Being able to get into the digital boots of Jet Li is a dream come true for a lot of gamers. Rise to Honor, starring Jet Li, was released recently for the Playstation 2 and we got to talk with Jim Wall, Producer, on the project. In our Post Mortem Q&A we talk about the fight system, how Jet Li became involved, motion capture vs. traditional animation, working and sleeping at Sony, how the development team came together, who games are actually made for and a lot more. Thanks for your time, Jim!

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Rise to Honor Post Mortem Q&A

Conducted by Omni

For the record, please state your name, how long you’ve been in the industry, your general education, and your roles and responsibilities on Rise to Honor?

My name is Jim Wallace and I’m the Producer of Rise to Honor, which is my functional title. My official title at Sony is Associate Director of Product Development for Foster City. I’ve been in the industry since 1992.

What other projects have you worked on?

Well I started out with a small developer out of New Jersey called Absolute Entertainment. We did a lot of games for Acclaim, THQ and other publishers. I worked on [games for] Super Nintendo: Super Battletank and Super Battletank 2. For Sega Genesis, I worked on Goofy’s Hysterical History Tour, a Disney licensed title. I worked on Star Trek: The Next Generation for GameBoy. I did Rocky & Bullwinkle and Friends for Super Nintendo. We cranked out a lot of titles in those days.

From there I went to Capcom when Capcom was starting an America-based development studio. I was one of the first employees over there. And we had our growing pains at Capcom – pretty much all the projects we started early on were cancelled but we did manage to get out a game called Final Fight Revenge, which was a continuation of the Final Fight series. And that was only distributed in Japan.

And then I came to Sony. [Rise to Honor] is the first thing I’ve worked on here but I’ve worked on over 35 different projects in my career.

What were your initial expectations when developing Rise to Honor?

When we started Rise to Honor, Jet Li wasn’t involved with the project. We wanted to do a video game based on Hong Kong action movies but we didn’t have a star in mind. So our original expectation was to do this great action game that had a core in hand-to-hand fighting, but wasn’t going to star a Jet Li or someone of that caliber.

Did you have a generic character in that Jet Li role?

We had our star character and even looked a little bit like the Jet Li that’s in the game. I have to tell you, we borrowed from Jet’s work heavily even in those early days because when you think about Hong Kong action and hand-to-hand combat, he’s the master.

Where did the idea for Rise to Honor come from?

I had a very small group of guys that were kicking around ideas for what we wanted to do and the idea came from my Associate Producer, Alben Pedroso. He’s another big fan of Hong Kong action movies and he just came up with the idea, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to do a video game that played like a Hong Kong action movie?” Being that we have a lot of Hong Kong action movie buffs around here, that idea really took hold and a lot of enthusiasm generated around it.

In terms of finances, did you have a hard time convincing SCEA financial mucky-mucks to throw their weight behind the project? When did they “green light” the project?

Sony was interested from the start in what we were thinking we wanted to do. They green-lit us to do a prototype first. When we completed that prototype and they were really pleased with the results then it wasn’t really difficult at all. Sony was extremely supportive of what we wanted to do and have remained so ever since.

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Was a design document adhered to?

There were a lot of design documents. This team doesn’t operate with a big design document. We had design documents for how the fight system was going to work and other components of the game. Everything turned out to be living documents. There was nothing we wrote at the beginning that we held to exactly from beginning to end.

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So was there a lot of “on the fly” stuff?

I wouldn’t want to term it as “on the fly” but everything was always growing. And we found that maybe an idea that we had really didn’t fit the overall scope of where we were heading, we would decide how we could re-fashion the game. So, there were a lot of decisions made throughout the development process and, as I said, pretty much every system that we first came up with, evolved in one way or another. I’d look at it more that there was a continuous evolution of how the game was going to fall into place.

Did it take long for the development team to come together as a group?

Not from a chemistry standpoint. But from a hiring standpoint it did. We wanted to put a development team together that would not only do Rise to Honor, but that would move on to do other state-of-the-art projects for Sony. So, we very carefully considered each candidate as we brought them in. We hired people from 11 different countries in putting this team together and the heart of the hiring took us about 12 to 14 months. We were, of course, moving forward but to get the team to full strength it took about that long.

How long had you been in development before Jet Li became involved with the project?

Well, it was shortly after that initial prototype that Jet happened to contact Sony’s marketing department – interested in video games and wanting to get involved in video games. The marketing department came to me and said, “Hey, we know you’ve got this martial arts thing that you’re working on, have you heard of this Jet Li guy?” Of course, we were floored and jumped on the opportunity.

How much input did Jet Li actually have for Rise to Honor? Was there any point where he said, “I don’t like that. Cut that out.” That kind of thing? Or was it more of a consultation role?

