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What has the fan response been like so
far, especially considering it’s been 10
years since the original came out?
JOE NICKOLLS: It’s been super positive.
I think they like the fact that it’s been
ten years since the original one launched
and they really like Frank - they like to be
Frank, they like the fact that the game is
Christmas time, and it’s in Colorado and
there’s snow. It’s been really well
received.
What is it about the Dead
Rising franchise that has
allowed it to stay relevant
and popular for so long?
It’s funny - video games
go through this journey, where a
game comes out and people play them,
and they go, ‘that’s really cool’ and then
it’s ten years later and you look back at
the original game and go, ‘oh my god,
that was horrible’ because technology in
games has grown so much. I really like
how the series has been evolving. I like
how our character’s more relevant now.
I like the fact that the new Xbox console
makes things look better. More stuff on
the screen. You need to invest in a brand;
we think it’s important that we put effort
into Dead Rising, because it’s going to be
around for a very long time. It will evolve
and grow throughout the years. People
have got a relationship with Dead Rising,
and everyone has a different one, and it’s
up to us to make sure that we make a
good brand for people to embrace.
What do you think is at the core of a
Dead Rising game?
When we first started making the
game, it was all about combo weapons
and combo vehicles. That’s been one of
the hallmarks of the game - putting things
together with duct tape, and things that
shouldn’t work together do work together.
When you’ve got all these weapons and
gadgets, you end up wondering ‘what’s
the next thing we could do?’ We came
up with the idea, maybe I can just combo
myself (he laughs) and we
thought, ‘how are we going to
do that?’ So we had the mech suit
that you could build upon - and we thought
that might be really fun. The mech suit
does a couple of things. It punches cars,
rips parking meters out of the ground,
and picks up huge objects you couldn’t
normally pick up without it. The other thing
you do, is you then combo that. So you
can go up to a slushie machine that makes
frozen drinks and you combo that with
your suit, which of course is the first thing
anybody would do, and you make this
ridiculous weapon that shoots ice tornados
and ice pellets and icicle bombs. It’s crazy.
So where can we expect to see the next
one set? Down Under?
Yeah. We should make one in Australia.
Dead Rising Down Under, that would be
fun. That’s the thing that’s amazing about
Dead Rising, because if it feels kind of
dumb and kind of, I don’t want to say
stereotypical, but oh my God, if we had
a Dead Rising in Australia, we would be
all over that. We’d even find a way to get
Hugh Jackman to work with that.
How have the zombies changed?
We’ve always had the regular horde - I
just call them a herd of cows. They’re not
too terrifying, they’re slow moving and you
can mow them down like bowling pins.
But what we wanted to do with that is
add a little bit more challenge, so we have
something we call the freshly infected.
What that does, that’s a person that’s just
been bit by a zombie, and they run around
all crazy, like 28 Days Later. They’re fast,
they’re crazy, they run at you. If they bite
you, you know it’s game over. They’re very
difficult to avoid - if you climb on a car to
get away, they’ll just climb up the car after
you. And, the way that the law works, if a
zombie is a freshly-infected bitten one, one
of two things happen. They either snap
and they just become one of the mindless
horde and they’re not a threat anymore,
or they push through it. What that means
is they become an evo. They become kind
of sentient, they become pretty smart.
They’re about five per cent human still,
and they still have a bit of capacity to
make logical decisions. They know they’re
a zombie but they use tactics to get to
you. Kind of like the raptors in Jurassic
Park. They will hurt you. They will wear you
down, and come in and finish you off. So
there are three different levels of zombies.
You’ve got a new voice actor on board
for Dead Rising 4’ s FrankWest, is that
right?
We did an open casting call. We had
all the original voices from Dead Rising.
We had all the stuff that we done in the
past, and we had all these audio clips with
video, and then we had all the people that
auditioned for new stuff, and we really
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