Free Radical’s Littlewood Talks Haze

 Derek Littlewood took time to talk with Gamasutra about Free Radical’s narrative-driven FPS in development, Haze. As creative lead on the project, Littlewood gives players insight on the origin of Haze, how difficult it is to “communicate the core message of the game through interactive sequences”, the importance of themes, three-dimensional character design and beta testing. He also talks about breaking into the industry and his career as well as his take on video game violence, Hideo Kojima, Apocalypse Now, and why the industry is so immature.

Littlewood explains a bit more on the concept of making “a war game that becomes a game about war”.

I think the idea of trying to tell a story that is mature in the sense of not treating the player like an idiot, and of actually trying to highlight and explore the complex moral issues associated with shooting human-like characters in games, rather than simply ignoring them, was our core motivation for making Haze.

There’s nothing wrong with a game that’s just a game… But at the same time, I’ve always felt that creative media are at their most compelling when they actually speak to the person experiencing them about their own life, and cause them to ask questions, or look at things from a different perspective, than they’d considered before.

Read the entire interview with Derek Littlewood on Gamasutra .