Jet reviewed everything and since we were headed in a very Jet Li-esque direction with the game because we were “ripping off” his work... <Laughter> No, we were influenced by his work—

You’ve been reading ahead! We’ll come back to that one.

He generally liked where we were going with things. He had approval over things like the way he looked and the way his character performed. He was always pleased with where we took it. But he collaborated with us almost like another team member in a lot of ways. He sat down in brainstorming sessions, thinking about story lines, settings… He had a lot of really good input as did Cory Yuen, the action director. He’s very well known in the Hong Kong action genre and has collaborated with Jet on several of his movies. Each of these guys gave us a lot of input just on the story and setting ideas alone. On top of that, they basically designed every fight move that’s in the game. We came up with the system for fighting and they designed all the moves around that system.

Why did you decide on the “double stick” method for hand-to-hand combat? What other control methods were explored?

We really wanted the core of the fight system to be the ability to attack 360° -- to be able to launch a precise, directed attack at any given time without re-orientating the player’s character. And this idea came from watching Jet. It’s very typical in his films that he would get surrounded by characters and he’d be able to take them on. We wanted to get that style of action across in the game. And thinking about that, the right analog stick was the obvious choice because the sticks are the only thing you can move around 360°. We certainly explored traditional controls but found that this control scheme – [utilizing the right analog stick] – gave us the control of the attacks in 360°, was the one we were looking for. It also helped us maintain the look of Jet’s style. If you assigned a single button for punching and kicking of traditional fighting titles, the player would be hitting punches and kicks and mashing away then the resulting combos or strings of moves wouldn’t necessarily look like Jet Li in action. And that’s something we wanted to get across in this game.

Just going back a bit, where is the line between “ripped off” and “inspired by”? How do you define that?

We looked at all of our favorite actions from a lot of these great movies and we thought about things that we felt could translate into video gaming. There were some actions in the game that were very close to what you might have seen Jet do in one of his films. For the most part, we took inspiration from the types of actions we saw were really cool. For example, we have seen Hong Kong action movies where the hero was fighting with guys on motorcycles. We thought that was really cool. Our spin on it was actually quite a bit different than the scenario played out but similar in the thought that, okay, here are these guys coming at the hero on motorcycles and we’re going to take them down. I think we held with that for the most part – we took a particular type of action, like shooting guns while sliding on something, and did our version of that.

Did any features have to be dropped due to time constraints or because you felt the features might be out of place?

More than out of place, definitely the time constraint element. With every game I’ve ever worked on, you start out with very ambitious plans and tons of ideas that ultimately need to be scaled down to something you can finish in a reasonable time frame. There are things we let go of that we thought, “Okay, we’ll do another one of these games, let’s add some of these things to the next game.” Or this feature doesn’t help the emphasis of this game and it will take time to develop, so let’s drop it for now.

What hardware and software was used to develop Rise to Honor?

We used all of Sony’s proprietary development tools, Playstation debug units and on the PC side, we used high-end PCs with high-end video cards, which we upgraded a couple of times during the development. Our primary development software that we worked on most was Maya, an Alias product for 3D art creation.

Does motion capture save time or money for game development?

I think it’s dependant on the project – I can only answer for Rise to Honor. For Rise to Honor, I’m positive it saved time and money. Just imagine how long it would take an animator to key-frame a Jet Li animation to the point where you couldn’t tell the difference between Jet Li and key-framed animation. Using motion capture you get this very authentic performance of someone who has a very recognizable style. And you can tell almost no difference between the original performance and what we motion captured. That would be very hard to do without motion capture.

At the end of the development cycle, how many hours a day were you working?

<Laughter> Let me generalize for the team – on the low side, 12 hours. There were certainly many on the team, myself included, that were doing 16, 18 hour days.

Just sleeping under your desk then?

There was a lot of people of the team that would just crash here and I did do it on occasion, but for the most part, I would drive home grab whatever little sleep I could, shower, then make my way back.

Was Rise to Honor’s schedule a realistic one? (Hitting milestones, etc.)

Our very initial schedule was much more ambitious than what we could have actually gotten done. We did move the schedule, pushed the schedule back two times during development. As we really got a handle on the full scope on the project, we adjusted it. Then as we were pretty close to finalizing Rise to Honor, we made one final adjustment to the schedule to make sure we could get the level of polish we wanted.

In terms of the teams’ ability to hit milestones, that we were able to do.

When Rise to Honor shipped, did the team take a break or did they move onto another project?

