[13/04] Hong Kong Crime Drama Sleeping Dogs Will Awaken In August

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Square Enix announced a release date for Hong Kong crime drama game, Sleeping Dogs, today. North America will get the game on August 14th and the U.K. will see the game on August 17th. Depending on which U.S. store you order the game from, you’ll get access to different pre-order incentives.

Best Buy are giving away a “Georges St. Pierre” pack, which lets you dress like the martial arts champion and gives you an extra melee move based on him. Wearing his clothes will give you increased throw and grappling damage in combat.

Amazon’s pre-order bonus is the Martial Arts pack. This gives you a Shaolin Warrior outfit and decorations for your safehouse in the game. You also get bonus Triad XP points and an extra “Shaolin Showdown” mission.

Finally, GameStop have a “Police Protection” pack, which has an exclusive “High Speed” mission, an HK Police SWAT outfit, an exclusive assault rifle weapon to use in the game, and a SWAT police vehicle.

In the U.K., the George St. Pierre and Police Protection incentives will be part of a limited edition for the game, which will be available to those who pre-order the game at any U.K. store. Additionally, Square Enix Europe also say that the downloadable PC version of the game will have some sort of extra content as well.

Source: Siliconera

 

[Sexy Beast]

I did hear that SE got the rights to the "True Crimes" series from Activision. I knew it was gonna be renamed, so this could possibly be it. Hopefully it doesn't stink.

 

[Steve-O]

I did hear that SE got the rights to the "True Crimes" series from Activision. I knew it was gonna be renamed, so this could possibly be it. Hopefully it doesn't stink.

you are indeed correct, this is true crime, it just been renamed by square enix, as square enix did get the rights to the game last year

on the news.... i'm looking quite forward to the game..... it looks pretty nice, I just hope it plays the same as true crime did back on the ps2 days

 

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[25/04] Sleeping Dogs’ Fighting System Inspired By Tony Jaa Action Flick "The Protector"




Square Enix is diving into the open world genre with Modnation Racers developer United Front Games. The two companies are polishing Sleeping Dogs, which was originally True Crime: Hong Kong. You play as Detective Wei Shen, a member of the Hong Kong police deep undercover as a member of the Sun On Yee gang. It’s your job to take down the Triad and that means plenty of fist to face action.Siliconera sat down with the development team at United Front Games to talk about partnering with Square Enix and how United Front Games developed the combat system.Sleeping Dogs was originally in development as True Crime: Hong Kong with Activision as the publisher. How far along was the title before Square Enix stepped in and how did they help when they got involved, aside from the live action Goldtooth trailer?Mike Skupa, Design Director: Well, Square Enix has had a lot of experience making similar games. They brought a lot of high level advice. They were also able to look at the game with fresh eyes. We have been working on it for quite awhile, so that was extremely helpful. They basically were able to help us in all areas and disciplines – game design, the visuals, user testing, the tech. It’s been a really good partnership from the beginning.Jeff O’Connell, Senior Producer: One of the things about making open world games is they are incredibly complex and system driven. The systems take a very long time to develop and as a result, through its development, is often a very messy development cycle. It’s really hard to see the whole thing come together until very late in the process. I think people who have worked in open world games and one of the cool things is Square [Enix] had the patience and foresight to be able to see and did see all of the core systems were very strong and well thought out. Even though the project was late in development when the game was canceled, when Square saw it all of the fundamentals are there – you guys are so close, let’s finish this thing.Mike and I were on this project since day one and it was really refreshing to have a publisher come in and say it looks great guys. It was a nice confidence boost for us as well because we always believed in the game.MS: Square did a lot of due diligence on the product. They played through the game in its entirety and then asked all of the right questions to figure out where things were heading. It really gave them a refreshingly quick taste and insight on where things were at and where things could be with the proper amount of work and time.


