1. Before we begin can you introduce yourself and what work you do on Pariah?

Hi, I'm James Schmalz, I'm the founder and creative director at Digital Extremes. On Pariah, I lead the design of the game as well as did a few of the levels and created most of the weapons.

2. You are using the Unreal engine. Aside from adding bump mapping, more tweaks and optimizations can you add on any other features the engine is capable of?

We have spent a huge amount of time improving performance on Pariah in every area as well as adding in a number of new features and visual enhancements. Things like distortion effects, improved physics, bump mapping, various new pixel shaders, a new specialized decal system, improved skeletal rendering, adding in Havok Physics, etc. The list is quite extensive.

3. How long do you think it will take the average person to beat the game?

Depending on the difficulty level you set it on, we expect people to take anywhere from 10-15 hours to get through the single-player storyline. The play hours on multiplayer are endless.


4. In order to get the best out of the graphics what would you recommend? Would we need an nvidia 6800 Ultra or would an ATI 9800 Pro be sufficient?

Obviously the better the video card the faster it will run but it will work well on almost any ATI or Nvidia card you can purchase today.

5. How does the AI work with the environments and other allied units? Do they communicate with each other? Do light/dark areas affect their abilities?

The Single Player A.I. Is quite adaptable and is setup to understand fairly complicated situations. Depending on their class they understand cover and how to work as a team. There are a number of situations in the game where the AI have been scripted to perform specific actions as needed by the level they are in, but in general they are very autonomous and independent.

6. Please tell me the controls aren’t made for the consoles. Will we have to hit A to select a menu choice? It’s very upsetting to the PC world to see a game reek of console controls and such.

Absolutely not, we spent a lot of time tailoring it specifically to the PC so that it's as enjoyable on the PC as it is on the Xbox with the respective controls.

7. From the previous question, will the PC version support higher quality textures and more robust features over the Xbox port?

Certainly higher quality graphics are on the PC version. We designed Pariah from the beginning with the PC in mind so all the eye-candy is there.

8. What will the multiplayer aspect feature? I know you spent most of your time focusing on the single player aspect of the game, does that mean multiplayer will be a big stink?

Definitely not, we have a long history in multi-player FPS games so Pariah certainly doesn't slack off in that area. While we focused a lot of time and energy on the single-player campaign it was the multi-player action that we got running first and many may remember it's what we showed at E3 last year.

You'll find the old favorites in multi-player such as DM, TDM and CTF but we've designed a new gametype called Front Line Assault that's a hell of a lot of fun to play. It basically mimics a frontline in a war where you're trying to push the enemy team back to their base and then destroy their objective. The fresh spin we've taken with the old favorite gametypes is through the upgradeable weapons and vehicles which take a very important role in multi-player.

9. Will there be a sequel? If so what can you say about it?

We have already started thinking of the design and we eagerly await the feedback from the community on what they think are the most interesting aspects of Pariah are.

10. Thank you for your time is there anything else you would like to add before we go?

We're looking forward to seeing what people come up with using the MAP Editor feature we've worked really hard to include in the game along with the PariahEd tools for all the modders out there.

By:
Jason Chang
4/1/2005

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