But don't think the studio is playing it safe. In an interesting turn of events, Gunslinger is heading to digital platforms. The Xbox Live Arcade version was being showcased at Ubisoft's recent Digital Days press conference, and I spoke to Techland's brand manager Błażej Krakowiak about the game's design.
SPOnG: Gunslinger is an interesting return to form for Call of Juarez - why did you choose to develop the game for digital platforms?
Błażej Krakowiak: Well, Ubisoft has long been one of the key publishers in the digital space. they were one of the first to really believe that this is the future, and they were right. So they have a very ambitious approach that we share - that digital platforms can really have great, high-quality games with great stories. We see our brand as a perfect match, so we are happy to be part of the digital revolution. As a company, we are always open to new opportunities.
Now, we are not saying that we’re always going to make Call of Juarez a digital title, but this definitely is something we want to stand out in the market, and be seen as a very high quality digital offering.
Błażej Krakowiak: ‘Experiment’ is something that you think may fail - and we don’t think that this game has a bad future. We really think this is the best game in the series to date. In our view, we see this as a new experience for the players. But, we are a very experienced studio and this is a series with legacy so... this is maybe not an experiment, just a new direction.
SPOnG: The last Call of Juarez game, The Cartel, didn’t get a very positive reaction from fans and gamers. Would you say that this return in direction to the wild west is a response to that? Have you learned from The Cartel?
Błażej Krakowiak: We always learn from everything, and games are complicated things - the business of developing and then what happens with them [at retail]. There were numerous reasons why Call of Juarez: The Cartel didn’t turn out to be what we wanted it to be. But the key feedback we got from fans was to bring the series back to the Wild West. So we did - and ever since Bound in Blood we’ve had a lot of ideas that we really wanted to use in a new western game. So, this is our chance.
SPOnG: You mentioned a couple of reasons. What were those reasons?
Błażej Krakowiak: Well, really I wouldn’t like to discuss them in too much detail without our partners at Ubisoft. Basically I think it’s... the modern ‘Wild West’, so to speak... it’s a different type of story. It’s more of a deconstruction of society - a modern society that’s established and it breaks down. You have these characters as gunslingers in a modern sense, fighting to survive to really remain in that world and try to live in it.
Here, with the historical Wild West, you are building something new because there is no society, no justice. The characters in this world are really exploring the unknown, going into the wilderness, bringing justice with them in the form of their guns. This is how the myths work about the lone gunmen in the Wild West.
I would say this is more of a positive process. This [traditional Wild West setting] is what people really love about this approach and this is what we’re focusing on for this one.
Błażej Krakowiak: I would say that even Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood was very well received, and it was definitely a high quality western game. And it was developed in one of the most popular genres - first person shooters. Yeah, obviously Red Dead Redemption is also a great game, but it has a completely different approach to us. We are focusing on very tight, very interesting storytelling.
Techland really likes first person games because we think they’re more immersive. So the same thing that led us to first-person melee combat in Dead Island also makes us really believe that looking at the Wild West through your character’s eyes is a good thing. It also allows us to use all those gameplay tricks - like a sense of death, bullet dodging mechanics and the concentration mode. And you’ll see, in the coming months as we reveal more, that the narrator has a very important role to play too.
SPOnG: I wanted to talk about the art style in the game, as I found it quite striking. What made you guys take this ‘comic book’ approach?
Błażej Krakowiak: Yeah. When you think about it, everything that we know and like about the Wild West is some form of legend. There is historical truth in it - we know it, we research it. But there is also this whole set of expectations [of what the Wild West was like] from pop culture, movies, comic books, dime novels and whatnot.
So we decided to make a game that’s a story in itself - because it’s being told by the character - and inside that story you have another one unfolding. Many of the Wild West characters that we meet are real, historical figures - even though they were transformed into these larger-than-life, almost superhero-style characters. The comic book style fits very well to that approach.
These guys were the first living legends - people who could do impossible things, like kill 20 people in one gunfight... which obviously never happened, but this is how we like to look at them. They’re like the martial artists in the early action movies, like Bruce Lee. That’s also exaggerated to the point of impossibility, but this is what we like. This artistic approach lets us underscore that in a way.
Błażej Krakowiak: Meeting those legendary characters is very much a part of the genre. You’ll find many Westerns, books or tales that involve suddenly meeting one of those guys. And when you think about it, you’ve heard the name. You know that Billy the Kid was a gunslinger from the West, but you don’t know much about him, right?
We decided to explore these characters more, and we’re definitely playing with this whole ‘fact and fiction’ mix, because this is the defining thing of the Wild West to us. We’re bringing in these characters, but it’s all connected with an overarching story - the game’s protagonist was a bounty hunter, and he had an opportunity to meet these legends.
There is really a cool story behind all of this, which we can’t reveal it at this stage, but we can say that this isn’t going to be just a series of connected episodes. It’s definitely one big tale that has all of these interesting characters in it. And as you see, we even have collectibles with the actual history written in them. So if you want to know the absolute truth - which is more mundane than what we like to think - you can do that.
And then you’ll see how much you like our version. We’re playing with this, so we want people, after playing our game, to learn more about all those characters, and to also wonder what really happened... because we’ll definitely mess with their heads!
SPOnG: You’ve got real-life heroes and notorious gunslingers in the game, but you’ve clearly taken a creative liberty with story...
Błażej Krakowiak: Oh, absolutely. Because it must be done that way. You know, the episode that we’re showing in the demo - the mission of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett - the place where it all happens, Stinking Springs, is an actual place from the life of Billy the Kid. Obviously, it’s exaggerated a bit in terms of size and number of enemies. But if you think about it, in the Wild West those who survived a gunfight got to tell the tale. There were no video cameras to record the event.
Our character is one of those guys who lived to old age and really has incredible stories to tell. So he has something to add... but we’re absolutely playing with this whole ‘fact and fiction’ idea. Yeah, you can expect the creative approach, and I hope that people like it because we’re putting a lot of effort into it.
Błażej Krakowiak: Again, as Techland we are an independent developer and we like to be able to really make our decisions based on what makes sense from the business and creative side. So we’re not saying either way.
We’re definitely committed to making a high quality product from this one, but we’ll see. It may be the first of many Call of Juarez titles, or maybe the next one may be a retail game. We’re considering all options.
SPOnG: Thank you very much for your time.
Błażej Krakowiak: Thank you!