The combat felt like another Square Enix London project, Batman: Arkham Asylum, when I played Sleeping Dogs. Can you tell us what the hand to hand combat was like before Square Enix signed on to publish the game?MS: We’ve been working on the combat system for over four years now. A lot of the members of our development team have had previous experience making on combat on games.A bunch of us did the gameplay in Bully, so we have a lot of experience making hand to hand combat in open world games. That combat system has basically progressed and evolved since the beginning. Square did bring a lot of feedback just based on general playability, user testing, a lot of tweaks, and helping refine the mechanics. It’s pretty much been a constant evolution of the system from the beginning.I think the first piece of reference material we used was a scene from Tony Jaa’s The Protector. What we knew from the get go is we really wanted to have a combat system that incorporated multi-directional combat, the ability to grapple and counter enemies. We wanted to combine strike based gameplay with a lot of environmental interaction. Environmental interaction has always been what we consider the key hook of our gameplay. It’s something we try to bring about in all of our systems. Making one big violent sandbox was our initial concept.We started off with a player with a few enemies in the room. We added things on and off until we created our first playable demo, which funny enough is actually the very same night market chase we showed in our demonstration. That was the first mission we ever created. While it has advanced heavily, we sometimes go back and play it and are quite amazed at how the flow and pace remained the same.JOC: It’s pretty interesting, like Mike said, the fundamentals have really stayed the same. I think that is attributable to the fact that a bunch of our core gameplay guys came from Bully and had a grasp on how to develop an open world combat experience. I remember when Mike first came aboard and started working here he sent me this clip from The Protector – it’s the scene where he goes up the spiral staircase.

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It’s an amazing fight scene because he uses melee and he uses the environment. There are no camera cuts. It’s all continuous. Mike said with the team’s experience I feel confident we can deliver that and that was in the fall of 2007.MS: Obviously since then we’ve made improvements and changes based on user feedback. We’ve done a lot of focus group testing and through Square’s experience in the genre working on titles like Arkham Asylum and Just Cause. It also helped that the head designer at Square and both myself are big fighting game fans. We communicated heavily on what the core essentials of the combat system. It will both cater, I guess, to hardcore fighting game players and people who want a hardcore martial arts experience, but also the kind of gamer who is into open world games or likes the concept of an undercover cop in Hong Kong and doesn’t have a lot of background in combat systems. We really want to make sure that type of player can get into the game and become an expert while going through it.

JOC: I think one of the things Mike said, is in recent years melee combat in open world has become a thing. Assassin’s Creed and Batman have played a huge role in that. I think people now can recognize that as a genre into itself whereas years ago that wouldn’t be the case necessarily. The fact that the game is set in Hong Kong is a perfect meshing of culture where martial arts and hand to hand combat is a huge pillar of that society. We were happy to be able to tap into that.What are the favorite Sleeping Dogs uses the environment? Maybe you can tell us about some of the environmental finishers we haven’t seen yet.JOC: There are several dozen in the game. There are really well done ones in environments that you haven’t seen yet. There is a fish processing plant action scene that has particularly violent props in there. I won’t spoil them, but those are some of the my favorites. The thing that I get the most joy out of when I’m playing the game is there are versions of these props also in the open world. If you’re having a street fight against the Triad guys, the phone booths, some of the market stalls, and vehicles are interactive combat props. These things aren’t just in missions, they’re in the open world too.MS: We started off with some really key props in set pieces locations. We were really focused on what can we use to get that level of sizzle to go over the top. As we progressed, we found ways to add more and more environmental objects into the world. We were also able to take everyday geometry setups like tables, walls, and even utilizing the ground, so this wouldn’t be something that just occurred in a set piece environment.One thing that Square really pointed out is it was so much fun to utilize these things around the world. They really helped us get a lot more physics driven environmental interaction in the game. You have the ability to just toss a guy, even if the object isn’t tagged to do a special case scenario, there is still a lot of physics based interactions that provide a lot of fun. The tricky thing is for us with this is it’s so fun to run around and beat on people in the environment, but being the player is a cop it’s balancing those sociopathic tendencies we get as gamers and weaving that with the fiction has been an interesting challenge.
Can you tell us about the shooting parts we haven’t seen that yet?MS: First and foremost, we wanted to make it mobile and not overtake the hand to hand combat. It’s very, very tricky to make a game that combines melee combat with shooting into one, especially in an open world. We don’t actually have a full fledged inventory system. We tried to make that very realistic.From the beginning, we treated guns as power ups. Your character is constantly, during a gunfight, using up his weaponry. He has to utilize hand to hand abilities like arm flip disarms and free running disarms to constantly move forward and switch up your weaponry.It’s a very mobile experience. It’s a very cinematic experience. We do have a full fledged cover mechanic, but we like to call it aggressive cover. We don’t want to ignore the player by having them camp out at places for a long period of time. There are certainly a few scenarios in the game where you have to defend yourself at a location. In general, we make the player move, get cover for quick burst, and jump out of cover to surprise their enemy. We wanted to capture the classic elements of Hong Kong cinematic shooting, but also make sure it fits within the modern day sensibilities of the title.JOC: We really tried to push the mechanics in the open world genre. Oftentimes in open world games, the driving and shooting doesn’t feel that great. Whether its on a motorbike or in a car driving and shooting. We spent a lot of time trying to make that experience feel good and that had its roots in not just the open world genre itself, but the action movies that inspired us on how we wanted to bring the game to life.Check back tomorrow for part two of our Sleeping Dogs interview where Jeff O’Connell and Mike Skupa talk about the game’s open world.



