This is Nicolas, Creative Director of Red Steel. I have great news for you!

Today is a big day for us, as we are revealing for the first time, a multiplayer trailer for Red Steel.

Multiplayer features split screen Gun fights with 3 different play modes. 4 different maps are available with a selection of character skins. (If you like strange characters I'm sure you’ll love them!)

The usual suspects are featured, including Death match, team death match, and as we couldn’t miss the opportunity, we designed a mode using the speaker feature on the Wii Remote - Killer Mode.

The Wii Remote/Nunchuk combo makes aiming at your buddies much, much easier and this brings a new dimension to all Deathmatch battles. The pace is much faster than usual on consoles and close combat easier than ever.(Watch out for backstabbing!)

Now I would like to introduce Killer Mode.This mode starts like deathmatch, but there is a CPU controlled game master. Players' Wii Remotes will randomly ring like phones, meaning that the next killer round is beginning; each player will get one secret objective by listening to the game master through the Wii Remote speaker. No players knows what the others are supposed to do. Whoever reaches his objective first wins the round points, thus improving his score much faster than by fragging.

Some objectives will require for you to find and kill a mystery player. The Wii Remote speaker will then act as a sonar, bleeping quicker and quicker as you get closer to him!

Lately, we really enjoyed fine tuning multiplayer mode, having some journalists participate in the latest debug sessions. Their feedback has been very rewarding for the team and we look forward to seeing you try the game as well.

Prepare your Wii Remotes, fragfest begins on Wii launch day!

Nicolas Eypert

This is Marie-Sol from the Red Steel development team! I want to take this opportunity today to give you different news and updates about our game

As you can imagine, we are in a very busy period of time since quite a few weeks now. We focused on polishing the game and controls, debugging & also finalising the multiplayer modes of Red Steel that we will reveal soon…!

In August, we were excited to attend the Game Convention, in Leipzig. In fact, even if we could not present a new version of the game vs. E3 at this time, it was the first time we could present the game massively to Europe. The feedback we got at during the show were very enthusiastic & a big source of motivation for the team!

More recently we have been part of the worldwide Nintendo events, in New York, London & Tokyo. We were very proud to finally reveal first maps of the game! If you’ve seen the last video we put on the net at the same time, this will give you a first look of them.

Now, those days, play test & pizza are our main daily & nightly tasks :)! But it worth it. Especially when we see the result. We think we succeed to get impressive visuals and effects that your will also discover through the whole game, such as traditional Japanese houses, as impressive bamboo forest, very nice weather effects... I don't want to reveal too much on what happens there, but I'm sure you'll like it too!

To finish, I just wanted to let you know that we keep reading your reactions & feedback on internet. Thanks for your support!

Talk to you soon for more news!

Marie-Sol

My name is Jerome Collette, scriptwriter on Red Steel. I’m here today to talk a little about the game experience in Red Steel and why the Wii Pad is a central element of it.

To begin, I wanted to say that my role as a scriptwriter was to be part of the core creative team since the very beginning of the project. We worked hand in hand with the creative director, producers and level designers so that the plot, the universe and the gameplay all go in the same direction to give a consistent and interesting experience to the player.

As the game is a First Person Shooter, we needed a simple plot, understandable from the point of view of the hero and also a hero anyone could identify with. This is something really important to me as I really consider that especially in FPS it is key, that the player feel he is the hero acting.

In Red Steel, this immersion is reinforced by the use of the Nintendo controller. I had to write a story focused on it and the experience the player feels while handling it and mastering it.

That is why I came to the idea that the plot turns around a sword, the Katana Giri. The hero’s journey, trying and mastering the sword is the same as the player using and mastering the Wii Pad. The identification prevails.

And the importance of the sword/Wii Pad is reinforced by the fact that this is also the only solution to solve your problems: It’s the thing your enemies want, the only way to get back your love one.
So, you have to fight with it, you have to train, to master it and prove your skills against your enemies or in front of your mentors to progress and succeed.

Later in the game, you discover that Tokai, your enemy, wants to take the katana giri, as it represents a symbol of power inside the yakuza underground. The only way to get out of this tricky situation is then to learn how to master the sword fighting and then the Wii remote to fight back all your enemies.

As you will go through the game, you will learn how attacks and moves. So my role at this level, as a scriptwriter, was to find an exciting way to make you learn how to manipulate the Wii remote. That is to say to find a scenario that fits to this game structure. I came to the idea of having masters you can visit regularly and who will teach you new tricks. The mentors also give you all the values of a modern samurai. Among them, there are control and mastery, which are the keys to be a very good player with the Wii remote. If you control your moves, you’ll be super efficient. If you just gesticulate, it will be much harder & exhausting.

As you can see, my job is to find situations, dialogs and characters that make you live the game system as something really exciting and not artificial.

