The team didn’t want to just rinse and repeat the ‘time running out’ formula, which they found ”frustrating as gamers” because there was always so much to do. Also survivors aren’t lemmings anymore.
The survivors you help out will now actually help out back, so there’s no need to constantly babysit them or just listen to them whinge. Now they can go with you packing heat.
”…we wanted to make a game where you weren’t just repeating the same formula of time running out,” said executive producer Josh Bridge of Capcom Vancouver, formerly Blue Castle Games.
”We found it frustrating as gamers even when we were playing Dead Rising 1 and there’s so much of that game we loved that we wanted to just explore in… but we didn’t want to just say “okay, there’s no time-limit”, you know, we did that with Off the Record and found that yeah, it was cool, but there’s so much to do other than trying to do constant side-missions.”
The Canadian outfit ”wanted to have zombies be the threat – it felt like zombies should be the star of a zombie game, whereas it kind of felt like they were just a toy.” This led them to make zombies a lot less comical than before.
”So if we’re going to say they should be the threat, then they should look threatening and the game should look threatening, and it all should show a line to that vision that this is actually a horror game first and a comedy game second.”
One positive change from all this is that survivors needed to be drastically altered as well, because having total drooling morons following you around virtually helpless just wouldn’t fit.
“Survivors aren’t just escort missions and babysitting, if you complete and help them out they’re gonna offer to help you out now,” explains Bridge. “And now they’ll just fight to their death with you. You can direct them and give them perks and, actually, with the Kinect, we got it to detect your finger pointing which actually evokes a cursor in the game and you can just say “attack” instead of multiple button inputs.” Kinect has a prominent role in Dead Rising 3.
Shouting at the game will be picked up by Kinect and can be used to distract zombies, but of course if you happen to be ‘caught off guard’ by something that spooks you and you give a little yelp…
Capcom Vancouver are offering two distinct game modes sharing the same campaign. The first is a non-time sensitive play through, while the other is played against the clock with saving only offered at specific washroom locations.
”So if you want to, it’ll completely hand your ass to you with Nightmare Mode where the time-limit is going to be pushing you along a schedule – you’re gonna have to meet and finish the missions at a certain time or you’re going to miss them; you’re gonna miss the optional content; you’re going to run out of time – a bomb is gonna likely nuke the whole area.”
”But if you wanna have the freedom to explore… we have a bigger world and there’s even more stuff to do in it than any other Dead Rising, and if you want that and to take it all at your own leisure, that’s there for you. You can even hop between both modes if you want – it all goes to the one profile and saves all your experience points.”
Dead Rising 3 releases on Xbox One this November.
