The Suffering: Ties That Bind Wrap Report

Richard Rouse III: We also spent a lot of effort on expanding the morality system, giving players more choices and a more meaningful way to affect the story. We also tied the player's reputation into how the insanity creature works. I was pretty happy with how these features worked out, though I think they ended up being a bit more subtle than we initially expected. We seriously explored a few new features that didn't end up making the final cut, though these features weren't brand new game mechanics per se. One was "fully playable flashbacks" that would affect the story. So, instead of Torque just seeing a vision from when he was growing up in the group home, the player would actually be able to go back in time and play that section of the gameworld for a short time. This was a pretty cool concept, but with all the story rewrites we did, it ended up not making it into the final game.

It's interesting to look back at how one change like cutting some of the areas can lead to an unexpected gameplay results. Despite our best efforts, game design and development is basically a chaotic system

The story was something we didn't expect would take as long as it did. The first game was not really intended to have a sequel, so coming up with a plot that fit together with the story from it was a much bigger challenge than we initially anticipated. Since the first game was so heavily story-driven and the story was what people had seemed to like most about it, finding a narrative that fit together was a task we spent a lot of time on, perhaps too much. Originally, we had explored the idea that we could do a second game without Torque in it, and it certainly would have been an interesting avenue to explore. A lot could be told about The Suffering universe without involving him. But feedback from people was so strong on Torque that it was decided it would be a waste not to explore him further. We completely rewrote the plot at least four times, which we never did on the first game. But in the end, I think it's the story integrity and relevance of the two games that makes them stand out from other action or horror games.

Technology Andre Maguire: Our technology was pretty much entirely our own. We used a proprietary engine that was initially developed for Drakan years ago. Since then and during the course of the first and second Suffering games, we made massive improvements and additions. It's amazing how much the team accomplished in that regard. Visually, Ties That Bind far surpasses any other game we've done.

In the past, we would build up levels in Maya, export each component of the scene to the network, import the components to the editor databases, and then rebuild the scenes in the editor. The technology team built up a tool set that allowed artists to quickly transfer entire scenes directly to the editor, which allowed for much better scene composition. That, combined with a more focused artistic sensibility, really worked out well for the title.

Development Timeline Andre Maguire: We started The Suffering: Ties That Bind in March of '04, and finished up in September of '05. The first few months were spent in pre-production, and then we went through a sort of evaluation period. It was during this time that we determined the optimized "Maya to Editor" pipeline was something we wanted to pursue, and we ramped up the team into full production in November. It was right about then that we sustained a particularly catastrophic server crash that literally put us out of commission for a good three weeks. Once we had that sorted out, we were in full-blown production all the way until the moment we shipped.

Richard Rouse III: Though that was a pretty aggressive schedule, our original one was even more so. It was shorter by four months. Fortunately, we realized early on that what we shipped in that time frame would have been a lot more like the first game, to the point where it almost would have been basically a mission pack. Once we had our adjusted ship date by end of '04, we stuck to that date, which was no small accomplishment. It was a Herculean effort for all involved. I certainly think there were still things we could have polished in the game, but there always are. At some point, you have to ship the game, and you can't go on tweaking it forever.

Changes and Enhancements Richard Rouse III: Earlier on, I mentioned that the story changed quite a bit over the course of development. Even once we had a story that we were happy with, because of various problems with getting the art for the game made, we had to trim back on quite a few areas. For example, players would have been treated to Killjoy's psych ward, a particularly twisted area that resided beneath the prison, and where the good doctor had gotten his sadistic start before moving out to Carnate Island. There was also a significantly larger park, a massive shipyard, and a lot of other areas that would have been fun to do and which the team wanted to build, but we simply didn't have time.

Because we cut so much real estate out of the game, we ended up with less space to work with to get us a long enough game experience. This led to us adding more waves of enemies in some areas than we probably should have, which in turn made for some really hard sections of combat. It's interesting to look back at how one change like cutting some of the areas can lead to an unexpected gameplay results. Despite our best efforts, game design and development is basically a chaotic system, where the smallest change can have massive ramifications in a completely separate area of the game.