How do you make a storyline for an open-world sandbox game? That was the main challenge for United Front, which developed and assembled the fragments of Sleeping Dogs, the undercover cop drama that is essentially the third True Crime game's spiritual successor.
The game's set in the sleazy back streets of Kowloon City in China and an undercover cop forced to immerse himself deeper into the Triads while performing some not-so-nice actions like killing other gangsters or even cops. But the essence of the open world is fascinating, especially if you're treating it like a Grand Theft Auto. Gamasutra sat down with the creative leads for Dogs and went over what makes the upcoming game tick. One part of it is the clear focus on melee combat, ranging from kung-fu to taking on multiple groups of enemies in deliberate odes to Hong Kong action films. Dealing with that was incredibly important to Executive Producer Steven van der Mescht:
"From If you think about an open world experience as more of a TV show than a movie, and you think about some of the great TV shows like HBO or Showtime -- anything like The Wire or Sopranos or The Shield, any of those kinds of shows -- the approach that we've taken is that all of the characters in the game play a role in the story.
They actually develop a little further, and the open world structure actually allows you more opportunity to get to know them better in the context outside the core story. They may become characters that give you things to do like a story mission, or they may be involved in a case that you do which is not part of the core story but you get to learn a little bit more about them.
The story we wanted to tell from the get-go was a very directed story. We did not want to bring in a whole bunch of branching with people deciding: "Oh, I'm going to do this; oh, I'm going to do that." The story is fairly linear. As you play it, from beginning to end, there's very little impact that you're going to have on the outcome of the narrative."
So it's a Chinese Wire with more kung-fu? Hey, we can whistle "Farmer in the Dell" while kicking ass, no problem. Sleeping Dogs will be pulling an Omar Little on August 14th for XBox 360, Playstation 3 and PC.
