XBOX-HQ.COM - The developers of BLACK discuss their plans to jumpstart the FPS genre

Gun-porn. It’s a term oft used to describe Criterion’s upcoming revolutionary shooter, BLACK. Jeremy Chubb, the game’s producer, flinches every time he hears it though. “Last year at E3, we weren’t allowed to bring much of the game with us,” he says, so the whole “gun-porn” coining of BLACK came to be, if only a way to describe the game with limited assets at hand. Jeremy worries that this term will cause people not to take BLACK seriously. However, once anyone plugs in BLACK and sees what the Criterion crew has been up to, all of those worries will be effectively quashed in a hail of beautiful bullets.

BLACK is a no nonsense shooter, with excellent graphics that push current gen hardware to the absolute brink, realistic weaponry and all-out balls to the wall intensity. Whereas Criterion has been enormously successful when it comes to racing with a focus on crashes (the developer’s flagship ‘Burnout’ series has seen critical and commercial success, with entries topping many Game of the Year lists), BLACK will be a love song to guns themselves. The point of the game is to feel like you are Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies, Bruce Willis in Die Hard, or (insert favorite action star/favorite role here).

GameZone recently spoke with Jeremy, Craig Sullivan (lead designer) and Stuart Black (senior designer) in a conference call concerning BLACK, learning some of the ups and downs in the game’s development and progression, and just what they plan to do to put their FPS on the very top of the heap.

The first thing addressed in the call was the game’s lack of multiplayer. “Ambitions for the game were very high,” they said. “We had to be laser-focused on one aspect, so it was a question of what we could do really well. We’ve played too many FPS games that felt exactly the same, and we wanted to do something really fresh. The best shooting ever.

The decision to keep the game on current-generation hardware (namely Playstation 2 and Xbox) was also called into question. While it is a no-brainer to some extent (the original Xbox and the PS2 have a much larger consumer base than the Xbox 360, currently the only “next-gen” console on the market), the team had other reasons for this, as well. “We wanted the PS2 and the Xbox to go out with a bang,” they said. “The next generation hasn’t really started properly since Sony’s not around, plus the team was really able to nail the (current-gen) hardware.”

The game itself is a shooter with an emphasis on shooting, if that makes sense. The team really wanted to “make the guns the stars” of the game and make for an engaging action experience, so they put careful consideration into the inclusion of each weapon. “We could’ve had hundreds of weapons,” the team said, but decided it would be better to focus on the really “cool” weapons, even the pistols. “It’s your game and you dropped fifty bucks on it, (so) you’ll want some cool customizable weapons.”

The gameplay is intense action, but the team feels that there are some important tactical elements involved in approaching the gameplay. Reloading is a time consuming process that isn’t done in the drop of a hat, much like in other FPS’s. Instead, according to the team, it’s a “disorienting” process that will require you to take cover and carefully consider your actions in an intense situation, lest you meet your demise.

The environment will also play an important role in the gameplay. While there was the concern that destructible environments would be gimmicky, the environments do play a pretty crucial role when it comes to taking down your enemies. “The environment works as a weapon against enemies,” they said. “We didn’t want (the player) to shoot a hole to Japan, but we wanted the player to use the environment to their advantage.”

All things considered, BLACK is looking poised to take the gaming world by storm, and could very well be the biggest game of the Spring.

Special thanks to Jeremy, Craig, Stuart and Tim Sweezey from EA for the Conference Call.

News-Source: http://xbox.gamezone.com