October 15, 2007

TNA iMPACT! Interview 1: Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3
By Louis Bedigian

“We’re going to beat Smackdown in in-the-ring gameplay”

“We’re concentrating on the in-the-ring action,” started Mark Allen, Executive Producer of TNA iMPACT! at Midway LA, who is responsible for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game. “Our philosophy is that if we can tackle that we can add all the features we want around that game.”

TNA iMPACT! is a cutting-edge fighting game from the developer and publisher of countless arcade and arcade-style classics. GameZone recently attended the game’s premiere event to get some hands-on action and speak with the developers about the new IP.

“It’s going to be the first iteration of our game so we’re not going to be as wide as Smackdown,” Mark told us, referring to the number of game modes offered in THQ’s series. “But we’ll certainly focus on what we think are the most important things, and I know we’re going to beat Smackdown in in-the-ring gameplay.”

“That,” he says proudly, “is what the gamer wants.”

Tell us about the run button. That’s not typically the kind of thing you see in a wrestling game, but that is a very Midway thing to do thanks to Mortal Kombat. Where did that come from in this game?

The run button is not meant to run away in wrestling. Wrestlers don’t run away from anything. They don’t block or anything like that. They can take the blows, so the run button is basically to get you back into the action as fast as possible. I mean you’ve see that you can go out of the ring, so once you include that area of being out of the ring, you’ve got to get to your opponent as quickly as possible. Unless you take the time walking back there’s a lot of gameplay time lost out, so you do need the run button for that.

The other thing of course is that there are some unique moves you can pull just by using the run button. You’ve seen the jump kicks and stuff. Then if you actually want to run out of the ring, dive onto someone who’s already out of the ring, [and] knock them over on the concrete, the run button is great for that too.

Will there be other run moves that we haven’t seen in the game yet?

There are a ton of moves that have yet to go into the game. The move set for each character is going to be unique. You’ll see a lot of things.

What about outside-the-ring gameplay – are there going to be interactions there? Will you be able to pick up objects to use as weapons?

Yeah, you can pick up chairs and bats and… We’re gonna have that stuff. We’re working on that stuff right now. How many we’re going to have, I couldn’t tell you that right now. But certainly bats, pipes, chairs, the standard stuff will be there.

How have the motion capture sessions been going?

This is one of the things about working with TNA that shows why the partnership is fantastic. When we do the motion capture suits, we have an animation list that we bring along. We tell them the moves we want to do. The guys we’re working with, they actually suggest moves that we can put in there.

People like AJ Styles and Samoa Joe, and these guys play games. They understand the moves that we want to do in the game. They know they can’t do something that requires a long lead up to something because the responsiveness of the game has got to be there. They suggested some great moves, we did the motion capture… There’s this realistic level that this adds, having them do it is even better ‘cause they’re adding to the game.

“[The Unreal Engine] allowed us to concentrate a lot on the environment. You probably saw the depth of field in there. The amazing lighting system we put in there. Something that has a level of realism that I don’t think I’ve seen in any sports title.”—Mark Allen

This first demo was limited to Quick Play mode. What other modes will be offered in the final game?

We’re going to add a lot of standard game matches. Tag Team will be there. But TNA is also known for things like Ultimate X. I don’t know if you’ve seen that yet.

I have not.

It’s basically, in the corners of the ring there are pillars that come up. Then there are ropes hanging to make a cross and in the middle, an X. The object of the game is to [climb the pillars] and if they grab the X, they win. This is one of the match types we’ll be adding. It’s a fundamental part of TNA, and it’s what the wrestling fans are going to expect.

So if a guy is close to grabbing the X, your job is to pull him down?

Pull him down, kick him down, whatever you want to do.

Will there be any broken bones, any injuries or things like that?

We have a localized health system right now. I don’t know how far we want to take it. We want to go for the Teen rating, so we have to work through that. When the time comes we’ll figure it out.

Are all the characters going to be available from the start of the game?

What you’ll start off with we haven’t really determined. You’ll certainly get a bunch of the main guys. So when you buy the game you’ll get to play as some of your favorites.

How will you unlock additional fighters?

This is some of the stuff that we’ll decide toward the end of the game when we want to figure out how we want to control the players. So I can’t comment too much on that. But there’s going to be some cool stuff to unlock. Maybe even some surprises.

We got a glimpse of one finishing move but we’d like to know more about them.

In TNA wrestling every single wrestler has their unique finishing move. The one that you saw was Petey Williams’ Canadian Destroyer. Obviously you’ve got Samoa Joe and Christian Cage, they’ll have their finishing moves [as well as other fighters]. The way we’re going to implement that into the game now looks like it’s going to be: fill up your iMPACT bar, which is the thing in the corner [of the screen] that fills up [when attacking]. Once you’ve done that, that’s going to unlock the ability of the move. So you still have to get the player to the right point so you can pull it off.

And what will you push to activate the iMPACT move?

We’re still figuring that one out as well. It could just be as simple as pulling off the move with a combo. Or it could be that there’s a mini-game involved, something like that.

I really like that the game has standard punch and kick attacks, and then you pull down a button to make them stronger.

That’s right, we’re aiming for a control system which anyone can pick up and play. We’re going for simplistic buttons but depth through combinations of buttons. You’ve got a shift button as well. Basically you have three main attacks: low attack [kick], high attack [punch], and grab. And then with the shift key you can multiply these things out and string them together for combos.

Talk about the ring physics.

We have a rope system in there so that the rope reacts correctly to the player; and the player reacts correctly to the ropes. It’s very realistic how that works.

The point of the six-sided ring in TNA is that these ropes are stiffer than a four-sided ring. That allows the player to pull off some pretty intense moves using the wipes as a trampoline almost to spring high into the air and do a backflip before coming down on their opponent.

What can you tell us about the four-player gameplay?

There are going to be three different game types, tag team and so on. You’ll be able to have four-player online…

Will it be possible to have two guys at home on one machine and two guys online playing against you from another location? Or will it just be one on each machine?

That’s a good point. We should think about that actually.

Please do!

That’s all the questions I have Mark. Thank you very much for your time.

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