Well, as soon as the North American version was done we started localizing for Europe, which will probably wrap up this week. The Rise to Honor team will be taking three weeks off then we’re bouncing right on to the next one. We’ve been doing pre-production on the next project already (by those people that were not involved in the localization). And then we’re rolling onto the follow-up to [Rise to Honor].

And the next project… when is there going to be information available on what it is? I won’t ask you what it is, because I know I won’t get answer.

When Sony wants to release that information, you’ll know. Stay tuned in the next few months.

Did your initial expectations of Rise to Honor meet the end result?

Particularly in the way we thought of the core of the game, 360° hand-to-hand combat. I think it definitely met our expectations in what we wanted with that.

How seriously and/or personally do you take the reviews of Rise to Honor? Or do you even read the reviews?

I pretty much read everything. You feel bad when you read anything that’s negative. Sometimes you feel that maybe the reviewer didn’t “get it” – sometimes that’s the case and other times you’re looking at review saying, “Well, that’s this guy’s opinion. I’m sorry that feels this way. But he has the right to feel this way.” You want everyone to love what you’re doing. Unfortunately, sometimes people aren’t going to like the angle [you took]. We knew we were doing something different, we knew we were taking some risks on this project – we went into it knowing that. Sometimes you’re going to meet press that’s not the way you wanted it to turn out.

So, you don’t take it personally then.

Nothing personal against any journalist. I know that’s their job and that’s what they do. In fact, there are some examples of people that I like quite a bit and I read something I wasn’t really enthusiastic about. And my attitude is, “Damn it, that’s too bad.” Hopefully the next thing we do, this guy will be more enthusiastic about.

Does criticism from jaded game journalists take precedent over people that actually buy the game and take the time to give you some feedback?

You’re making the assumption that there are jaded game journalists.

Well, I know a few of them!

<Laughter> Clearly, you’re making games to please the gaming public. When you do read what’s on message boards, you hear people’s opinions or you conduct focus groups and hear directly what the public thinks. That definitely weighs more than what any journalist might be thinking.

Will games replace movies in the Media Dominance list?

They’re two different kinds of entertainment. You’ve got passive versus interactive entertainment. I think there’s always going to be space for both of them. As big a game fan as I am, I love nothing more than vegging out and watching a great movie. I think that’s always going to be the case. Interactive experiences take energy and the one great thing about interactive is you can choose to do it whenever you want. You know, walk into the next room in your house, pick up a joystick and play for as long as you want. But there’s always going to be that desire for the passive entertainment and being able to hang-out and watch someone else’s work. I think we’re going to be sharing that dominance.

With all the time spent making games, do you have time to play games?

I don’t have nearly as much time as I would like to play games during the later stages [of the development cycle] particularly with Rise to Honor. I was playing nothing else – there was no way. Every moment that I had was dedicated to playing Rise to Honor and checking and approving elements for Rise to Honor. But even in the heaviest of times, I always made sure I saw what was going on with other games. I’d take the opportunity to talk to the test department here at Sony to see what other games they were playing, what they liked and watch somebody else play a game, or maybe pop in a disc and play it really briefly myself. I like to really keep in touch – read websites, see what’s going on in the industry.

Do you think that genres, as we know them today, won’t exist in five years? (I’m thinking of all the hybrid games.)

I think what we’re doing is really defining that “Hybrid” genre. I think that’s going to continue to develop, to get stronger and stronger. I still think you’re going to have genre specific video games, always. But I do see that is the trend, to make a more hybrid game right now. There will always be people that may want to stick to the classic platformer, for example, and if that’s entertaining and meets the entertainment requirements of the public -- those games are still going to be out there. Fighting games, sports games... There will still be genre-specific games but that hybrid gaming is going to grow before it levels off.

Is the Playstation 2 being used to its full potential?

I would have to say, no. Each generation of product that comes out you see advancements. [The Playstation 2] is an amazingly complex and powerful machine. My team could probably spend the next six years working on the Playstation 2 and always find new ways to utilize the power of it. You’re going to see in upcoming months things like the new Gran Turismo. You might have thought that after GT3, that there was no way they could improve on it. But just wait until you see the next one. Just when you thought it couldn’t go any further with the hardware, someone comes out with something like that.

Can hype or high expectations kill a game?

When the smoke clears, it’s either a good game or it’s not a good game – no matter how much hype surrounded it. I love message boards for this. You’ll see that period of time after a major game that people have been waiting for forever finally comes out, you might get some of those people that say, “I’m disappointed in this.” Then you read more a week later then people start to really judge it and say, “Hey, this really is a good game.” And I’ve seen that turn-around many times when you look at the public’s response and read message boards. Sometimes you get people that think, “I thought it was going to be more this than that.” Ultimately, they’ll start judging it on its own merits and the game will either stand up or not.

(March 14, 2004)