Developer Liquid Swords has released a new video for its upcoming action game Samson: A Tyndalston Story, this time around offering a behind-the-scenes look at how the title was made. The video – a development diary – focuses on the city and car design in the game, and features concept artist Piotr Kupsc and vehicle artist Damian Ksiezopolski. Check it out below.
“One of the toughest challenges in designing the city as an artist was finding the balance between the gameplay and the visuals in the city,” explained Kupsc. “Because we’re at the same time trying to make a city that you subconsciously can understand as a consumer, that you’ve experienced in day-to-day life, but at the same time we want to make an engaging game.”
The studio approached the challenge by making use of multiple strategies. One of these is an early decision to set certain metrics in stone. This way, the studio wouldn’t end up deciding on last-minute changes later in development. These metrics were the measurements of various assets in the game’s world, like the height of a doorway, or the width of a hallway. There were also challenges faced in this aspect, since you can’t have hallways that are too narrow at the risk of creating issues with gameplay or the camera.
“We were heavily inspired by North Eastern American cities from the ’90s,” said Kupsc. “So, New York, Philadelphia, we had a lot of photos from the era which were amazing, which had a lot of character, which really set the tone for the project. But then also we had three art direction pillars that we used to filter through all the photos and the references used to inspire and amplify the work.”
The three pillars of art direction, he noted, were “statement”, “violence”, and “parasitic”. Statement revolves around “big bold splashes”, like massive murals on the sides of old buildings. Violence depicts how the whole city is a violent place through the use of art, like dilapidated buildings. And finally, the themes of the wealth inequality and injustice in the city of Tyndalstone is where its parasitic aspects come into play.
“So I think the most exciting thing for the players to find in the game is just all the nooks and crannies that we’ve put in a lot of love and attention,” he said. “There’s a lot of areas where maybe we don’t have any specific gameplay that pulls you there, but they’re interesting to explore regardless.”
When it comes to cars, Ksiezopolski took over the video to discuss the decisions that would eventually lead to the design of Samson’s own car, the Magnum Opus. He noted that the studio had look at common cars from the 1990s, and how the eras would also define the look of the cars at the time.
“We can take a lot of inspirations from existing cars, but the cars in their design are mostly ours now,” he said. “And we had quite a lot of liberty when it came to that. Because if we were working on real brands, we wouldn’t have any type of freedom. There’s a lot of challenge that comes with the freedom, because you need to stay true to what people have seen or can relate to when they look at these cars.”
The Magnum Opus seemingly saw many iterations in design during development. The car was originally envisioned as a standard four-door sedan. However, it didn’t fit the personality of Samson, owing to the car feeling too “average”. The studio eventually decided to make a new car for Samson with the goal of providing the right kind of “attitude”.
Cars will also take quite a bit of damage throughout your time with the game. In discussing the deformation of the vehicles, Ksiezopolski spoke about how the studio wanted to make sure that players can use their car as a tool to pull off brutal takedowns. “That was a lot of work between me and our VFX guy, Oscar,” he said. “He was the one that uplifted the whole thing, that made it so much more impactful.”
Samson: A Tyndalston Story is coming to PC on April 8th. In the meantime, check out how the studio’s founder feels about the inevitable comparisons with Grand Theft Auto.
