*exclusive interview with Deep Shadows*

I recently had the priviledge of interviewing Ika, the spokesperson for Deep Shadows, regarding their latest game in the works, White Gold: War in Paradise.

OMG Pc Games: Thanks for your time, Ika, first of all, what is the storyline to White Gold?

Ika:  Greetings!

Concerning the storyline in White Gold: the main character of the game is a retired veteran of a special military squad.  He was an expert soldier in Caribbean region. At the time of one operation all members of the squad were killed, except our hero and one of his mates. The mate became an invalid, and the hero had retired and started a struggle against depression by drinking excessive amounts of alcohol. At the same time a new drug surfaces in Europe and America’s underground market. The originality of this drug lies in impossibility to distinguish it from the usual one. But all who takes it in dies incredibly fast – after only one or two doses, deaths occur. Government is shocked regarding the many youths who are now in danger of dying.. Drug mafias are also shocked as well – due to the fact that relatives of dead users blame them for the drug’s release. Special services are at total loss sending their agents to Caribbean region and receiving their remains in plastic sachets afterwards. Naturally, at that time everybody remembers about our hero. The call our hero with a proposition which can be refused only together with the ticket to hell. Consequently our hero finds himself at one of the Caribbean islands in state of hard hang-over syndrome where he starts main investigation. That’s about game plot, in brief.

OMG PC Games: How big is the game-world in comparison to Boiling Point’s? How much detail will be put into it?

Ika: Can’t tell an exact mileage of White Gold world but I know that it will be no less than six big islands and 50 small one. Moreover, player will take long water travels; there is no restriction for water travel in game. Naturally, the game-world of White Gold is a bit smaller than in Boiling Point: Road to Hell, but it became a lot more detailed and rich in terms of decorations and active gameplay.  It’ll be very interesting to investigate it.

OMG PC Games: From looking at the trailer, it becomes apparent that there are certain animals in the game. How many species of animals are there?  and can you give us a rundown on the basic ones?

Ika: The world of White Gold is rich with various animals. In-game fauna is presented in two groups – water and land animals. Thus, player will be able to meet snakes, parrots and giant spiders in the jungle as well as chickens and rats in villages. While water fauna is full of various representatives of tropical underwater population – fishes, mollusks, sharks etc. Traveling WG world player should always be aware of land and water predators such as leopards, snakes, sharks and piranhas. Meanwhile other animals will be peaceful and interactive elements of decoration and gameplay.

OMG Pc Games: I find it very adventurous to make another RPGFPS after Boiling Point was so heavily criticised by the gaming community, due to its bugs. Is there anything that prompted you to make the decision to carry on the RPGFPS series?

Ika: As you mentioned, the gaming community mostly criticised numerous bugs of Boiling Point, but the genre. The originality of such mix was values as interesting and challenging direction in the game industry.  Thus, Deep Shadows team decided to rehabilitate RPG\FPS genre for gaming community, taking into account previous experience. We consider that mix of RPG and FPS is attractive and promising genre for players. We’re aiming to keep in all attractive features, throw away stuff that irritated player and implement most of new features, that passed community feedback.

OMG PC Games: There has been mentions of a ‘Perk’ and ‘Ability’ system, can you give us a rundown on what these actually are?

Ika: The RPG system in White Gold is based on the advanced system of perks. Some of them influence common skills like trading or skinning. Other are connected with combat abilities such as accuracy and so on. In addition there are set of special perks for stealth mode. But if you hate camping enemies, you can always use your assault rifle to show your foes some real firepower.

Naturally, player will get experience finishing various quests and killing enemies. After receiving certain amounts of experience you character level grows and you can learn some new perk or improve an existing one.

Practically, all perks in the game have three levels to improve and there are lots them at all. So, you should think hard about what perk to pick or improve.

All perks can be logically divided into three groups – combat assistant, peaceful perks (responsible for communication, trade etc.) and perks which can make game more interesting, for instance – a jar with jam, which is lure for insects and could be thrown in your opponent.

