FaceBreaker Interview

If you’re of the opinion that the Fight Night series is way too technical, I have some good news for ya. EA is working hard on a brand new IP that involves cel-shaded visuals, over-the-top boxers, button mashing, and of course, tons of facebreaking. We tracked down the game’s producer, Todd Batty, who gave us the lowdown on FaceBreaker.

How was FaceBreaker born? Could you describe the game in a nutshell to our viewers?

The very first line of thinking was that the game was going to be an arcade version of Fight Night. It then evolved into discussions as to what we wanted this game to be, a fighting game or a boxing game, and whether or not this would still be a licensed game like NBA Street, where we use actual players from the NBA. We eventually decided to make our own characters and go from there.

Were you inspired by Team Fortress 2’s visual style or was FaceBreaker always going to be a cel-shaded game?

We took inspiration from so many places. From the get-go we were thinking Super Punch Out on a next-gen system. If Nintendo made that game today what would it look like? Taking it a step further, we began to experiment with making 3D models of some of the old-school 2D boxing characters. Our goal was to identify a point between stylized and realistic. As you know, Fight Night is a simulation boxing game and thus has much more realistic characters, but with FaceBreaker we wanted to go with an over-the-top, stylized feel. I feel good about where we ended up with the characters, and hopefully other gamers will like them too.

Will players be able to make and customize their own characters in the game or will they have to make do with the existing characters?

We will have a Create Boxer area that features Photo Game Face, but you’ll have to wait to hear more information about that!

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How deep does the deformation system run; will it tie into some sort of in-game mechanic or is it purely cosmetic?

The deformation does in fact tie into gameplay. We wanted to give people two different ways to win a fight. You can win by knocking someone out in the traditional boxing sense, or you can focus on secondary objectives while you’re fighting, which is to actually break your opponent’s face. That said, the facebreaking doesn’t happen in a gory kind of way, there’s no blood shooting out or anything like that. In fact, when it came down to the facebreaking we actually went through a lot of iterations on damage, and they range from completely comical to completely grotesque. Once we figured out who our target gamer was though, we settled somewhere in the middle.

We hear the game’s not going to implement Total Punch Control. If that’s true, will the game end up being a simple button masher?

Since FaceBreaker is an arcade title and Fight Night is a sports simulation, there are quite a few differences between them – including the controls. My last project was NBA Street Homecourt. With Street we were one of the first titles to say that we wanted to make our game more approachable to someone who might not be a hardcore gamer, but still have enough depth to ensure the hardcore gamer had a blast as well. I wanted to bring the same vision to FaceBreaker - making it approachable enough so that two people, even if unevenly matched, could have a lot of fun playing against each other. To do that we adopted a fairly simple control design where you could still do sophisticated moves if you figured out the systems that were going on, but they took a very simple input so that someone who didn’t know what they were doing could still spam on some buttons and get some early success. With this game it’s all about making the experience fun for everyone.

When can we expect to see some sort of gameplay footage – or a demo for that matter?

First gameplay will go live later this spring.

Have you fixed on a release date for FaceBreaker yet?

Yes, fall 2008.