Rare Art Lead Interview
At A Glance
- Bigger, badder, and better-looking than the original in every conceivable way.
- These artists have slaved for years to create the greatest first-person shooter ever.
Perfect Dark Zero™ is one of those "must-have" Xbox 360™ launch games. Years in development, it's a banner title that has pushed gamers' expectations up into the stratosphere. The prequel to the 2000 release (which earned an unbelievable 9.9 score in Gamespot's review promises to be bigger, badder, and better-looking than the original in every conceivable way. That's due in part to the massive power of Xbox 360, but power is nothing without the talent to harness it.
You've come a long way, baby.
Enter Lee Musgrave, head of art at Rare®. He and his team of skilled character modelers, world designers, sketch artists, and texture mappers have slaved for years to top one of the greatest first-person shooters ever made.
I managed to eke a few details about the art design of this ground-breaking game out of Lee. Read on for an inside look.
"The graphical capabilities of the hardware
serve to tax the artist harder than
any [development] kit that has gone before it."
Xbox.com: Thanks for taking time to speak with us at Xbox.com. For the benefit of our readers, please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your role as Art Lead on Perfect Dark Zero.
Lee Musgrave: [I am] Lee Musgrave, Head of Art for Rare. PDZ has been in development for some considerable time and has had a transient art department throughout development. There has been no full-fledged single art lead on the project for over a year. Art lead duties have been split between a concept lead, background art lead, and character art lead—and several other departmentalized lead roles (animation, props, etc.) that have formed a lead "layer."
Xbox.com: PDZ has been in development for a few years now. Did you originally intend it to be an original Xbox® game, or did the team decide to make the game for the next-generation platform from day one?
Musgrave: It was originally intended to be a GameCube title! As far as we were concerned, the platform we were developing on at the time was the target platform; you can't afford to be distracted by the platforms you'd like to work on. The shift from GameCube to Xbox naturally led to a re-examination of the art assets due to the slightly higher specs of the Xbox, but that was nothing compared to the change that we had to make when Xbox 360 came along. Every single one of the graphical assets has been re-worked for Xbox 360, bar none.
Xbox.com: What features of Xbox 360 made your job as an artist easier? What were you able to accomplish that you previously couldn't achieve?
Musgrave: Xbox 360 has absolutely no features that make an artist's life "easier." The phenomenal power of the machine and the graphical capabilities of the hardware serve to tax the artist harder than any [development] kit that has gone before it. It can push more polygons and calculate more shader elements than any previous console, and this in combination with the HD screen resolution means that artists are now free to create characters and backgrounds at a previously unthinkable level of fidelity. Easier? No. Better? Oh yeah.
"This is future Earth in a comic book sense and the art
draws heavily from cinematic and anime references."
Xbox.com: Joanna Dark has a new look. Why the change in her appearance?
Musgrave: PDZ has always had a distinct tone and style. The graphical realization of this was limited by previous hardware, and meant that artists could not create Jo and the other characters in the way that they would have truly liked. Xbox 360 changed that, and has allowed our artists to push the graphical style of the game in a direction that is both unique and compelling.
Xbox.com: Were you or the members of your team involved on the original Perfect Dark?
Musgrave: Only three artists remain on PDZ that were part of the original team.
Xbox.com: What are some ways you and your team differentiate the visual style of PDZ from other first-person shooter (FPS) games?
Musgrave: PDZ stands out on two fronts. Firstly, it does not strive for a realistic art style like so many other FPSs. This is future Earth in a comic book sense and the art draws heavily from cinematic and Anime references. Everything from the characters and backgrounds down to the smallest props and effects has been deliberately designed to echo a reality that is both recognizable and fantastic.
Secondly, PDZ is a technical leap beyond past console FPSs. For the first time, players will experience pixel-accurate motion blur that works just like a movie camera. They will find shaders with a level of detail and an HDR lighting engine that more closely simulate real world lighting than pretty much any console game that has gone before.
The combined effect of this intense realism and off-kilter art style is what makes PDZ different; it's what gives it its cohesiveness, its recognition factor, and its character.
Xbox.com: Tell us about the varied environments players can explore in PDZ. Were any real-world locations used as reference points, or was each level built from the ground up to be entirely unique since the game is set in the future?
Musgrave: We wanted to ensure from the beginning that we were not going to go down the mega-futuristic route—there always had to be some grounding in modern-day reality to whatever we did to make it relevant to ourselves and the player. So it is futuristic—but not too far-fetched.
We had to ensure that locations were recognizable as everyday places and so they had to retain as much realism as possible, but they had to be futuristic enough so we could get away from a pure (dull) "representation" mindset. Take the Night Club level for instance; the far shoreline is modeled after Hong Kong. It is not a direct emulation, but does retain certain recognizable elements. We wanted something fun and new and nice to look at, but not totally alien to the player.
Xbox.com: Aside from the original Perfect Dark, were any other first-person shooters or games from other genres tapped for inspiration?
Musgrave: I am sure that if you look closely you will find elements of many things within PDZ. It is built on a foundation of high originality and a desire to be stylistically unique, but is at the same time willing to tip a nod to its forebears. It's Halo® meets Star Wars meets Ghost in the Shell. There is a little Half-Life® 2 next-gen realism, and a little Final Fantasy The Movie. This is future Earth, not a wacky alien world— it is high technology, Neuromancer, and Blade Runner ... The Matrix and Minority Report, but not Buck Rogers.
Xbox.com: It's truly an amazing looking game! Thanks for your time, Lee.
Article by Bobby Stein