I hope you will really enjoy discovering more while playing Red Steel soon!!
Domo arigato !!

Jérôme

Francois Mahieu
I am the Lead Engineer on Red Steel and with a strong team of 12 people we have quickly learned how to master the Wii hardware, ensuring we are maximising its potential accross graphics, sound, controlability, animation, SFX and AI elements to produce the best possible software experiences.

Romain Rimokh
My name is Romain and I am in charge of all the cut scenes within the game. I therefore work closely with a ‘story-boarder’ to develop the look and feel. Then my team transforms this into actual scripted events and programmes the camera to make it happen “live” in the game.

Gregoire Spillman
I am the Lead Sound Designer on Red Steel so I am in charge of anything that generates sound, from music, voices and sound effects to ambiance. I am responsible for developing these individual sounds then integrating them into game itself with my team. We determine how and when you will hear them while you play.

Damien Moret
Hello, I am the Marketing Game Manager on Red Steel and I work closely with the core team to understand what their development needs are and to see how these tie-in with the player’s expectations. I also work with three people to produce all the screenshots, videos and game information you read or see on the Internet or in magazines.

David Legrand
I am David and I am the Lead Level Designer. I manage the largest team as I am responsible for all the graphic and level designers who work on the game’s many different and unique maps. I organize the production of the assets and I check the quality of those levels with the core team.

While I know this isn’t the most riveting Blog entry, I think it’s important that you get to know the Red Steel team so when they post on various topics later, you’ll understand who’s who.

Thanks again for stopping by and we appreciate your comments and support. While I won’t share exactly what will be discussed in the next Blog entry, know that there will be a new reveal.

Ciao,
Marie-Sol

I’m here today to let you know a bit more about the improvements and new graphic directions we have made since E3. The demo we had on display at the show was an early example of the game’s graphical potential and very much work in progress. Since we are working on a console that is also in its development stage we continue to learn new techniques all the time. We did feel that E3 was a little too early to show this demo but we were keen to get it into people’s hands and get some valued feedback. It was also a great opportunity for us to see people playing other Wii titles and compare these playing experiences to that of Red Steel.
We are now focusing on evolving the overall graphical style into something very special that will be unique to Red Steel and form a strong identity & signature for the title, like no other game out there in the market. To summarise this style in words would be to say that it represents the intense culture shock received by a Western guy stepping onto the streets of Tokyo for the first time! In essence, we have focused a great deal on the key environmental differences between Japan and our own. We are also still developing the impact of the graphics on the way the player plays as well. 70’s “film noirs” are another source of inspiration as it lends itself well to the gangster & mafia atmosphere you’ll be immersed in while playing Red Steel. Therefore, this style is one of our key focuses, among many other of course. In addition, we’ve reworked the lighting system, improved textures & added even more breakable elements to the environments.

I’m happy to let you have a first look today!
Keep posted, we will have more to reveal soon!

Cheers,
Stephane

During this stage of development, where game systems like sword fighting, combat sounds and all the other elements are now in the actual game levels, I’m going through the game again and again to see how the mix works and what we can fine tune to make sure we deliver on our original vision.

Roman Campos Oriola

My name is Marie-Sol Beaudry, producer of Red Steel here in the Ubisoft Paris studio. We’re excited to share bits of information here on the ongoing development of this Wii exclusive launch title. Along with me, you’ll get to hear from our creative director, lead designer, art director and others on their areas of expertise.

We were really excited by everyone’s response to the Nintendo Wii at E3 and were thrilled to showcase Red Steel at the Nintendo press conference.  After working so long on this project in complete secrecy, it was great to not just show the game but to also let people play it for the first time.

For this initial Blog entry, we want to talk about the Wii controller and how we’re using it to it is fullest.

The challenge for working on a new system, especially one that has such a focus on the interface with the Wii controller is that everything we’re doing in the game is directly effected by the controller. This includes everything from level design, overall game design, movement and storyline.  When we first received the controller our imaginations were limitless but then we spoke to our programmers and determined that there were guidelines and rules of which we’d need to adhere to in regard to both functionality as well as game play.

In other words, while the shooting was fairly straight forward, point-and-shoot, it was the sword play that proved to be a true challenge.  We quickly learned that wielding a sword and manipulating the controller was a lot of fun, but we didn’t want to force people to become actual professional swordsmen – just have fun. Also, we have to consider the animations of the sword and matching it up with what you see on screen. We didn’t want any delay whatsoever in response to what was happening with the controller and what you saw on the screen.

We’re continuing to tweak the controls to optimize the game and ensure it’s a great experience on all levels, for example keeping the precision and accuracy of the aiming but working on the sensitivity and the stability. Also the sword fighting is going to offer more diversity in movements and couple of special moves I will not talk about this time... Stay on line!

Well, that’s it for now.  See you again!