Remedy Entertainment's recent titles, namely Quantum Break and Control, featured a number of impressive and innovative mechanics. Whether it was manipulating time or telekinesis, these implementations come after long brainstorming sessions and lots of drawing board ideas crossed out. The world of game development is never straight forward, and a number of Remedy Entertainment's staff held a Q&A to answer some of the community's questions on how these titles and their features were born.
Senior Game Designer Sergey Mohov answered a question regarding the sequence of how a game is born, whether the core gameplay mechanics are developed into a video game or the opposite. Mohov's answer discussed how most features and titles start off with a concept of “wouldn’t it be cool if..?”. The development team then takes it and develops it further.
Every game and even feature I’ve worked on always began with the question, “wouldn’t it be cool if..?” What follows can be a mechanic, a character, a story, or even an emotion. As a designer, the next question you tend to ask is “why:” Why would it be cool? And then “how:” how do I make the player feel the same about it?
Level Designer Teodor Vasile took his turn answering how the level design team agree on what the environment will look like, especially the creative and technical process of what goes on behind the scenes.
Because I arrived in Remedy when Control was already in development, I can’t give you an answer about the other games, but I can tell you some things about designing for Control. The main thing you’re targeting when creating levels is keeping everything consistent to the world and the setting. Because gameplay was an important pillar in the game, we focused on making every place combat friendly, while also keeping in mind player abilities and the “Metroidvania” aspect of the game. It takes a lot of iterations for them to come together, but I’m proud of the team and what we managed to achieve.
The questions and answers Remedy Entertainment's team provided were rather interesting and gives players an in-depth look at how their favorite games came to life. Feel free to check out the rest of the questions in the ResetEra forums.
