WEBVTT 00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:06.879 Linus Tech Tips coverage of PAX 2013 is brought to you by Western Digital, 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:10.800 Intel, and Steel Series. Hey guys, I'm here with Alistair from Splash Damage 00:00:08.720 --> 00:00:14.639 and Chris from Nexon. And I'm going to get them to give me a brief overview and 00:00:12.719 --> 00:00:18.800 a little bit more specifics about the game. Uh, so Extraction is a team- 00:00:17.119 --> 00:00:22.880 based, objective based multiplayer shooter. It's freetoplay, free to win. 00:00:21.119 --> 00:00:27.039 It's set in uh London in about kind of 2018, 2020. It's been irdiated. The 00:00:25.519 --> 00:00:30.560 streets are empty and teams of mercenaries are kind of roaming the 00:00:28.880 --> 00:00:34.239 streets fulfilling contracts. And the contracts generally revolve around uh 00:00:32.239 --> 00:00:37.920 securing uh data cores. So there are shadowy kind of backers out there who 00:00:35.920 --> 00:00:41.200 are either uh want secrets buried or want secrets, you know, recovered and 00:00:39.760 --> 00:00:44.160 they hire these teams of mercenaries or rather they kind of hire you to go out 00:00:42.879 --> 00:00:49.120 there and put together these teams of mercenaries to go out there and take them back. So and that's that's 00:00:46.960 --> 00:00:53.600 represented by uh a really fantastic objective based team-based gameplay. So 00:00:51.920 --> 00:00:57.760 about that objective based, team based gameplay. Um how do you progress through 00:00:55.760 --> 00:01:01.760 a level and how many objectives are you expecting to run into in an average 00:00:59.359 --> 00:01:04.960 level in this game? So it really differs uh kind of map by map. That's one of the 00:01:03.680 --> 00:01:09.600 things we're most excited by is every map is a different experience. So right now you guys have played Camden. You 00:01:07.920 --> 00:01:13.760 probably played about half of that map. There's also a map set all over London. 00:01:11.520 --> 00:01:19.759 So Victoria, White Chapel, Canary Warf, Waterloo, Batisy. Um uh and each map has 00:01:17.680 --> 00:01:23.280 a different set of objectives. So this one uh as I say the half that you played 00:01:21.600 --> 00:01:27.520 involved, you know, uh planting a charge and uh uh you know, hacking a terminal. 00:01:25.680 --> 00:01:33.520 Others involve escorting a kind of EV and extraction vehicle through the streets. Uh you know, erecting or 00:01:30.159 --> 00:01:35.119 destroying barricades. Um so every map's 00:01:33.520 --> 00:01:39.520 a different tactical challenge. Uh requires kind of, you know, a different uh understanding of the map, different 00:01:37.520 --> 00:01:42.159 teamwork. Different team makeups will will do kind of, you know, better or 00:01:40.560 --> 00:01:46.399 worse or require different strategy. So it's really uh exciting to see how the 00:01:43.920 --> 00:01:49.360 dynamic changes kind of uh map to map. Speaking of different team makeups, 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:52.479 there's different classes in this game. Can you go over those and explain how 00:01:51.119 --> 00:01:55.600 they can augment the different gameplay on defense and offense? Sure. Well, one 00:01:54.560 --> 00:02:00.719 of the things actually that we've we've got away from is is class-based stuff. So, um, and that's that's allowed us a 00:01:59.840 --> 00:02:06.159 lot of freedom to come with some fantastic characters. So, really this is a character-driven game. So, the 00:02:04.079 --> 00:02:10.160 characters still have roles, but um, it's not rigidly adhering to kind of 00:02:07.920 --> 00:02:14.160 class structure. So, uh, that gives us a few really big wins. So, for example, in 00:02:12.480 --> 00:02:19.520 some of some games, you know, you might come to a point where there's an enemy bomb you have to disarm and you get 00:02:16.959 --> 00:02:22.400 there, you you wipe the enemy team and then you're out of luck because you're 00:02:20.640 --> 00:02:25.920 the wrong class and you have to sort of stand there. Um, we didn't