Interviews// Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice - Lead Designer, Chris Whiteside

We didn’t want the player having to press buttons to issue them with commands and to give them stuff to do, so we have this pretty advanced AI whereby they act as if they are a co-operative player – so they do what’s needed of them, they don’t piss around and they don’t get in your way. So it’s a lot of fun! Its fun watching them do what they do. Sometimes they save your ass and sometimes you have to save them. And then later on in the game things change a little and it really does come into its own then…

Also, in multiplayer, you can choose to play as any of the recruits. Or you can even play as the gang members as well, if that’s what takes your fancy.


SPOnG: But for the story mode you just play as the one character, the cop?

Chris Whiteside: Yes. Again, it goes back to the movie influence. We wanted a central character. We wanted the player to be the cop, the hero. If we were to allow the player to play as other characters then to a certain extent that dilutes the identification with, and the characterisation of the main guy.


SPOnG: The other Hollywood reference that immediately springs to mind is Simpson-Bruckheimer and that team’s way-over-the-top high concept action movies.

Chris Whiteside: If you look at all the reviews of the first game… in fact, I think in the SPOnG preview back in 2005 it was also mentioned… we always get references to Michael Bay or Simpson-Bruckheimer. One of the mags said Pursuit Force was “the best action movie you’ve never seen”… the Michael Bay reference is particularly interesting, as he is rumoured to be setting up his own videogame studio.


SPOnG: Oh really? That’s interesting. We’ll have to look into that. So tell us some more about the multiplayer aspects in the game. (You can read the preview right here.)

Chris Whiteside: Sure, we’ve basically got four-player on the PSP version – as well as 2-player split screen on the PS2 version, which we’ve not shown you today – each console has two exclusive multiplayer modes. The multiplayer is based on the Pursuit Force mechanic, so there’s no death-match or capture-the-flag here. Instead its stuff like jumping from vehicle to vehicle or cops and robbers fighting each other and that kind of thing. There’s co-operative play, co-operative team play, versus play and versus team-play.


SPOnG: The big epic boss encounters look pretty cool. We saw the rather awesome looking S44 Sky Fortress earlier… so there’s twelve of those in total?

Chris Whiteside: Yeah, there’s twelve boss vehicles. I think you get to fight on ten of them, but the ones that you don’t fight on are as interactive but they do some other interesting things as well


SPOnG: Can you tell us which bosses are your own particular favourites?

Chris Whiteside: Well I’m a real purist when it comes down to games so one of my personal favourites is the Syndicate Lieutenant, she’s got this super cool almost-Batmobile-like car and she steals the scientist who’s integral to the plot. And it’s your mission to take her down, but the problem is that her vehicle is bullet-proof.

So, you basically have to ram her while doing this Top Gear-style racing across these winding alpine roads. And every so often when you ram her and she loses 25% of health these awesome boosters open up on the back of your vehicle and, meanwhile, she starts dropping mines in your path. I love my racing games, so for me that’s one of my favourites.