STACK NZ Dec #80

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listened to everything, and we worked with Microsoft closely to see where we wanted to take Frank. Frank is now 15 years older. The funny thing is, when you ask a 25 year old what a 50 year old looks like, they basically describe someone that is about 70 (he laughs). So we put all these voices together and then when the guy showed up to audition, he drove up in this crappy old van with a mattress in the back and he just owned the role straight away. We are super excited about where the new Frank is going; we just wanted to take him in a new direction and we did. We’ve had a lot of what we call ‘mock reviews’ with different agencies, and they’ve all told us, ‘oh my God, that acting’s superb.’ We really like the acting.’ There’s real chemistry. It feels good. But, make no mistake, he is still absolutely a smartass. That really comes through. So you could tell he was perfect straight away? You know what’s really funny, the guy showed up and it was almost eerie because he looked like the Frank that we

always seems to like the online mode because you don’t have to have a massive time commitment. You just get in, have a lot of fun and play, and get those scores posted and see how long you can last. How would you describe the franchise to someone that’s never played it? If you tried to describe Dead Rising to someone that never played it, they would have no idea, because it doesn’t make sense when I describe the ingredients to our recipe. Are we a zombie game? Sure. Are we The Walking Dead ? No, we’re not. Are we 28 Days Later , are we terrifying? What we do is, I think we just focus on a much better story this time around. We’ve hired three writers to get a story in much better shape, and I think we have deeper characters now. I think what keeps us fresh and relevant is the fact that nobody does what we do. We know exactly what we are. We’re not trying to be someone else. We’re trying to be Dead Rising. The analogy I give to a lot of people, which everyone gets when I say it, if you look at a serious survival game or

had modeled. He looked a lot like him. We freaked out a little bit. He showed up and he looked like he’d been out all night. It was perfect. Have you ever considered implementing a co-op campaign aspect? One of the things that we’ve always felt is that Dead Rising is a single player journey. It’s a lot about discovering things and solving the mystery this time around. We wanted to have a different experience for our online mode, so you could pick it up and play with your friends before you go out, or maybe you’ve gone out for the night and you come home and sort of wind down. Four player co-op has different missions to play. The missions you play in online four-player is completely separate from the main game. They’re only online. There’s a time limit that you have to deal with. It’s a kind of like happy accident that we found. We wanted to have something a little bit more casual for people to mess around in, and it turned out to be one of the most fun things in the game. Everyone

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