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| Online multiplayer Melee |
To celebrate the game’s release outside Japan, I’ve been allowed to write a little bit about its history. For those of you that have the time, feel free to check it out.
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| Oinkie |
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| MadWorld artwork |
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| Garuda |
Development Concepts
Up until now, PlatinumGames has mainly specialized in well-crafted single-player action. We wanted to take the knowledge we gained there, and use it in something multiplayer. Specifically, an online, melee action game that supports a large number of playable characters. Simply put, that’s Anarchy Reigns. Sounds easy enough when you put it into words, but making things a reality turned out to be a different story. We were completely new to the process.
Anarchy Reigns and Madworld
Before we go any further, I’d like to answer a question I get asked a lot. “Is this game Madworld 2?”
It’s easy to get confused as they feature the same characters; we used some of the Madworld cast because they fit the gameplay style of online multiplayer melee. However, even the main character Jack, though he may have the same appearance and voice, is a different person. Think of it as a different world portrayed by the same actors. So is this game Madworld 2? “No.”
Jack was just so cool that we felt we had to include him in another game.
Arriving on Online Multiplayer Melee
Recently, online multiplayer games have become a standard, but original ideas have run thin. There are already a million FPS games out there, plenty of killer titles with killer sales, but that’s not what we chose to put ourselves up against. We wanted to take a stab at things the Platinum way. From the beginning, we wanted to come at this project with everything we had, as if we were being shot out of a cannon.
In the past, 2-D fighting games were synonymous with waiting your turn to play. I would stand in line and think, “I wonder what it would be like if we could all fight at once? That’d be awesome.” That’s when I first came up with the idea for multiplayer melee. I used to get excited just thinking about a dozen people being able to fight at the same time: Everybody at home, meeting up online. Different rules and different ways to play. Different stages and situations every time. Deciding who’s the strongest.
Maximillian Caxton is a wanted man. In a former life, he led Nikolai, Leo and Sasha as the commanding officer of the Bureau of Public Safety High Crimes Division’s elite Strike One detachment.
As the ultimate master of the Cybrid Arts, Max taught the Strike One agents everything they know, as his ability is such that a simultaneous three-way attack by his former students would present little threat.
Max carved the eight jagged scars running down the sides of his face with his own hands, and in a mere handful of years has aged to the verge of unrecognizable.
My dreams for this game grew larger and larger.
A different experience every time.
In Anarchy Reigns, you’ll have matches with as many as 16 players fighting at the same time. Things get going fast, and sometimes mayhem takes over. Yet, even with that unpredictability, as long as everyone focused on winning the match, each match started to fall into the same pattern. Not good, so we decided to change this by having challenges come in from the outside.
One technique often used in game production to change things up is something called a “Quick Time Event.” In this new genre of multiplayer melee, however, we needed something bigger, something more dramatic, happening in real time. What we came up with was mid-battle “Action Trigger Events.”
The name “Action Trigger Event” comes from a few different ideas. We imagined a situation where the stage “ate” the player, for example. Or that Quick Time Events posed a question (“Q”TE) to which Action Trigger Events had the answer (“A”TE). The match doesn’t play out the same way every time; the ground might start to shake and suddenly the stage you thought you knew changes shape completely. Fighter jets come in for an aerial raid, or begin crashing around the stage, racking up the casualties. The game’s AI keeps tabs on players and arranges disasters/traps in the stage according to the gameplay situation, so you never get the same outcome twice. You can’t just focus on the opponent in front of you. The game forces you to adjust to your surroundings.
Deciding on the right world and characters
I wanted the characters to look strong. Mutants, cyborgs… The kind characters you would nod your head when told they had supernatural powers. After it was decided we’d have Jack, I wanted all the characters to have some hidden weapon connected to their body somehow. And I definitely wanted them to be extremely macho.
Every character also had to have a hero quality with a distinct feel; hence, you’ll find transforming robots and mutants in the cast. The animation and modeling in the game has a Japanese touch to it, so I hope you can pick up on that when you play.
Garuda, the transforming robot and Oinkie, the transmutating porker.
To better understand the characters in Anarchy Reigns, try playing through Campaign Mode, where you can see all 16 of them, one after another. Anarchy Reigns is a story with two protagonists following the same man. Both are conflicted by their reasons for doing so; however, at the end of the tunnel an answer awaits them and you both. If you’re just an offline player, there’s more than enough for you to sink your teeth into here.
Douglas has made hunting mutants a personal crusade for decades, using a pair of tremendously powerful pistons installed in his arms. He has no specific fighting style, preferring to leap into the fray on instinct and let his massive armament do the work. According to Douglas, the mutants deserve little else.
In Conclusion.
In Anarchy Reigns, there will be attacks from off-screen, random deaths, and an infinite array of unexpectedness waiting in every match. What makes Anarchy Reigns interesting is that we CAN have items that would be absurdly overpowered for anything one-on-one, or things that just wouldn’t fly in a normal game… We stayed true to the word “Anarchy”, and hopefully this game stands out in the current market of so few original IPs. I hope it might be able to shake things up and that from here on, we might see more games in the online melee genre.
