Entrevistamos a Andrew Wensley, Codemasters

This is the original English version of the interview that Andrew Wensley, Heatseeker's Senior Producer offered to Revogamers at the game’s official presentation in Spain.

Revogamers: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us about your role in the project?

Andrew Wensley: My name’s Andrew Wensley. I’m the Senior Producer on the project, the guy who works for the publisher. I’ve worked very closely with the developer, IR Gurus for about a whole year, basically.

RG: You’ve stressed the main factor of the game: less realism, pure action, but… could this be the first Wii title that offers a more authentic feel of piloting?

AW: I certainly hope so, yeah, because the game features not just one but two different control modes, two different ways the aerodynamics works: if you want, you can play the game as if handling a real plane, you can hold the Nunchuk just like it’s a fly stick, you’ve got a real, real sense of flying a real plane. And then if you just really want to take to the skies and blow up loads of bad guys, then I feel the Wiimote and the Arcade mode is just waiting everybody to feel it. So, yes, the title offers a more authentic feel.

RG: How did the Impact Cam idea come up?

AW: It was one of the original design ideas, basically. The whole idea of “bleep killing”, you know, destroying enemies on you radar, 30, 40 kilometres away…

RG: It’s boring…

AW: Yeah, yeah, it’s not exciting at all. If you think back to that great films, in the 80’s like Top Gun, when the fighters were chasing each other there… it’s almost like a car chase, seeing each other’s tails, so we wanted to make sure the place’s got a scene with enemy planes, we’ve put so much work into them. The designers spent time playing a lot of arcade games, and Burnout was one of them.

RG: So it´s like Burnout, but in the air.

AW: Yes, absolutely, I think it’s kind of this phrase: “The Impact, yes, we could make the kills like Burnout in the air” it was like… yeah, that’s a fantastic idea! It took quite a while to get it right. It took quite a while to get the individual one. I’ve got the camera choreography see have also the bullet-time effect some real-like feel like Matrix. I mean, games like Max Payne were doing it a while ago. But this is the first airplane jet combat game where we have bullet time, full screen burns, you know, we’ve thrown every special effect possible.

RG: It’s known that the Wii version shows better modelled planes. ¿Which other graphical improvements have been included compared to the PS2 version?

AW: Because the Wii’s just got more power under the hood, we were able to improve the explosions, the missile trails, the clouds, we added better water effects –you can see the crest of the wave when you fly really low-… and then you get also a better resolution of the planes, and have been added self-shadowing. But not just that. We also then looked to the colour palette that we use: the Wii, coming from Nintendo, has got a really rich -lush, you know- colour spin. We wanted brilliant skies, that wonderful seas in the Caribbean. It’s a fairly saturated game, it’s more colourful, more appealing, just more striking to the eye.

RG: Why the multiplayer mode has only been included in the PSP version?

AW: I fairly believe in choosing “do one thing and do one thing well”. So in Heatseeker 1, we’ve got stuff like the Impact Cam, we’re gonna make that as stunning as possible. As the learning curve discloses, let me find out about the Wii. We had the opportunities; we had taken the game and the lead on the way. We carried over the same strategies. Because the PSP, you know it comes with the Wi-Fi built-in thing, it’s relatively easy to do that, so that was a thing we decided to do very well on the PSP.

RG: What about possible future downloadable content?

AW: Not in Heatseeker 1, but in Heatseeker 2… maybe.

RG: So it is coming!

AW: (laughs)

RG: Is Codemasters publishing future IR Gurus titles such as Heroes Over Europe, which is scheduled for the next year?

AW: I’m not in liberty to discuss it.