"KillzoneUnit.com has managed to set up a Q&A session with Sebastian “motherH” Downie of Guerrilla Games. We talk about the company and of Killzone. Pull up a chair and enjoy.

Tell us about Guerrilla Games and what your role is there?

Currently I am Test Lead/QA Manager and I just finished a tour of duty as Producer on Killzone: Liberation.

Since the acquisition by Sony, has anything changed in the everyday office life for GG employees?

I keep waiting for something to happen. Something big to change. Some big event where the big corporate mothership flexes its muscles, but it never comes. We still work with a lot of the same Sony people we worked with before the acquisition and other than some slight procedural changes here and there I don’t think much has changed. If anything I think we have matured a bit as a company since then and it has opened a couple more doors for us in terms of technology and resource sharing and getting into the better parties. So no, not much at all.

Moving on to Killzone, briefly, how would you describe the franchise to gamers who aren’t familiar with it?

A First Person shooter set in an alternative future interplanetary war, where the lines between good and evil are very thin, and the guns are very big. Or something. I am never very good at this stuff.

When the Killzone series moved to the PSP, many fans were surprised to see the transition from FPS to an isometric gameplay view. Were there any major differences between developing Killzone for the PS2 and the PSP?

You could say that. We decided we needed to have a good blend on short action that the player could jump into and keep going at any time, mixed with a narrative and player progression. So pick-up and play was very important to us. This covers the casual gamer base that might pull out their PSP when commuting or on the toilet (I know you do it!) and the guys who will quite happily play for 4 hours straight.
One thing our artists had to do was relearn working on that kind of scale. They had gotten too used to their high-detail, polygon chewing ways of Killzone 1 and needed to scale back down a bit to make it work for the camera angle, but they did a cracking job on keeping the Killzone style while making it one of the best looking PSP games out there. As for the camera angle itself, it makes the game a little more tactical as it allows the player more of an overview of the area ahead so he can plan ahead a bit more.

Amongst many fans of the series, there seems to be a little debate on whether Killzone Liberation was a direct sequel to Killzone, or a spin-off. Where exactly does Killzone Liberation sit within the series?

I think the best way to describe it is a branch within the timeline. It is dangerous to try and stick to one giant narrative that spans through many games and stick to it religiously.
The story has to be vague and unrelated enough to invite newcomers to the series without confusing the hell out of them, while still giving the fans of the previous game something to go on. So is it a sequel? Who really cares? It’s a bloody good game.

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