Interview: G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra

Feature by Nick Akerman, published on Friday 7th August 2009

With G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra hitting cinemas everywhere today, I donned my tightest, most body crunching suit for a quick sit-down with EA Senior Producer Matt Marsala. Wanting the low-down on the playable product that’s accompanying the film, we avidly discussed all things G.I.

First of all, how long did you spend working on this project? Did the game’s production run alongside that of the movie?

The game was in development for about a year and a half in total, and ran parallel to the movie production.

Was it always the plan to have this as a third person shooter? Why was this decision taken?

Yes – we went this direction for two reasons; first, given the iconic nature of the characters in G.I. JOE, we really wanted to show each one of them off so you could get a sense of who they were and why they were so cool. We also wanted to make a two player co-op game from the ground up where both players shared the same screen, so third person made the most sense from a technical point of view as well.

How much input did you have from the movie team?

I would say there was more “influence” from what they were doing on the movie side. We were able to visit the Paramount lot a few times during production to read the script and take a look at the sets for visual inspiration. We also managed to get a lot of reference shots from Paramount through our contacts at Hasbro – these shots helped us recreate some of the sets, vehicles and props seen in the film that we otherwise would have had to make up from scratch.

What does G.I. JOE do to shake off the tag of being another movie-tie-in that doesn’t work on consoles?

We decided very early on that we were not going to make a “play-the-movie” game. Instead, we chose to create our own story line separate from the film, weaving some of the main threads from the film into the game where it made sense and leveraging the last 45 years of G.I. JOE history for the rest. It was really important to us as fans to include as much of that history as possible; it’s what we grew up watching, reading and playing with when we were kids, and we know that there are many fans out there that will appreciate some of the content we managed to get into the game.

Have you felt any extra pressure to deliver a quality title due to the popularity of the G.I. JOE brand?

Of course! Most of the dev team grew up with G.I. JOE in one form or another, and many of them (including our Lead Designer) are pretty hardcore fans. The pressure to deliver something that exceeds expectations of these fans is pretty enormous, hence the reason we shied away from making a movie game and included as much classic content as possible.

Co-op action is included on a local level, any word about online multiplayer?

We decided to focus on making the “couch” experience as fun as possible, meaning that the game is at its best when played by two players physically sitting in the same room as one another, talking smack while trying to outscore your opponent. In all honesty, from a technical point of view and given that our release was tied to the film, it was important to reduce as much of the technical risk as possible, and unfortunately, online multiplayer is one of the places that would have put our date in jeopardy.

The premise of the game looks extremely simple. Do you feel this is aimed towards the younger G.I. JOE fans of today, or further towards the adult followers of the ‘80s and beyond?

The game was intentionally designed to be accessible to a wide range of players of various skill levels given how long G.I. JOE has been around. There are fans of G.I. JOE that may not be hardcore gamers that will be experiencing the brand for the first time since their childhood, and younger gamers that are being introduced to G.I. JOE for the first time by their fathers or uncles. The reality is that there are not too many games out there that take such a broad range of gamers into consideration, so the way we’ve developed our difficulty system and control scheme allows players of various skill levels to play together without any issue.

Hardcore gamers looking for a challenge should play in Advanced or Hardcore mode, and recreational gamers might be best suited to stick with Casual until they become more comfortable with the controller and the game mechanics.

How do the handheld versions compare to those on consoles?

The PSP follows the same game design as the higher platforms, but is single player only. The beauty of the PSP though is that the one stick analogue works quite well with the design of the game. As for the DS, the game was built from the ground up by a different developer in order to take advantage of all the hardware has to offer, so while the story line and some of the characters may be very close to the other consoles, the gameplay is completely different.

As we get ready to review the product, are you pleased with it? Any things you aren’t happy about and that you would change if you had more time?

Yes, I’m pretty happy with the way the game turned out given what we set out to do, but ask any developer if there are things that they would change if there were more time, and every one of them will say “of course”! If time, money and resources weren’t an issue, every game on the market today would be different than what you put in your console.

Aside from G.I. JOE, any other licenses you would love to create a game for?

Of course, but for the time being, working on the G.I. JOE franchise has been quite satisfying!

Any final thoughts for our readers?

Sure! I’d like to encourage your readers to give the game a shot – you may just end up having a good time! Now you know… and I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that knowing is half the battle!

So there we have it. Many thanks to Matt for answering my questions at this stupidly busy time. I’m sure many of you reading this are as relieved as me to discover the game is based largely on the history of G.I JOE, and not the new film. Nevertheless, both the G.I JOE: The Rise of Cobra games and movie are out today, with the latter featuring Sienna Miller as a leather-clad, arse kicking brunette vixen. Do you need anymore persuading?