Linus Tech tips coverage of pxs 2013 is brought to you by Western Digital Intel
and steel Series so we're here with Nick Herman
co-director of a Wolf Among Us also The Walking Dead and apparently a million
other things is that correct uh yeah I guess we make a lot of games if someone
said it it must be true and it's on the internet right sweet yeah oh yeah totally a million games so give me the I
guess give me the 30 to 60c pitch for how why you want a gamer to invest in
the experience you guys are delivering here yeah um I mean uh with The Wolf
Among Us uh we sort of you know we're following up The Walking Dead and um I
think a lot of people are sort of putting the pressure on us to make this
good and I and I think we uh instead of you know taking this really dark and
really serious I mean the game actually is really dark and serious so what am I saying we wanted to push it in a
different direction it's not it's not about you know it's they're two
different characters right two different stories Lee's you know a story of uh
sort of redemption and sort of um being someone's Savior and and this game I
think is is a little bit about redemption in the fact that Big B wolf who's the sheriff of fabletown you know
he he used to be the big battle wolf and now he's sort of in charge of protecting
everyone and it's and it's sort of up to the player to figure out how they want
to do that like the the the problem with him is he's got all this power right and
you have to choose whether or not using that power is worth it and and if when
you do what how that affects you know the people around you and what people think of you and um I think it's really
interesting and I mean with this game too you can look at of the art and it
looks so different the game feels different it's a different story so I
think people should just be excited for something new and yeah now I played a
10-minute demo of it here in the booth and the thing that I noticed more than
anything else is looking from my screen to the guy next to me is we were playing
the same 10-minute demo and he had completely different stuff on his screen
whether it's down to um an option in the combat or whether it's down to um
driving away in the car versus falling out of a window on top of the car it
felt like the choices I was making were having we're having a huge impact on how
the story was progressing I mean you guys obviously have a branching
structure to it but are there you know 101 endings or is it pretty linear yeah
I mean I would say it's it's closer to The Walking Dead I mean we don't have I mean with episode one we don't have you
know 40 endings but um I think a lot of the things we're playing around with are
just giving the player more Choice more often um letting them sort of uh choose
how they want to play on on a more of a micro level a lot of the times and um
something we're playing with too is is sort of the sense of time so uh even in
the demo when you're talking to Mr toe downstairs you can leave the
conversation early in favor of sort of getting to figure out what's going on or
you can sort of drill them a little bit more and get more information and and
that comes into play in a much bigger way later in the episode too fascinating
I mean speaking of sense of time um the combat was felt very frantic felt very
urgent but didn't feel very punishing because whenever I made a mistake I was
able to go back to about you know 3 to 5 seconds ago and and get a do over so
what does that say about the experience you guys are trying to deliver here yeah
I mean with with a combat specifically it's really about I mean we're not we
don't want to punish people for not being able to play an action sequence I think most people play our games for
sort of the narrative and the characters in the story and and getting to make
these decisions and um yeah I think I
think it's really about in the fight sequence just sort of creating Your Own
Story I mean we now we have this a branching fight sequences really just to
let the player Express themselves more like I was saying more on a micro level
and um even if you get the kicked out of you it's still fun to watch right
it's still it's still something it's an exciting experience and there's only you
know a few death States in that in that fight but um it's really about creating
narrative I mean one of the things I noticed is during the fight okay so when
you're talking to people you really have the option to be a total or to
just be very passive or to be very helpful you you can go one of even in
the fight you have an option to throw them and you can decide what to throw
them against um how does that affect who how you're building yourself out as a
character yeah I mean it's it's funny that that there's a you know there's a
couch you can throw them into and a lot of people are like well I threw him into
the couch because you know like I wanted to be kind of soft on them but you know
just you like they just sort of you know read into it more than than we even
expect sometimes and that's that's sort of the fun part of it um and I think in
in that fight specifically there's uh it we're sort of just teaching you the
mechanics but but later on there's going to be ramifications for how you treat
people in those types of situations that's absolutely very very
cool I really enjoy the demo and I'm really excited to see this when it's
available for me to buy Yeah well yeah it'll be available uh early or late SE
September early October yeah sounds great thank you so much thank you we're
here with Pierre shet lead writer of a Wolf Among Us well at least episode one
anyway hopefully episode two assuming things go really really well with this
one tell me about how how challenging is
it to write for a character like Big B wolf when the charact or the the player
gets to make a lot of the decisions and you just kind of have to make sure that
everything makes sense regardless of what they do luckily for us um Big B
comes from fables the uh Bill Willingham
comic book um he's a dynamic enough character that the range that you have
with him the way you'd want to swing this character um emotionally whether
you want to play the role of the enforcer the the
law-abiding Sheriff of fabl town or you want to be the guy who kicks a door in
and gets answers all that still fits in with who
Big B is and allowing people to sort of choose who their Big B is is still
possible even with a character that U many people know and love okay so I mean
if that if that's not the big challenge of writing for a for a game like this
then what what were the things that you were sitting around the table or
discussing or sitting at your desk tearing your hair out well
figuratively that's that must be where it all went so um tell me what was so
difficult it was definitely giving the
game and giving The Wolf Among Us an identity that is different
and sort of sticks out from what The
Walking Dead has done not trying to relive the same beats not trying to have
similar characters is it's its own thing it's it's based on fables it's a
Fantastical world and just being true to that and giving it its own feel and
atmosphere and tone and dialogue uh was probably the biggest challenge from a
writing standpoint thank you so much I really appreciate you taking the time
Pierre and uh hey good luck thanks
thanks nice talking to you so guys don't miss any of our packs Prime 2013
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