, you were working through each other's personalities, all these things that come up, you know, in a game development and you're learning so much together and then at the end of it, they say, "All right, everybody, you got to see ya, you know?" It's rough. I mean, I... So, through Starfighter and Jedi Starfighter and Republic Commander, we had a core group of folks that we kind of kept together for three teams. And that was kind of unheard of at LucasArts and it's unheard of, like you said, in industry and that's why I'm always envious of the guys that do stick together, the valves and, you know, and the Infinity Wars and the blizzers because they made it work, they have great products every time, right, and they stick together for the most part. And you guys kind of brought honor back to the Star Wars brand on consoles because they were some really, really awful games. It's true, Starfighter and Republic Commander are some of the better, more games in recent memory. From '97 to 2002, like, pretty much every Star Wars game that existed with the exception of Jedi Knight and Jedi Academy were terrible. That's pretty flattering for you guys to say that. We were proud. I mean, yeah, we had a good time making this thing, so. But, I mean, that's, to your point, Tyler, that's definitely like a lot of developers dream is to stay together for multiple projects, find a team that you're really close to it with, and you build because we spent so much effort in building that team over time. And then it just all went away, that's not cool. So like every time I'm starting a new team, starting up into a new team, I hope with everything that we can stay together, games are so complicated to make those suckers though, you know, and then corporate, you have no control over what they're doing, you know? And so you never know what the destiny will be like two years later. That was the transition period for LucasArts in general. Yeah, big. I mean, episode three was coming out and I was like, "Okay." So the prequel trilogy's done. Yeah. What are we going to do now? Yeah. And a lot of guys from the other teams stayed to start the Force Unleashed stuff, you know? And a lot of those are good friends of mine, and I'm super happy for them. Were there inklings of like the euphoria stuff and all the materials stuff while you were still there? No, that was post-me. Yeah, that was after I left. Yeah. Tyler, I'm impressed that you were able to bring the wire into a Star Wars discussion. Yeah, I sure. Well, Tyler just didn't want it to get left behind. Oh, man, that is the worst insight joke on this podcast ever. Can you've made like a balls joke or today's joke? I think you guys would be tame with me here. You're not your usual... Well, because you're within ball punching range, usually when we talk shit about a game, it's like... Fuck, this guy is... No, no, no. That's not what he's talking about. He's talking about more of the fact that, you know, the words revolving around genitals have only come out. And Anthony's not cutting loose from the degree. Oh, it's because lately, it's so easy to go... Matt, he's up the best point. We try to keep it sophisticated. It's just so easy to go from lightsaber to cock in like... It's true. That's why we didn't have any in there. Yeah. It's true, I guess they are kind of like the obvious, like a... I'm excited! No, it's just the penis replacement, right? It's like, "Look how fucking badass my sword is." And that's something I'll never be able to see in my life. See, like with Yoda, it's not how big it is. It's how it uses it. Yeah. Yeah. Commanders not a moose? Size matters not. That's what I fucking say out loud every time I've had to get naked in front of a girl. I was looking at her and all of a sudden switched to some nerdy Yoda voice. Size matters not. And funny, the words you always hear is next are "Put your clothes back on." Oh, you do kind of look like Yoda. All right, I think we should wrap it. So we're going to take a week off for Game Club. And then... Do we want to do one or two, because you're going to be quite con? Potentially. No, because next week is quite con. Okay, so why don't we take two weeks off, and next week we'll announce what the next game club game will be. Or we get to announce it right now. Why don't we take two weeks? We'll take a week off, tentatively a week off, if it becomes too much going on. You might as well just announce it right now, so people can get it. Okay, so the next game, as you may have surmised previously, is Heavenly Sword for PS3. If you don't have a PS3, I'm sorry. Well, it's about time the PS3 got some love. Yeah, we haven't done a single PS3 game, like at all. I don't know the game club, or even when it was backlogged. Yeah, one up, yeah. I don't think they did anything... I don't think they did really any PS3 exclusives. There are a lot... Of course, there's a lot of games out there that are PS3 multi-platform. Most of the games are always older games, I think. I mean, I can't even play PS2 games on the PS3 that I have, so... Ah, you got one of those. Yeah, I'm sorry. But you have a PS2 now. Yes, but it's... Yeah, but you don't have the upscaler, which is the best thing. Yeah, and I can't capture off a PS2. Why not? Because Blackmagic doesn't do a 480p capture, it's only 720p or above. Oh, that's true. Or composite. So I can... Aww, I'm not cutting this nerd conversation off right there. Sorry. It's a confideo nerd. It's a confideo nerd. Anyway, it's a AP nerd. We're doing it. We're going to have a nice sword next, because we want to give PS3 some love, and we're all kind of curious about a nice sword. Yeah, I think Matt's the only one that's played it before. All of that? Or some of that? Yeah, I played it. The rest of us have never played it, so... You can be our resident, Heavenly Scholar. Nice. Nice. Thank you, Tim, for joining us. Yeah, thanks a lot. It was great having you. Sure, yeah. Totally, I'd... Awesome. I'm super flattered, you guys chose to do it for Game Club. You used to choose some awesome games in the past. It was a lot of fun. It was very worthy. This is one that I've been pushing for. I know. Yeah, there was some personal love in there. Yeah. Yeah, you pushed me. To be up there with some other games, you get it. This one, this one and the thing, those are the two I've been pushing for for a while. Wow, that's a good one. I mean, the thing is another kind of... God damn it, I can't go back to the thing. Any game where my people say thank you for guns and other fucking heads off, I have to... I quit that game for a reason. That's why I'd make an awesome story when your guy kills himself and you didn't expect it. Alright. Wow. So yeah, thanks for joining us, Tim. Yeah. Yep. Make sure to check out co-op on area5.tv where co-op lives on and strong. Or there's in 3.com/co-op. Yeah, something like that. Alright. Don't do nothing though. Whee. Whee. Whee. Whee. Shh. Whee. Whee. Yeah. Pops. Whee. Whee. Whee. Whee. Whee. Whee. Whee. Whee. Whee. Whee. Whee. Whee. [BLANK_AUDIO]