By Kermath Davies
It's no secret that Tearaway for the PlayStation Vita is a match made in heaven.
The game utilises every feature that the Vita has to offer, requiring users to 'push' their fingers through the rear touch panel and into the game world.
Rex Crowle, lead creator at Media Molecule, is responsible for the intuitive ways that the fourth wall is broken between our world, and of that which exists in-game. But I really wanted to know how they were going to achieve this for their new title, Tearaway Unfolded for the PlayStation 4.
I was really interested in how they were going to close the gap between player and screen as they did with the Vita, but obviously, you're very separated between controller and screen with the PS4.
I was lucky enough to get to speak with Rex about Unfolded at Media Molecule Studios, the team behind Little Big Planet and with multiple BAFTA awards on their trophy wall.
A year ago, it was announced that Media Molecule would be releasing the retelling of Tearaway, under a new title, Tearaway Unfolded. How many ideas have been packed on to the new expansion?Well, essentially, we had to really look at the game and kind of tear a lot of it up and remove elements that just wouldn't work on the PS4. We wanted the game to have the same feel of joy and excitement of exploring the hardware, like the Vita version had. We didn't want it to just feel like we've just ported the game over. We made the decision to just go big. We looked at the DualShock 4 controller to figure out what completely new gameplay mechanics we could come up with that use that controller. Then we wanted to rebuild the whole world and use the gameplay we get from those new mechanics, and just use the opportunity to retell the story and go larger, go deeper within the whole adventure. So that's more than one idea and less than a million, haha!
How much paper did you go through making Unfolded?Our Engine Programmer, Mark; he actually has the number of how many sheets of paper there are in the game. I think it's fairly close to a million. I can't remember how many folds, but everything we make in the game, we actually do make out of digital sheets of paper in our editor before folding them in the worlds, which is kind of a time-consuming, pain-staking way to build a world, but it's more honest to it. We don't want to be making something in some 3D software that's trying to look like it was made in that way, you know. It's about simulating the way that it's built, as well as the way it ends up looking. Each piece of virtual paper you see in the game is actually being digitally folded every time you load that environment on the PS4, so the rendering is very real. It does take up a lot of resources, but the PS4 can handle it.
It's virtually impossible to fold a piece of paper eight times. Have you cracked the code behind this with the extraordinary amounts of folding you've now done?No. There are a couple of programmers that do believe you can fold a piece of paper infinite times though. Yeah, that's a mystery still to be solved.
Tearaway is an awesome game on the Vita that utilises all its features. We'll soon see this game jump from the Vita platform to the PS4. What new features will this open for the player from a technological aspect?We've been able to draw wider vistas for the actual world that you're in; things that you couldn't do before like simulating a whole scene made out of paper. The feature I really enjoy is the light on the back of the DualShock 4 controller. You've got this sort of glowing triangle there that doesn't usually seem to have a purpose. We've used that so when you move into a darker area of the game, that actually shines into the game world and help breaks down the fourth wall. Using the gyros on the controller, you can shine it around and sort of hypnotize characters and drag them around and throw them into the sky. So that's the one thing that we couldn't have done before, partially because it's quite processor-intensive, but also it's more about the sort of metaphor of the game; the fact that you are an outsider of the world with a controller and you are sort of sending an influence into the game world. When you're playing a handheld game, that metaphor is a little bit different. You're literally holding the world in your hands.
What's been the biggest advantage of developing for the PS4 over the Vita?I think particularly the amount of memory available in it is just wild compared to some of the previous generations of consoles. I've been making games for quite a long time and it's a great liberator. I sometimes hear some of the coders just realising that they've still got yet more they can use, rather than the age-old problem of going really ambitious, and then slowly having to scale down your dreams, and thinking you can't see that through. We just have to dream harder!
Tearaway is great for playing around friends and family also. A lot of people get involved just watching gameplay on the Vita. Will there be possibilities for others to get involved in the gameplay in Unfolded?Like you were saying, we've heard a lot of stories of how players like to play it with other family members or friends and that's kind of difficult on a handheld device, because you're fighting over the screen. For Tearaway Unfolded, we've put a lot of effort into utilising the PlayStation app. So if you have an iOS device, an Android one or a Vita, you can use that as a second, or third or fourth screen, so that other players can use the creative tools of the game, and they can be customising the game on the PS4, while you know, player one is playing. So, you're going on this adventure, you know, and they're sending things in. It's definitely been a fun way for us in the studio to play the game, because obviously when you're developing a game you have to play it so many times it almost becomes a little bit stale to you, and by just for us internally, we've enjoyed playing it even more, because each time someone brings something new that messes with your game by retexturing it by taking photos, or sending in customisations that you weren't expecting.
As a last question, some people complained that the Vita game length was too short. It was so tightly packed that some felt they didn't have enough time with the new features that were being utilised. How does Unfolded add up?Ah, well it is longer and it is deeper. For us, we're more focused on making something that doesn't repeat itself at all. It's more important to us to make a slightly shorter game that goes all-out with the experiments and the surprises, rather than just padding it out with repeated content. But yeah, Unfolded is a bigger game and there's much, much more to explore.
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Tearaway Unfolded is due to release worldwide on September 9, 2015.
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