PHILOSOPHY - PATH OF THE FURON DEVELOPER DIARY

Sandblast Games discuss the philosophy behind the game

Jon Knoles, Creative Director at Sandblast Games...

Pox: “Crypto, do you think Destroy All Humans! sounds, well...inhumane?"

Crypto: “Well, yeah. I believe that's the point, Pox…but in that non-threatening, tongue-in-cheek, T-rated kind of way.”

The series has always been known for massive destruction and laugh out loud humor in an open “sandbox” game world. This winning formula is very much intact in Path Of The Furon, and has been redefined for next gen consoles.

Massive Destruction

As described in Diary #1, Path of the Furon redefines “massive destruction” for next gen consoles. You will see a higher level detail of destruction on a scale never before seen on any console this time around: larger cities, filled with skyscrapers, all of which can be completely and utterly destroyed. You will see crowds of panicked humans fleeing buildings as you destroy them. You’ll see skies full of attack helicopters and alien saucers all trying to bring you down. And you’ll unleash unbelievably destructive far out alien weaponry on humans and their world with weapons like the Black Hole Gun, Tornadotron and Quantum Deconstructor, to name a few.

Irreverent Humor

Perhaps the greatest strength of the Destroy All Humans! series is its unique brand of irreverent and satirical humor, from the invading alien point of view. Gamers can expect this humor alive and well this time around. The story lampoons the hallmarks of the funky 1970s: Kung Fu, disaster movies, conspiracies, the second golden age of sci-fi, the “me” generation, disco, etc. But players need not be a student of 70s history to get the jokes: we wanted the game to be fun for a broad audience. The humor is as irreverent as ever, pulling no punches when it comes to comically skewering us as a species. And with tongue firmly planted in cheek, the game often makes fun of itself, too.

The humor in the game is largely presented in the wild and funny weapons and abilities Crypto uses against humans, their reactions to these, and in the fun interactions between Crypto and his holographic handler Pox in cinematic sequences, interactive conversations, and also during in-game banter. Voice actors Grant Albrecht and Richard Horvitz reprise their original roles as Crypto and Pox, and you can tell as you play along that they had fun doing it.

We’ve also added more of the type of interactive conversation games like the Mayor’s speech in the first Destroy All Humans! game, as Crypto addresses a group of humans, often while disguised as one, and manipulates them through carefully chosen words. There’s a “correct” path to navigating these humorous conversations, but a lot of the fun comes from deliberately making the wrong choices, just to hear what happens.

As with the first two games, you can read humans’ minds for mission hints, to prolong your body snatched disguise, or just to hear the absurd things they have on their minds. There are around 2000 of these in total, between 30 and 50 unique thoughts for each type of human in the game, some of which play on stereotypes, some of which play against them. I’m not sure anyone can claim to have 2000 jokes that will cause side-splitting laughter every time, and we don’t claim to either, but that’s not really the point: it’s a humorous diversion that is useful in gameplay, sometimes makes you chuckle, sometimes makes you laugh out loud, or occasionally prompts you to look up a word or name on Wikipedia just to figure out what the heck you just heard.

Destroying All Humans! In Their Own Tongue

This time around we’ve taken extra care to ensure the humor is not only funny to American gamers, but has been customized for other languages as well, replacing jokes or references to American pop culture with appropriate counterparts that French, Spanish, Italian, or German speaking gamers will “get.” Did we mention you get to destroy a fictional version of Paris in this game? The aliens have already invaded several cities in the US, invaded Britain, Japan and Russia. It was only a matter of time before our friends in France found themselves on receiving end of the anal probe.

Expanded Open World Gameplay

What’s this Open World thing we keep hearing about and how is Path of the Furon expanding this concept? Open world or sandbox gameplay basically means a game world in which the player is free to explore and have fun without being forced down a particular path or “directed” experience. The sandbox formula of the series has been expanded in Path Of The Furon to allow more freedom and more choices in gameplay. The player has more choices available to them in terms of activities, missions, mini-games, and exploration.

There are story missions, which are more directed experiences to move advance the story and feature progression, and which required in order to advance through all five Invasion Sites. But now many of these story missions can be played in non-linear order. As with the previous games, the player chooses when to undertake missions by finding and speaking to a “mission giver” in the world, which may be Pox or other characters they’ll meet along the adventure. If players choose to decline or abort a mission so they can mess around in sandbox mode to upgrade their weapons and abilities, or just to have fun exploring or blowing the crap out of everything and everyone, they are free to do that too.

There are also numerous optional side missions called “odd jobs” to undertake in each Invasion Site, and these have been given more depth and are more complimentary to story missions—some are pretty epic, actually. And you can perform favors for the Furon god Arkvoodle, who rewards you with new landing zones for your flying saucer. To encourage revisiting Invasion Sites, we’ve added repeatable challenges and mini-games that you can return to over and over to better your score and collect more rewards. Each of the five Invasion Sites is peppered with hidden alien artifacts to collect, and fun Achievements to unlock.

Perhaps the biggest advancement to the Destroy All Humans! open world experience comes from the ability to combine mental powers, hand weapons and jetpack flight for the first time, which exponentially increases the size of the tools available to the player for sandbox mayhem. This freedom of choice and discovery is most apparent in the Temporal Fist, a new mental ability Crypto learns from an alien Kung Fu master, which allows him to stop time, freely move around in and mess up the world, then start time again to watch the mayhem play out. This feature alone provides almost limitless possibilities for discovery in gameplay, which is frightening for us as developers as we try to figure out all the ways a player might use it, but it’s worth the trouble: players will have a blast using it to discover new ways to Destroy All Humans!

If you want to experience playing the role of a homicidal alien invader with far out mental powers and sci-fi weaponry in several open worlds that you can completely destroy, and laugh out loud while doing it, we think you’ll enjoy Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon.

Crypto: “Enjoy? Hell, the name of the game is Destroy All Humans! Who wouldn't enjoy that?”

You can read the previous developer diaries from Jon Knoles here.

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