OMG PC Games: What is the Deep Shadow’s budget for White Gold?

Ika: Nice and easy question, but I cannot give a straight answer – it’s incorrect to divulge any information about budgets on CIS territory. Only our publisher can officially answer this question. Instead I can assure you that budget of White Gold: War in Paradise is much bigger then Boiling Point one.

OMG PC Games: It has been mentioned that you can build your own homes in White Gold, how does this work? What benefits would they give you?

Ika: This works just like in a real life. If you want to build your own house - find an architect, make an order and pay him money afterwards. When building work is finished, you can additionally construct a wharf for boats or special pod for helicopter.

In overall, we decided to implement this feature, because it will improve immersion into the game for player and will stand very helpful in various gameplay situations.

OMG PC Games: Will drinking and eating play a larger role in White Gold, than in the previous instalment, Boiling Point?

Ika: Talking about White Gold, there are no great changes with drinking, eating, sleeping in comparison with Boiling Point. Drinking and sleeping is a nice way to restore some health or improve some characteristics, or even to make a deal with unfriendly NPC using a bit of alcohol. Anyhow, you’ll never die of malnutrition.

OMG PC Games: After Boiling Point was released, the rather unique game was in an almost unplayable state due to glitches and bugs – are you hoping to squish all of the bugs in White Gold, prior to release?

Ika: Essentially, testing over Boiling Point was provided by publisher and project was released when publisher decided that project is completed.

At this time majority of testing job is provided by our company, and we are not going to release game before it’s done, i.e. there will be no any critical bugs in release version.

Besides, we are testing White Gold for almost two years already and every build that released inside of the team is tested. Thus we can state that there is much lesser amount of bugs in White Gold at the moment in comparison with Boling Point on release stage. Taking into account that phase of global final testing isn’t started yet we are sure that it will be truly “completed” game. Anyway we are going to release game soon, but only “when it’s done” to avoid past mistakes and release good quality product.

OMG PC Games: Will there be any vehicles in the game? Can you give us a few examples?

Ika:  We greatly increased range of available vehicles in White Gold comparing with Boiling Point. There is a large park of ground-based vehicles, air transport and set of boats, of course. I can`t list all vehicles, but in general it’s a different cars and airplanes, helicopters, motor boats and water scooters. We have a quad-bike and even a tank in the game. All of usable vehicles can be bought, or hijacked using proper skill.

We are earnestly worked on the vehicles physical model last year, in order that player will be able to drive a car with pleasure and without any suffer from inconvenient control or unrealistic behaviour of vehicle.

OMG PC Games: Will you still maintain the rather unique ability that Boiling Point had, which was the ability to go to the bar and get drunk? Will this affect the game any more than disrupting the walking, and blurring the screen? Will it have any long term effects?

Ika: Yes, main character will be able to let through a couple of shots. Sometimes player will be offered to drink some alcohol for a profit. Drinking excessive amounts of alcohol will lead to immersion of drunkness - coordination disorder and distortion of environment view. We don’t have any final concepts about permanent or long effects connected with alcohol use - it will depend on balancing issues and gamers feedback.

OMG PC Games: Tell us a little about your engine, Vital Engine 3, what features does it offer?

Ika: Project is developed with Vital Engine 3. This is a new version of our “home-made” engine created by our programmers, which satisfies all modern technical requirements. Shader 3.0 support as well as various post effect like HDR, motion blur as well as other features. In comparison with previous version we have greatly improved physics system for vehicles. Moreover, one of the engine preferences are destructible objects, which will come across everywhere in the game and huge unified area support. We are still working on engine improvement and optimization at the moment, thus game picture becomes better day by day.

OMG PC Games: Thanks for your time, and this is the final question. When are you hoping to release ‘White Gold’ to the Western Market?

Ika:  This is a question of the day.  At the moment Western Market release is planned on autumn of 2008. We can’t give any precise official information at moment.