Interview: Axel Lindberg, Director of Renegade Ops
To kick things off can you give us a brief overview of what Renegade Ops is?
Renegade Ops is a top-down, dual-stick shooter, where you get to drive around in cool vehicles, with even cooler weapons, and wreck havoc in awesome environments, with the goal of stopping evil megalomaniac Inferno from taking over the world. You play as one of four characters compromising the “Renegade Ops”-outfit, under the command of their big-muscled-big-mustachioed leader General Bryant. Each of the four characters has a unique vehicle, special ability, and unlockable upgrades earned through an RPG-like leveling system. Renegade Ops is fast, tough, crazy, and loads of fun!
What inspired Avalanche to go from creating large open world games like Just Cause to a digital download title like Renegade Ops? What games out there inspired you guys to go the direction you did with Renegade Ops itself?
Avalanche as a development studio is still focused on big, open world games and have several AAA projects on the way, so the studios’ focus hasn’t shifted at all really. We’ve just added a new spice to the flavor that is “Avalanchian” game development. After Just Cause 2 was released, a few of us felt like it would be a nice change of pace to work in a small-team environment on a smaller project. A project that would both allow, and force us, to simplify and streamline every aspect of its development. Digital download is the perfect platform for that type of project. We saw a bunch of games coming out for digital download that basically were re-inventions of classic games from the 80s-90s and they struck a strong chord in our brains’ “nostalgia-center”. There are loads of games, and even whole genres from that era that have all but disappeared from the market today. With all those factors in mind we got to work on a concept. We’ve done our best to create a game that is super-modern in terms of technology, graphics, and gameplay, but still delivers an experience that will have you reminiscing about golden oldies like Jackal, Desert Strike, and Cannon Fodder.
How much of the staff at Avalanche is working on Renegade Ops? Did working on a game like Renegade Ops allow you guys to break off into smaller, tighter development teams?
The Renegade Ops core development team is 8-12 members strong. We only have a single team, sitting in a single area together, which makes having meetings really simple and efficient, ha! Basically, every member of the core development team on Renegade Ops is a one-man-team with full responsibility for one or several areas of the game. If some important information needs to be conveyed to the entire team, we just scream it out and make sure no one has their head-phones on. Issue solved!
Many developers have spoken about the restraints Microsoft puts on XBLA titles compared to retail. Do you think working within those walls drove you guys almost like a challenge, or was it something you guys had to hold back for? Graphically the game looks great so it doesn’t appear you had much to hold back there.
To be honest, we haven’t felt any restraints from Microsoft at all while developing Renegade Ops. On the contrary they have been very supportive and positive throughout the entire production.
Sega is set to publish Avalanche Studios’ Renegade Ops sometime this fall.