want that. 00:02:24.560 --> 00:02:29.520 So, all of our classes can, you know, they can hack, they can disarm, they can plant bombs. They've got different 00:02:28.480 --> 00:02:34.319 strengths and weaknesses. So, for example, Proxy, who you might play today, uh, she's got an engineering 00:02:32.400 --> 00:02:36.560 background. So, her character is, um, particularly fast at hacking, 00:02:35.440 --> 00:02:40.800 particularly fast at disarming and planting, but everyone can have a go. Everyone can try it. And uh that's part 00:02:39.519 --> 00:02:44.640 of the strengths and weaknesses of each character along with you know the weapons they have and the special 00:02:43.120 --> 00:02:50.000 abilities they have whether it's Vaseline's heartbeat sensor or whether 00:02:46.800 --> 00:02:52.800 it's Arty's air strike. So there's no 00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:56.560 rigid adherence to classes. Um it also means that in the kind of full game you 00:02:54.640 --> 00:02:59.760 won't have to you don't have to have a team that that always consists of there 00:02:58.560 --> 00:03:04.879 has to be one medic in the team, there has to be one engineer in the team. No, you just bring in five of your favorite 00:03:03.200 --> 00:03:08.080 characters or you know whatever they may be. Uh the other thing it gives us is it 00:03:06.800 --> 00:03:12.640 frees us up to come up with some really creative kind of character combinations 00:03:09.840 --> 00:03:14.400 because if we want a guy uh because you don't have to have a medic and he 00:03:13.599 --> 00:03:19.360 doesn't always have to have shock paddles and always have to have uh uh medkits. You know, you might have a guy 00:03:17.760 --> 00:03:23.040 who can whatever, I don't know, revive guys at a distance but doesn't have any 00:03:20.879 --> 00:03:26.480 healing packs and uses a scout sniper rifle or something. You know what? You 00:03:25.040 --> 00:03:31.280 couldn't really fit him into a class uh before. You couldn't really pigeon hole them. Um so it lets us create kind of 00:03:30.080 --> 00:03:34.879 crazy characters like that if we want to. So, it's um it's really let us be 00:03:33.280 --> 00:03:38.879 very creative and come up with the most exciting characters that we uh we can in 00:03:37.120 --> 00:03:42.879 terms of how they work on on offense and defense. Um, one of the other really fun 00:03:41.680 --> 00:03:47.599 things about both the characters and the maps is how much uh mastery there is to be had. It's really important to us that 00:03:46.159 --> 00:03:51.680 this is a game that has depth and can be played, you know, really competitively at a high level, but at the same time be 00:03:50.480 --> 00:03:55.440 really easy and fun to pick up. And one of the things that's been great about packs over the last four days is that, 00:03:54.480 --> 00:03:59.360 you know, people have come to it completely fresh and they've been, you know, having a blast. There's lots of 00:03:58.080 --> 00:04:04.080 whooping and hollering and high five and everyone's having a a really good time. They're able to pick out very quickly. 00:04:02.480 --> 00:04:08.080 Now, he definitely has a point with everyone getting psyched and a lot of the communication and high level play 00:04:06.720 --> 00:04:12.400 and all that kind of stuff. My friends and I played in the tournament here and 00:04:10.159 --> 00:04:15.760 one thing we noticed is that it it you can fall behind. Definitely you can fall 00:04:14.560 --> 00:04:20.799 behind. Say you're on the attacking team, but as long as you're able to group back up and get to back together 00:04:18.720 --> 00:04:23.759 on one of those spawn waves, you as long as you have the right communication, 00:04:22.320 --> 00:04:27.120 even if you were doing poorly before, you can come back together, solve that 00:04:25.600 --> 00:04:31.360 objective, hack whatever point you have to do, plant whatever bomb, and still get out there. Now, this is probably 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:35.840 more for him and sorry for maybe bringing this up, but coming splash 00:04:33.840 --> 00:04:40.560 