Source: Siliconera

 

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[h=1][26/04] How Open Is Square Enix’s Open World Game Sleeping Dogs?[/h]
Yesterday, the Sleeping Dogs team at United Front Games discussed developing the game’s hand to hand combat system and how a fight scene from The Protector was a source of inspiration. But, Sleeping Dogs isn’t Streets of Hong Kong Rage. It’s an open world game and since we’ve only seen demo missions I asked the developers about the scale of Hong Kong in the game. You said Sleeping Dogs is an open world game, but how open is it. Will we be able to ride the Star Ferry or take the MTR[SUP]1[/SUP]? What parts of Hong Kong will we see? Mike Skupa, Design Director: It’s a full on open world game. We really wanted to focus on what the main character would do and what would be really fun. We had a lot of things in the open world in the beginning that basically allowed the player to use numerous types of transportation and teleport around the world such as taking the MTR or the Ferry. We actually had those things functioning. We removed that stuff because it was taking away from the player’s ability and fun factor of utilizing the action hijack mechanics, leaping from car to car, and driving around the world. While it is a full open world game, there are primary missions, secondary missions, and a lot of ambient and dynamic content that pops out of the blue. We tried our best to ensure that it all fits within the pacing and action based core we wanted to have in the game and not make it feel too much like a simulation or have a lot of things in the game just because there is something you can do in the open world. Everything we have in there caters to the story and lifestyle of our main character and also the mindset that the player would have as the main character. There are a lot of secondary diversions that aren’t serious or tied to the core narrative, but these are all things our main character would partake in. Jeff O’Connell, Senior Producer: We went to Hong Kong and it sounds like Spencer you may have been there maybe more than we have. We have been there a couple of times doing research. When we came back we compared notes and we came up with a list of things for the core game. It could be shopping, it could be food, it could be gambling, karaoke or massage – things that really felt fun for us. You’ll find those things throughout the open world, as well as the secondary combat Mike mentioned. It can be collectibles, ambient fights, there is a variety of stuff. It is a full open world game, even though we’ve spent a tremendous amount of time making some of our core story missions feel more like a layer. We use interiors and spaces that are custom built. The reason why we did that, is coming back to The Protector, is we felt that gave us a good amount of control to create action movie moments or let the player create their own action movie moments in these interior spaces. That’s not to say every core story mission uses a custom environment, a lot of them use the open world as well. There are car chases, bike chases, fights in the streets, shootouts in the streets, all kinds of those things. One more cool thing about the open world is the famous Hong Kong red taxis are in there as a teleportation system if you do want to get where you’re going a little bit faster. MS: I think gamers are going to be quite surprised at how open world the game actually is. It’s something we contemplated and worked heavily on when releasing our demos to the both the media and public. It’s how open world do we want to showcase? They are very, very tricky games to demonstrate. Because a lot can go wrong and there is potential for people finding reveals that we don’t want to get out yet. A lot of what we showcased focused on the action based set piece moments in the game. There is quite a wide array of secondary diversions and freedom of choice of how you want to pace your progression through the main storyline. [SUP]1[/SUP]The Star Ferry is a Hong Kong landmark that brings passengers across Victoria Harbor from Hong Kong Island to Kowloon and vice versa. The MTR is Hong Kong’s subway