One of the most memorable times I had at E3 2004 was watching a presentation of Mercenaries, the soon-to-be-shipped action game (for PS2 and Xbox) from LucasArts and Pandemic Studios. There was a lot of carnage and I think GameSpot's headquarters got blown up, but I was on my third or fourth handful of Tylenol at that point so who knows? Shara Miller is the LucasArts producer on the project and we dropped some questions on her. She answers them with laser precision. Realistic physics, hardware limitations, the soundtrack, and little tidbits about Mercenaries development that you won't find anywhere else -- Shara answers them all. Thanks for your time, Shara!

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Mercenaries Q&A

Conducted by Omni

Lets get the 411. Who are you? What’s your role on Mercenaries? How long have you been in the games industry? What’s your diet been like for the last four months?

I’m Shara Miller, the LucasArts producer for Mercenaries. I’ve been working on games for about five years, and my diet in the past for months has consisted of double-strength decaf coffee (‘cause I’m in denial) and take-out food from the many fine eating establishments in Westwood, home to Pandemic Studios.

For those that don’t know, what’s Mercenaries all about?

Mercenaries is all about making money, causing mayhem and destruction, playing factions against each other, flying helicopters, hijacking tanks, calling in air strikes, shooting at bad guys, and having as much fun as possible in a video game. It’s set in a fictional North Korea, in which a malevolent general has staged a coup to prevent peaceful overtures to the world. Your job is to dismantle his organization, conveniently laid out for you as the latest “Deck of 52,” and to make as much money as you can in the process.

I was impressed with the use of the Havok physics engine in Mercenaries at E3. Are realistic physics all that important to an action game of this type?

Thanks for throwing us a softball to allow us to brag about the engineering team’s excellent use of the Havok physics libraries J An action game can certainly be fun without realistic physics. But having the freedom to take advantage of weight and gravity to create roadblocks out of debris on the fly, send flaming vehicles into the air, or even just try to kick a barrel up a hill to see if you can make it all the way – these are enormously important to Mercenaries and are a huge part of what makes this game so special.

I have to admit that I first thought of Armed and Dangerous when I saw Mercenaries for the first time. Am I completely off base? What would you say to gamers possibly thinking the same thing?

That’s really quite a nice compliment because Armed and Dangerous was such an addictively fun game. It could be the use of Havok physics, or the similarity in controls. But I think it’s probably due to Planet Moon’s “over the top” spirit with Armed and Dangerous, both in explosives and with their incredible arsenal of weaponry. Pandemic has that same “over the top” enthusiasm for games, and it has manifested itself in altogether different – and equally brilliant – ways.

Has the team had to deal with hardware limitations? Was there anything left out of the game for reasons directly attributable to hardware limitations? Or does any hardware limitation make the team work that much harder to find a software solution to the problem?

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The engineering team, led by Ron Pieket, was able to eke out more from the hardware than anyone would have imagined, especially in the case of the PS2. Nothing was deliberately left out because of the hardware, but the team used the limitations to put the memory where it would do the most good. For example, they restricted themselves to about a dozen air strikes with excellent visual effects, rather than having thirty-odd mediocre ones.

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Everyone seems bent on making games that have some online component. Will Mercenaries feature any online play?

No, Mercenaries was always designed to be an incredible single-player experience only.

Does Mercenaries add anything to the action genre? Or does it operate in the genre’s conventions but make it fun, with a capital “F”?

Gamers will find the use of the aforementioned air strikes to be a refreshing addition to the genre. Especially the bunker buster. That’s in a class all by itself.

Did all the originally planned weapons make the cut?

All of the weapon classes made the cut, but there may have been some individual weapons that the designers dropped along the way.

Audio is an important component of any game, particularly the music and dialogue. Who is involved in the voice cast and who is composing the music?

Michael Giacchino, recently of “The Incredibles” and “Lost” fame, did the main theme for the game and worked with another very talented composer named Chris Tilton on the rest of the score. Those guys played the game, met with the team, and came up with some truly incredible stuff. In fact, you can buy the soundtrack from La-La Land Records! http://www.lalalandrecords.com/Mercenaries.html Will Beckman was our voice director, and he spent countless hours finding just the right actors to handle all the foreign accents. This involved dealing with lots of international casting agencies and even scouting out some international talent from around the Lucas organization.

Will gamers feel small and inadequate if they don’t have a good sound system to pump the audio through?

Ellen Meijers, LucasArts’s lead sound designer, listened to the SFX on all kinds of TV’s with every sort of sound system, to ensure that they would sound great no matter what. David Rovin and Andrew Waggoner at Pandemic then went in to add their magic touches to the mixes. A great sound system always adds to the immersion factor, but NOT having one will still deliver some incredible aural experiences.

The ability to ally with the various factions in Mercenaries looks to play an important part in progressing through the game, but is there the ability to go it completely alone?

Well, you have to work for factions to get money and intel. That said, you definitely don’t have to use their help if you’re the lone-wolf type.

What’s one bit of trivia about Mercenaries development that no one outside the development team is likely to know?

Mark Domowicz isn’t wearing any underwear.

(January 5, 2005)