Transcription of interview with Karl Stewart which took place in Los Angeles on 7th June 2012:
Jaden from Guns & Grapple would like to know were there are any reference photos taken to aid the creation of the concept design and artwork?
Yeah, Brian took a lot of photographs, I’ve - every now and then I try to inspire myself by dipping into his archives, you know, to just sort of help me understand and get an idea of his perspective so when we’re talking about the game and when we’re presenting it we’ll know more about the process in every area, yeah – let me just say there’s a lot of photographs in Brian’s folders!
I’ll underline “lot”! And where were they taken, which locations?
In a variety, as Brian mentioned we travelled to Japan not so long ago, and Brian took a day off the beaten track off up to Toniko to be able to take some photographs for reference. And in general Brian likes want to try to get out and see things from himself as well so most of the locations that are in the game, at some point in time, Brian has had the opportunity to get out and study them and analyse, make sure that they feel real and feel natural.
And we also work with a very talented group of concept artists who have done a tremendous job of using source material and reference material to be able to bring our world to life, so it was a lot of photographs have taken but the goal is to try to make it feel as real as possible.
Harry from Music of Tomb Raider has asked if there’ll be additional bonus material in the Collector’s or Limited Edition sets
Yeah, we actually, we’re right in the middle of deciding that as we speak, there’s a lot of content that get created in making a game and there’s a lot of stuff that ends up on the cutting room floor, you know, much like movies, you know, a movie starts at four hours and ends up at ninety minutes.
You know, for us, there’s a lot of stuff we want to talk about, we’ve been a little more strategic in the way in which we go about doing it now, so that when we do performance capture we capture all our B-rolls to make sure that we’ve got it all and then instead of just launching it all, you know, in one big lump in a collector’s edition, this is where we’re going to be doing these chapters as you’ll see over the next coming months is to bring some of that to life and in a very unique way, so it’s very important that we show people some of the procedure that we go through, the process that we go through, so yeah, you’ll see a lot of additional content.
Harry has also asked, regarding iTunes releases whether any of the music either from this title or from previous titles (or any other – other suppliers are available).
I need to have a look at that right now, I think it’s - obviously, you know, iTunes has now become the defacto place to go and get most all your music in a lot of cases so I know Meagan’s worked hard to make sure that we do things like getting podcasts are up there, I know certainly from our experience of our soundtrack when we do release the soundtrack we’ll make sure that it’s on iTunes because it’s the defacto, so, you know – it’s interesting, I might have a look if they’re not up there already I would like to make that happen actually, it would be great to get all the previous soundtracks – or whatever soundtracks are out there, up on iTunes.
You said the soundtrack will be released in line with the game – regarding the game’s release, is that going to be a worldwide release date or is it going to be staggered?
Right now it’s a world-wide release date, we’ve been talking with our European counterparts and we’ve made the decision that March 5th will be the date that we launch the game in our EFIGS territories [English, French, Italian, German, Spanish] and North America, we haven’t made a final decision yet with regards to our Asia markets and our Japanese markets, that will be a little harder because they’re a little more complex, to make sure that, you know, translations and VO and making sure it hits at the right time.
So certainly from North America, South America, right through to all of Europe our goal is for it to be day and date, which is a big thing, because obviously normally it’s Tuesday at one place and Friday at the other – we wanted it to be March 5th as a global release date.
Tiernan from Lara Society has some queries regarding Lara’s background in her reinvented form and wants to know how much has changed and whether she still has her aristocratic roots.
So, obviously, I get that question a lot you know, about who she is and where she’s from and really we looked at the character and thought, you know, when breaking it down and trying to bring this new vision for Lara and reimagining her, you had to be willing to – to be willing to take the risk of delivering emotion you have to have a character which feels believable and real for today and you look at Lara on this journey, this is her first adventure and already you see a very different side to her, she hasn’t paid to be on this – in past worlds Lara would have bought the ship and paid for it herself and hired a crew – or not even bothered hiring a crew and doing it herself – this is a girl that wants to be accepted, she wants to be a part of the team, she doesn’t want to be, you know, kind of left out on her own, you know, she really wants to do this and she wants to show her worth. And we see a side to Lara which we’ve never really seen before.
You know, we haven’t and we won’t just yet, start talking about her backstory in any depth because I think that detracts from what we’re trying to present right now, I think there’s a time and a place to be able to get into that detail but for now certainly what we’re presenting is a young girl that’s energetic, ambitious and maybe a little bit naive because she thinks she can do the things that – you know, it’s a little bit like Nemo’s dad? You think you can do these things but you can’t? You know, we’ve got to take you on the journey to see how she grows and she becomes a person, you know, and when we set the foundation on this game, we’ll see how that plays out, but right now we don’t really want to get into – too deep into the backstory of, you know, who she is versus who she was.
There’s been some interest in an animated series like the Gametap episodes, is this something you might be interested in bringing back to promote this game or possibly future releases?
(asked by @RyanRaider_)
There’s no plans right now to do any animation, or animated series, our goal as a studio is firmly in making sure we build a great game and we take this awesome opportunity to, you know, bring the series back to life in a way which hasn’t really been done in video games, so I think we have to be careful that we don’t lose focus.
How much work is still to be done in the game - a statement’s been made (by Mike Fisher - President & CEO for Square Enix US) that it could be released at this point and it would be a perfectly satisfactory game – obviously you’re going for a bit higher than satisfactory – what bits will you be focusing on between now and the release?