system. Since we’re talking about choice will Detective Wei Shen be able to choose between being say a heroic officer or dirty cop? MS: From the beginning we toyed with the idea of making a multi branching storyline. Working with the writer and our creative vision, we felt in order to tell the story we want to tell we want to craft that narrative so that no matter what the player is always going to be doing good things. It’s not a black and white or a good versus evil tale. Based on a lot of our reference material, movies like Infernal Affairs and the Electionseries, we really wanted to give the player a lot more choice on how dirty or how extreme they want to go in the gameplay and having the gameplay reward that instead of changing our cutscenes around. There is a lot of choice. There is a lot of flexibility of how the player wants to play the game. The story experience in different areas will reflect that. We have a lot of stats in the game and we put a big focus of showing players how they are playing. That’s something Square has been really good at – pulling all the elements of how gamers play games and what type of patterns they have. Not just something you compare to yourself when you’re playing locally, but also with people around the world which also brings a community around the title. Going to back to the scale of the city, could you give us an idea of what parts of Hong Kong can we see. Will Wei Shen go clubbing in Lan Kwai Fong? Will we walk around Mong Kok or visit the big Buddah on Lantau Island? JOC: The island itself [Hong Kong Island] is the main focus of the action. There are maybe one or two small islands also. We haven’t included any of Kowloon. We just limited it to the main island itself, which is a fantastic setting for a game. You have a mix of very dense urban environments, which have a different flavor to Hong Kong’s night markets and fish markets areas that feel different from the skyscrapers of Central. We have four different neighborhoods which sort of represent the diversity of Hong Kong. Central, North Point, which is more modeled after Kowloon, perhaps, than the real North Point in Hong Kong. We’ve got Aberdeen with the famous waterfronts and our version of Jumbo’s restaurants[SUP]2[/SUP] and Kennedy Town as well. It goes to Victoria Peak with its winding roads. We tried to create a version of Hong Kong Island that we think is representative of the real thing, but we really built it for gameplay. Given right down to the road layouts, we have a lot of team members not just from Rockstar, but from EA. Guys who worked on the Need for Speed franchise. These guys built a lot of racetracks into the street layouts as well and there are a variety of races and car chases. In terms of the Island itself, it’s representative of the real thing, but really turned for gameplay. MS: Being an open world game, that has a very strong focus on on-foot mechanics and vehicular interaction, also combining the two, it was crucial from the beginning to layout the progression of the game. We were quite selective of the environments and locations from Hong Kong we focused on. We wanted to start the game off on-foot where you don’t have a vehicle, at the time, you are a low level gangster. That allowed us to set up the initial location to be a lot more ground based, but also not too complicated while they’re getting used to the free running ability to not be overwhelmed. We really set up the complexity of the environment into our game progression and that also reflects the social standing and economic growth of your character as he’s moving through the Triad, as well. You start out in a lower class neighborhood and progressively make your way around to the Island into fancier neighborhoods where you are dealing with upper end Triad bosses, higher end clothing stores, better vehicles, and all of that. [SUP]2[/SUP]An elaborate floating restaurant built in the style of a Ming Dynasty palace with Las Vegas lights. Jeff and Mike will be back tomorrow with Triad tales (to keep the source material authentic, did you know they consulted with gangsters?) and to tell us aboutSleeping Dogs’ story.

Source: Siliconera