damage coming from creating Brink. As a Brink player, what would someone expect 00:04:37.680 --> 00:04:44.000 to change when they come to this game? I think one of the biggest changes is this 00:04:41.919 --> 00:04:47.199 move into to a character-based system. So, we're going to have a a ton of 00:04:45.600 --> 00:04:51.280 characters. So, we got about uh you saw five today. Um we probably got about 00:04:48.960 --> 00:04:54.320 2025 ready to go back at the office. So I guess one way to think about it is 00:04:52.639 --> 00:04:58.160 almost um almost that kind of League of Legends or Dota type experience where 00:04:55.840 --> 00:05:00.560 you bring a character who has uh you know there's a lot to learn about that 00:04:59.520 --> 00:05:06.080 character, a lot to master. They have their own strengths and weaknesses. Understanding uh which mixture of 00:05:04.080 --> 00:05:09.440 characters makes for the best team is really important. So that's uh that's a 00:05:07.440 --> 00:05:12.160 big change um for us and it's something that people seem to be really connected 00:05:10.880 --> 00:05:15.039 uh uh you know really connecting with and getting really excited about. Um so 00:05:14.160 --> 00:05:18.960 that's probably one of the biggest changes. The other thing is after Brink 00:05:17.360 --> 00:05:22.080 we created uh a kind of sister company almost called fire team to handle all of 00:05:20.400 --> 00:05:25.440 our online services. So we wanted to make sure we had you know smooth lagfree 00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:29.039 connections great matchmaking all of that stuff was handled uh uh really 00:05:27.280 --> 00:05:32.160 well. So we were kind of looked at other solutions and none of them were quite 00:05:30.320 --> 00:05:35.120 right for us. So we created fire team and not only did they handle all of that 00:05:33.600 --> 00:05:38.560 but one of the reasons that the game's in uh you know even though it's alpha now it's people are having a really good 00:05:37.520 --> 00:05:44.400 fun with it. People are saying it's really polished and we've got some great feedback. Um one of the reasons uh it is 00:05:42.720 --> 00:05:48.479 in that state is because um we have a tool called Echo which gathers uh a kind 00:05:46.560 --> 00:05:51.600 of metrics and telemetry from the games. So what we mean by that is every kind of 00:05:49.840 --> 00:05:55.039 gunshot, every footstep, every cricket back to the face from proxy um is 00:05:53.600 --> 00:05:57.919 recorded even from these matches out there and we use that to balance the 00:05:56.639 --> 00:06:02.400 maps, to balance the characters, to balance the weapons. Um and on top of 00:06:00.160 --> 00:06:05.680 that, we've had um fans able to play the game for a while now. So we started to 00:06:03.680 --> 00:06:10.720 let fans in a kind of inner circle of sort of VIPs. Um they've been playing 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:14.400 since 12 1212 and they've been giving us uh forum feedback and they've also been 00:06:12.479 --> 00:06:19.680 um of course gathering you know helping us gather these stats definitely. Um so 00:06:17.759 --> 00:06:23.520 balance is incredibly important for us. You know we want this to make we want to 00:06:20.800 --> 00:06:26.400 make sure this is uh a really uh you know competitive game that you can you 00:06:24.880 --> 00:06:31.360 can play at high levels if you want to. We also want to make sure it's really fair. Um Venice is important for a 00:06:29.840 --> 00:06:36.080 couple of reasons. So I think I said at the top you know this is a free-to-play game. It's also a freeto-in game. We 00:06:34.560 --> 00:06:38.880 really want to avoid I say we it's Nex on and splash damage. We're not 00:06:37.680 --> 00:06:42.000 interested in pay to win. You know, we know that that uh a lot of players uh 00:06:40.880 --> 00:06:46.080 you know aren't interested in that. They want a balanced playing field. They just want to have fun. So, you know, we 00:06:44.960 --> 00:06:50.160 haven't even got a storefront in the game yet. We've just been focusing on making a really fun core