Interviews// Rogue Warrior Senior Producer, Sean Griffiths

You said it's a single narrative, rather than isolated missions?

Sean Griffiths: Yes, it's to do with a Star Wars programme and the defence mechanisms that the Russians start to develop. The idea is that Dick needs to disable that ability that the Russians had.


I get the feeling you were trying to avoid spoilers when you answered there...

Sean Griffiths: Yes, that's right. I think Aaron covered a few of those things in the demo and probably shouldn't have.


I know the old build was using the Unreal 3 Engine and this is using Azura. There's a striking resemblance to Unreal Engine 3.

Sean Griffiths: Thank you. That's good! It's a constantly evolving piece of technology and we're really pushing it. There's a central technology team in Oxford that are constantly advancing with different systems and pushing it.

Rebellion are the biggest independent developer in Europe and it's been a successful operation. We've got three sites in Runcorn, Derby and Oxford. I think there's about 250 people employed. The project is being developed primarily in Runcorn and Derby, and the core tech is done in Oxford.


So, if you're using your own engine, I take it you started from scratch? Did you get any of the old build?

Sean Griffiths: I think that's something to talk to Bethesda about. I don't know how much I can talk about that.

It's definitely our project now. We had the vision for it, we hit the nail on the head. We totally embraced the character of Richard Marcinko and the kind of game that Bethesda wanted is what we were happy to develop. They're very pleased with the direction we're going.


The stealth elements looked interesting – a Splinter Cell sort of style. Taking out lights and all of that. What's the balance like between that and the more straight-up shooter stuff?

Sean Griffiths: The balance... if it was kind of 50/50 – what percentage is the sneaky stuff, what percentage balance is the assault stuff... it's kind of difficult to work out. But throughout every mission there's a balance. We very much wanted to infiltrate in and assault out. There's a point where it kind of turns on Dick in every single mission.


So, it's a pacing thing?

Sean Griffiths: I think so. We want to set the pace at the beginning, and you're sneaking in for most missions. Then there's this Murphy moment where it all kicks off. As Dick says, no plan ever survives contact with the enemy. That's great. That's actually out of his books and the experiences he's had. It always goes wrong. We have that in each mission, where it kicks off and that's where you go to assault and go loud.


You're in the '80s, which is quite fashionable at the moment. Have you had much fun with that?

Sean Griffiths: It's interesting. It's been a challenge, definitely. We've got things like '80s computers. If we've got computer terminals in various missions and locations, they can't be modern computers, they can't be flat-panelled screens. So, we had to go back and have a look at some of the '80s computers and model them.

And we tried to use some of the artistic styling a little bit. We have got these big Motorola walkie-talkies – big, heavy brick things that we're going to use.


Any Easter eggs nodding back to '80s gaming in there?

Sean Griffiths: It's tricky...

We tried to make the music, the audio a bit '80s. We tried to make it Miami Vice kind of stuff.

There's the front end art style. The in-game objectives – the briefings, we tried to use teletype fonts.


You were talking about GPS before – I didn't even know they had that in the '80s! Is that historically accurate?

Sean Griffiths: We tried to be as historically accurate as we can be – there's maybe a little bit of artistic license in there. As we understand it they were experimenting with GPS technology, or they were on the verge of prototyping GPS.


What sort of weapons can we expect to get our hands on?

Sean Griffiths: There's a range of weapons in the game. I think the silenced MP5 is Dick Marcinko's weapon of choice, so that's your default weapon. But we've got a whole handful of '80s weapons in the game.


Thank you very much for your time!