Draft:James Shepherd: Difference between revisions

I'm responsible for the game-play content, the narrative, and overseeing the graphic style of the game. I listen to everyone's ideas for the game, then ignore them and do what I want to do. So if the game sucks it's my fault.

==Interviews==

===December 15, 1999<ref>http://www.gamespot.com/articles/medievil-2-director-interviewed/1100-2440416/</ref>===

'''JS''': The main pressure to do better than the original comes from within the team itself. You always want to improve on your existing games. The things you never got time to put in, or would have done differently, you can address in a sequel.

'''JS''': Loads of stuff. To tell you everything would be to give too much away. We always wanted to get some other playable characters into the game and to play on the fact that Dan is a skeleton. Also in our game, he wakes from five hundred years in the grave, so we thought a bit of love action would cheer him up.

'''JS''': The thing we found that most people enjoyed about the first game was the integrated mix of puzzle solving, exploring, and good old-fashioned bashing heads in. We want to keep the same game style as the original but improve on all of the above areas. If you like killing things, the fighting and the weapons are better. If you like exploring - with our new, modular loading - we have created levels up to three times as big as the original game.

Finally, if you like solving puzzles, there are some real "brain teasers" in store for you that will quite literally have you ripping your head off.

'''JS''': Dan quite literally loses his head in one of the earlier levels of the game. This rather painful inconvenience actually gives him a whole range of new abilities. The first of these is DanHand. Without giving too much away, remember the hands that ran around making a nuisance of themselves in the first game? This time, Dan can actually use them as DanHand to solve puzzles and explore new areas. When Dan is in DanHand mode he can switch to Headless Dan, and the two characters have to cooperate to get through the trickier areas of the game, solving puzzles for each other.

Dan-Kenstein is a version of Dan you get midway through the game for a one off-level. His name should give you a clue to what he's like. He doesn't have weapons, as such, but he possesses a wicked left hook.

'''GSN''': There's also new weaponry for our superhero, Dan - how bizarre will those be?

'''JS''': The hardest part of the development has been deciding which level ideas were "crazy funny" and which ideas were just plain crazy. We wanted to make the sequel as good as possible; we recoded a lot of the core technology, so in some ways it was like starting from scratch. The results speak for themselves though - bigger levels, better enemy logic, and more moves for Dan. The easy part of doing a sequel is that you already have the character, and you know people are going to like him.

'''JS''': Development isn't a barrel of laughs. The funniest things tend to happen when we socialize after work, and the programming team tries to chat up girls; but it's funny sad rather than funny "ha! ha!"

'''JS''': It is highly unlikely Dan will be back on the PlayStation 1. As for Fortesque on the PlayStation2? Personally, I would love to bring him back. I've grown quite attached to the bony little bugger. It's really up to the great game-buying public - if he proves to be a hit again, then anything's possible.

As for his next adventure, I'd like to see Dan in America, on his giant Harley Davidson, pulling chicks, flaunting the law, getting his kicks on route 66.

==References==