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TS4 NEWS!!!

GI: When did you decide that you were making TimeSplitters 4?

Doak: It was a while ago now. I think the thing for us was that TimeSplitters 3 got good reviews and things, but we had that difficult thing where people said, “Oh, you’ve made it a bit different,” and then we fell foul of a lot of people who were EA bashing as well. Also, the company wanted to expand the portfolio of things that it was doing, and it didn’t want to just be the TimeSplitters company. Earlier in the cycle for hardware is a better time for doing new things than later. We learned that way to our cost with Second Sight on PlayStation 2. When we came out, people weren’t really interested in new stuff—well, some people were, but the mainstream weren’t. I think with Haze we wanted to get in a little bit more early.

GI: Is TimeSplitters in development, or are you guys still at the concept stage?

Doak: It is in development, but it’s not at a stage that would look like development if we showed it to someone. We’re looking at engine things that we might need to tweak for it and deciding what are the features that we really want it to have. So yeah, the art stuff is a bit further in because there’s a lot of concept art and stuff like that. But also, we’re talking to publishers.

GI: So that’s all open?

Doak: It’s undecided at the moment. But it’s our family jewel, so we’re going to be careful with it.

GI: Things are leaking out about it. Originally, it was reported that TimeSplitters was going to spoof movies. When we were talking to Rob [Yescombe, Free Radical], that was one of the things we asked him about, and he said, “No, we’re not going to just spoof movies, we’re spoofing everything.” What are you guys looking at? And then we see the monkey COG with the Gears thing—which is hilarious.

Doak: At the start, with TimeSplitters 1, all of the environments in it were all movie-genre spoofs. That was kind of it. We all referred to it as a multiplayer game and the other thing with it was movie spoofs. If you look back at some of the challenges in the games, there’s also some game spoofing going on. I mean, there were like puns and things like Dead Fraction, somebody the dinosaur hunter and stuff. The situation at the moment is I’d like to do some game parodies, but it’s going to be down to appetite on the publisher’s side. It’s a funny thing. There’s a little bit of risk there. My take on it is I think parody and satire should be something that you should be able to do, everyone enjoys it and I think it benefits both sides, because it benefits the thing that’s being satired, as well. But we’ll see. That’s what we want to do, but we’ll see.

GI: You could ultimately do a parody on GoldenEye then?

Doak: We could. I mean, Bond’s been parodied already. I think we could do a lot with GoldenEye, because I know a lot about how the things work in it. We’ve got some inside information—I know that thing intimately. We kind of touched on it with the dam level in TimeSplitters 2—it was an homage.

GI: There were a lot of people I know who didn’t even play TimeSplitters 2 single player, they just played a lot of multiplayer. And back then, it was all split screen. What are you thinking as far as multiplayer? Are you going to go crazy with it?

Doak: I think it’s a really important aspect of the game, and I think a lot of our focus will be on multiplayer gameplay and competitive things and ranking yourself against other people. Because we had a lot of cool stuff in TS3, like the cat racing—you could download replays of the fastest cat races. There are things which I think actually have casual appeal and are important, like racing levels and building things to be raced and all that kind of stuff. I think TimeSplitters allows you to do well, because you can hang your pretentiousness and seriousness at the door, so it doesn’t matter if you’re doing silly things. I think quite possibly you will see more of the arcade and challenge stuff from TS2, because I think it was some of the strongest stuff in the game—and we almost hid it away, because a lot of it was unlockable and tiered and unlockable. I remember one of the times we were talking to EA when we were talking about Future Perfect, and they asked us, “What exactly is TimeSplitters,” and we were showing them. And they said, “I’ve not seen that bit before,” and we said, “You have to unlock this,” and they said, “What do you mean it’s locked up?” They missed it. Some of the best gags were locked away. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t have it so when you play a game over time more things become available, but I think we locked some stuff away and we didn’t put up the signs pointing at it. It was a beginner’s mistake—we won’t do it again.

GI: You’ve always been pretty high up on the latest and greatest hardware, you’re rolling onto the PS3 with Haze, but some of your biggest fan base was on Nintendo’s consoles, because there weren’t a whole lot of shooters on the GameCube. Are you thinking about putting TimeSplitters on the Wii, as well? What do you think about making a first-person shooter for the Wii?

Doak: I think it’s a good thing to do, and I think we want to put it on the Wii. And I’m sure it’s possible to do a control scheme that works. Also, if you want to start a petition for remaking Second Sight on the Wii, I’d like to see that as well, because I think that game worked really well, [laughs] because of the manipulation stuff.