experience that 00:06:48.800 --> 00:06:54.479 people can get into. And you know, we've got ideas about how we can monetize it, but it's all still, you know, early 00:06:52.960 --> 00:06:58.080 right now. Definitely. And talking bouncing back to the polished comment 00:06:56.080 --> 00:07:02.960 you had. Like I said, I have already played this game more than once and for 00:07:00.560 --> 00:07:07.039 a alpha or even pre-alpha game, it is very polished. which I do have to echo 00:07:05.039 --> 00:07:11.520 that comment that you previously said. Now, to give a throw out to Nexon as 00:07:08.960 --> 00:07:15.199 well, the the free-to-play and free to win motion, that's actually very cool 00:07:13.440 --> 00:07:19.280 because this is a really polished, good-looking, wellplaying game that will 00:07:17.599 --> 00:07:23.120 be free to play. A lot of free-to-play games, especially shooters that people 00:07:20.639 --> 00:07:27.120 run into are not usually that polished on average are not usually that polished 00:07:25.199 --> 00:07:31.199 or not that wellought out. This is a really well thoughtout game. So, how 00:07:28.800 --> 00:07:36.000 exactly is the shop going to work? Well, we haven't really made any decisions at 00:07:33.919 --> 00:07:40.400 all about how the shop will work. Uh, like he said, they haven't even 00:07:37.759 --> 00:07:46.319 programmed in a storefront into a build yet because, you know, with with Nexon, 00:07:44.080 --> 00:07:51.039 we've always tried to make our games free to play, free to win. And with 00:07:49.199 --> 00:07:55.280 this, you know, we took our time looking for the right title, and we wanted to 00:07:53.120 --> 00:08:00.160 make sure that, you know, freeto play has changed a lot, especially in the 00:07:56.960 --> 00:08:02.400 last couple years. And I think players 00:08:00.160 --> 00:08:06.000 are expecting higher quality games, whether they're free or not, than they 00:08:03.840 --> 00:08:10.080 used to. We wanted to make sure that we had a true AAA game. And we looked at a 00:08:08.400 --> 00:08:14.160 lot of different titles. Likewise, Splash Damage looked at a lot of 00:08:11.599 --> 00:08:18.160 different publishers. And uh eventually when the two met, we were like, this is 00:08:16.160 --> 00:08:22.240 a match made in heaven. I mean, we were always really impressed with their with 00:08:19.919 --> 00:08:26.240 their pedigree for giving quality multiplayer shooter experiences. And I 00:08:24.639 --> 00:08:29.840 think I can speak for them saying they were impressed with our pedigree for 00:08:28.240 --> 00:08:35.519 making free-to-play games. So it was just a good fit. And um so right now I 00:08:33.279 --> 00:08:39.839 mean while we are of course looking at at microtransaction options, we're more 00:08:38.080 --> 00:08:44.240 concerned with making the best game we can make. Cool. And then the players 00:08:42.479 --> 00:08:48.560 will enjoy it. And if the players enjoy it, they'll want to pay. Yeah. You know, 00:08:46.480 --> 00:08:52.959 and that but we want to make it a great experience for whether you're a free 00:08:50.720 --> 00:08:57.399 player or a paid player. we want you both to be able to have a great time 00:08:54.560 --> 00:09:00.880 playing the game. That's a great like preemptive statement because they're 00:08:59.440 --> 00:09:04.800 basically saying you won't have to invest anything in this game if you 00:09:02.640 --> 00:09:08.240 don't want to or don't need to. So once you grow an attachment to the game, you 00:09:06.720 --> 00:09:12.160 can deck out your character, you can get skins for different things, I'm assuming. Whatever comes down the line, 00:09:10.959 --> 00:09:17.360 I don't know. I'm just throwing that out there. I hope I didn't break anything. Um, so if you're interested in a 00:09:16.080 --> 00:09:22.399 free-to-play shooter that's well polished and might have some customization options down the future, 00:09:20.399 --> 00:09:25.040 you should definitely check it out. If you like our content on this, if you 00:09:23.680 --> 00:09:28.240 like any of our packs content, be sure to subscribe to Line of Tech Tips.