The film maker remarks that with a video game you don’t solve one screenplay, ”you have to solve 20” because of the ”illusion of free will.” They’re ”trying a lot of stuff” with it.
Both del Toro and Volition say Insane is about three years from a release. The director admits the demands of making a video game ”keeps you very nimble,” because of player actions.
Every week he’s in contact with the Volition team via conference call, where they ”exchange ideas about the design, the gameplay, about the models. I’m taking it little by little. I think it’s going to be a fun, scary game. It’s a maiden voyage into the medium for me. I’m learning a lot of stuff.” He knows movie experience ‘doesn’t equate’ to games.
”I came to videogame development with a lot of humility because I didn’t want to come in with the attitude of, “Oh I know how to make movies, therefore I know how to make videogames,” which is a big mistake. I came in trying to learn a new medium because I think it’s going to be very useful for me as a storyteller,” said del Toro, speaking with Wired.
”With a videogame, you don’t have to solve one screenplay, you have to solve 20 screenplays, because you are giving the player the illusion of free will. If the character kills another character or destroys a building, the game goes one way; if the character doesn’t, it goes another. It keeps you very nimble.”
”I think that’s the biggest, and the most fun, lesson I’ve been getting,” he adds. ”We’re being really, really nasty in the game. We’re really trying a lot of stuff that I don’t think would even fly in the movies. It’s still two-and-a-half or three years away, though, because videogame development is so long.”
Insane releases on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC sometime around 2013. Fortunately you don’t need to wait that long before Volition’s next game releases as Saints Row: The Third launches this week on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.