High Moon's O'Connor Talks Unreal Engine 3 PS3, Gears

Author: by Christian Nutt, Staff

As part of an in-depth new Gamasutra interview, High Moon VP Paul O'Connor (The Bourne Conspiracy) has been discussing Unreal Engine on PlayStation 3 and Gears Of War's impressive behind-the-scenes structure. Vivendi-owned High Moon, which previously worked on Darkwatch, is currently preparing the Unreal Engine 3-utilizing action title The Bourne Conspiracy for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. So, when asked in this early 2008 interview: "Do you have anything to say about the development process on doing multiplatform games?", O'Connor explained of the creation of his title: "We needed a lot of support on Unreal to make it run on the PlayStation 3. We got caught in the same crunch as everybody else when [Epic] finalized Gears [Of War], so that definitely slowed down the PS3 support at the time. But, that being said, the guys have done extraordinary work with the PS3, and it's just about ready to pipeline." O'Connor elaborated on the apparently largely out of the way trials and tribulations of simultaneous SKU development with Unreal Engine 3, explaining: "I don't want to badmouth Unreal. It's an awesome toolset. We wouldn't be where we were if not for Unreal. Their support has been as good as it could be for a company that's had its attention so divided between supporting the developer community and making their own game. But we had to roll a lot of our own stuff on the PS3." Later in the interview, O'Connor also mentioned the influence of Epic's Gears Of War on the game's design elements, explaining: "A key part of the shooting is that we have a cover system. We used Unreal 3, as you know, so our guys had the luxury of picking and choosing the parts of the Gears of War cover system that we thought that fits the Bourne shooting experience." When asked to clarify that Epic handed over the Gears Of War source code as part of Unreal Engine 3 license, O'Connor explained: "We got the whole level layout, too. That was a cold bath for my guys when they saw how they built the Gears of War levels. They look a lot more complex than they are. They're brilliantly executed in that regard." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, including plenty more from O'Connor on adapting a licensed IP into a compelling game - both in terms of story and gameplay.