Interviews// Beowulf Associate Game Director, Alexander Remy

SPOnG: So you had most of the actors from the movie in the studios, recording thousands and thousands of lines of dialogue?

Alexander Remy: Exactly, that’s why you see that promo clip of Ray Winstone saying it was one of the most exhausting days of work he’s ever done! Eight or nine hours in a row, just delivering and delivering lines… It’s not like a normal movie spread out over eight or nine weeks of shooting. Here, it’s all done in one day. Which was pretty intense, yeah!


SPOnG: Yeah, I think voice-over is something that is often overlooked a bit, or a bit of an afterthought by too many game developers. When you get actors of that calibre in, you really notice the difference. Moving on to the actual gameplay, the combat system has been described as more of a ‘hack and lead’ than a ‘hack and slash’ – tell us what this means.

Alexander Remy: Basically, ‘hack and lead’ means that you have the core elements of a ‘hack and slash’ game, the grand mechanics that are very violent… then on top of that you have a tactical side, which has two elements – firstly, your interaction with your men, your ‘thanes’, so you can assign them to specific tasks such as protecting you or whatever. Then you also have all the advanced combos which are a little more difficult to trigger, but give you much more of a reward, in terms of your ‘heroism’… the tactical aspect of the game is based on these two elements.


SPOnG: And you have this dichotomy between the ‘heroic’ side of Beowulf and ‘carnal’ side – how does that work in terms of the gameplay?

Alexander Remy: Well, the carnal side of Beowulf – which refers to his sheer, carnal brute violence – is all based on the specific power which we call the ‘carnal fury’ which, when you trigger it Beowulf becomes invincible and has extra damages and extra finishing moves on all of his grabs and so on. On the other side, you have Beowulf’s ‘heroic’ side which is the more difficult, advanced combos.

‘Carnal fury’ has a number of negative consequences in the medium and the long term in the game, which is basically related to the fact that you can kill your own men while using this, who will then come back to haunt you later on in the game. It will also change your kingdom, each time that you come back throughout the storyline in the game, if you play a more ‘heroic’ game then you will see that your people are becoming more civilised and they respond to you as if you are their established king. On the other side, if you play a more ‘carnal’ game, then you see a very different reaction from your people!


SPOnG: We’ve seen today the rhthym-action style mini-game mechanic which you use to open entrances to caves in the game. What other type of mini-games have you used in Beowulf?

Alexander Remy: We’ve got the same type of gameplay throughout the game, used for different situations – for moving gearwheels out of the way in order to progress or to block passages to enemies behind you, which is just as important. We also use this rhythm-action in a song mechanism in a ship sequence, where you have to encourage your men to row quicker in a race. There’s also a whole gameplay sequence where you have Beowulf, voiced by Winstone, singing and cheering on all his men in the mead hall. The better you are at the mini-game the louder you sing and you avoid having a big fight with your men!


SPOnG: The mead hall is also where you go to upgrade your character – how does that work?

Alexander Remy: Each time that you finish an episode in the game, we have what we call a ‘legacy system’ which counts up the heroic points and carnal points you’ve scored. When you come back to the mead hall, you spend those points on upgrading either your heroic or your carnal powers.


SPOnG: We’ve seen one of the big bosses in the game today – the huge sea serpent – what are the other five bosses that feature in the game?

Alexander Remy: There are three titans that feature in the movie. So, the first one you see is the sea serpent, then you have a fight with Grendel – which is pretty impressive and pretty important for the storyline – and then the last boss, which is the golden dragon. Then we added Hela, the goddess of hell, which in Norse mythology is all icy – totally different from the usual image of hell! We’ve got Breka, who is Beowulf’s nemesis and you’re going to have a pretty huge fight with him. Then Fenrir, the huge wolf character, also based on one of the mythological Norse titans.


SPOnG: And you can beat all the bosses by either using your ‘carnal fury’ or by being heroic and tactically using your men and the combos.

Alexander Remy: Yep. Absolutely.


SPOnG: So the game is obviously going to be marketed alongside the Hollywood blockbuster movie this Christmas. But one problem you have in terms of marketing games based on movies is that most of them aren’t very good!

Alexander Remy: Yeah, I know. I can’t agree more.


SPOnG: So you have this big hurdle to get over.

Alexander Remy: Yes, the games industry is very sceptical when it comes to games based on movie licenses. Hopefully, we’ll be up in the ranks of the Chronicles of Riddick and King Kong in terms of movie based games. Games that are trying to deliver much more than the usual type of adaptation. Hopefully, we’ll achieve that. We’re fighting that perception. We think the game is pretty solid. You’ll let us know of course, when you review it!