(Asked by Karen)
So one of the things which we’ve tried to communicate, hopefully it’s come across pretty well, is that we don’t treat this lightly, we take this very seriously, that we’ve had the opportunity to take a fifteen year old franchise and bring it back to life in a way in which very few media have had the opportunity to do so and for the guys and the team who have worked on it, this is the game of their careers, right? How many people get the opportunity to do this?
And we have to be very careful that we don’t, after spending all this time, rush it and put it out in a window or at a time when we just don’t feel like it’s going to live up to the expectations that we want to set, you know, we’ve talked a lot over the last year about the work that’s gone into it, so really for us it was a case of –in times gone by we probably would have looked at the game right now – let’s polish it, put it in a box and ship it, right?
And it’s great, it’s playable from start to finish, but we made a promise, before we ever announced Tomb Raider we made a promise that Crystal Dynamics would be about quality over quantity, we didn’t want to rush things, we wanted to make sure it was done right and, you know, despite it being used a lot, it would be ready when it’s ready that’s really where we looked at it, it’s that, you know, we wanted to make sure that we delivered the best experience and the time that we’ve got between now and March next year, really the focus is to look at story, look at the way in which we can bring certain things in that get to shore up, maybe, some of the holes that we feel - after we’ve played it over and over and over again – need to be fixed, you know, that we, you know, have an opportunity to do something that we really very rarely, ever get to do and that’s play our game, a thousand times, and actually question some of our questions, some of the decisions that we’ve made and make sure that shore them up and put a great amount of polish in and deliver a great experience.
Regarding the more vulnerable Lara, coming from a point where she doesn’t have any special skills or even a deliberate aim to get into a situation like this – how do you go about creating a vulnerable female protagonist that doesn’t fall into stereotype? I know that in the demos we’ve seen - obviously early in the game - the men are very predatory and I know that there has been some concern that this is putting her in the role of a victim and that she’s going to be stronger because she’s been victimised...
(Asked by Karen, this was also a concern at the TRF)
So I think there’s two sides to that, one is - taking away the victimisation side for a second - we want you to go on a journey to see her grow, we want you to see her become something which is going to stand the test of time throughout the franchise.
In regards to the sort of victimisation, that will play out in the story as to why you feel that way and there’s going to be “eureka” moments that make you go, okay, now I understand, it all comes together, and without getting into spoilers, we don’t do things for the sake of saying victimisation is going to be a great way to get people to go “oh my god, let me talk about it”, there’s a reason for everything we do, right, so we’re going to have to - so in some sense some of the negativity that we’ve read – and it’s very, very little that we’ve read, over the last couple of days, I think that when people see the demo and they talk to us they quickly realise what our intentions are.
I think that’s always going to be there when you show a very small portion of your game, a snippit, but I think after people play the game they’ll quickly realise that we have built a game that has been mapped out from minute to minute and there’s reason behind every decision that we’ve made.
And I think it would be fair to say, I wouldn’t want to put words in your mouth, but that the decisions that have been made have been made with thought and consideration rather than just a shortcut to – we want this emotional reaction--
Oh yeah, yeah, we’ve spent, you know, I can’t say how many times we’ve laboured over scenes, we’ve gone back to the motion capture studio more times with this game than I think we have on three games put together, because I think it’s about making sure that the scenes are played out correctly and the story has gone through many iterations to make sure that we deliver the start, middle and end to a scene, not just one particular emotion to one particular scene but there has to be a build up, you know – you watched that demo yesterday and what you saw was a side to a character like Whitman bringing you on this journey where you feel, okay, now I don’t trust him, he’s a little bit strange, a little bit cagey, and eventually you get to a point where you think ‘ah, now it’s starting to come together, but look at me, now I’m captured, thank you very much Whitman, you shouldn’t have done that’ – so everything feels like it’s got a start, middle and end and that it’s not just done for the sake of shock factor.
And on the game on the whole you’re confident that will be validated?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
One question left – and can I just ask what question you would like to be asked in interview that you haven’t been asked ... and please answer!
(Asked by Karen)
(Laughs) What’s awesome is that question! That’s the question that...
Can I get a slightly fuller answer?? (Jokingly)
Well, yeah, slightly fuller answer, I’ll give you my perspective actually – interviews like this are the interviews that I love doing because we can talk a little more in depth, you know the game very well because you’ve been following what we’ve been saying and how we’ve been saying it and it’s great to be able to put meat on the bones and not say the same thing over and over again – I wish, and this is just an unfortunate – I get asked the same question so many times that sometimes I go, you’ve got me for the next fifteen minutes – ask me an awesome question that nobody else has asked!
You’ve read everything, right? You’ve obviously studied it really hard, and you know - it’s things like that that I feel not enough people pick, you know, look for the meat on the bones of what we’re saying and we’ve spent so much time passionately building this game, that I wish that sometimes people would ask the harder, harder, questions and get a little bit more deeper, but I think it’s opportunities like this where I can do that.
So I think this is very unique, this, you know, your line of questions and the rest of the team’s line of questions are things that we don’t always get asked because people are looking for the high moments, they want to kind of [clicks fingers] get it onto a website, get readers and this is more about the passion of what goes into making this.
I did have a question about dual pistols and whether they’ll come back if you’d wanted questions that had already been answered!
(Asked by Tiernan)
Never say never! Never say never ...
(Thank you to Karl for answering our questions, they were very informative! And it was a real pleasure interviewing you. And thank you also to Meagan for setting up the interview and for inviting the ambassadors to the event! You're wonderful.)
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