Mike Bowden talks with Fuzzyeye Studio about their upcoming third-person fantasy title Edge of Twilight

Mike Bowden: For our readers who might not be aware of Edge of Twilight, care to give us a brief rundown of what the game is about?

Fuzzyeyes Studio: Edge Of Twilight puts players in the shoes of an outcast bounty hunter called Lex, the only living ‘halfbreed’ in a universe split into two parallel realms – one day, one night. As Lex is a hybrid of the two opposing races in the game (the industrial Athern and the spiritual Lithern), he can travel between the two realms, gaining a different persona and sets of abilities depending on which realm he’s currently in. Also, it soon becomes apparent that despite being an outcast due to his mixed heritage, Lex’s unique abilities might well be the key to saving both diametrically-opposed realms from slipping into total darkness.

Mike Bowden: The game description intimates that various choices you make in the game effect the world around you. Care to elaborate on this?

Fuzzyeyes Studio: We are implementing a dynamic storyline system that will alter according to what you make Lex do, or rather, not do. For now though, we’ll have to keep the finer points of how this will work under wraps. Sorry!

Mike Bowden: Aside from the promised action, the game sounds very story driven. How long can we expect the game to be?

Fuzzyeyes Studio: I’d put the play time around the ten to twelve hour mark; a nice length for an Action/Adventure.

Mike Bowden: You also mention Lex’s persona. In what ways can we shape his character? Is this similar to Bioware’s KotoR or Mass Effect?

Fuzzyeyes Studio: Nah, not really. Those two are RPGs and we’re an Action/Adventure, so our customization is a bit more modest. That said, we do let players work and search for currency (or items they can trade for currency) so they can buy a variety of upgrades. These upgrades will really help the player out during combat as the game progresses.

Mike Bowden: You say the game world is divided up into night and day. Will these changes be in real time? i.e. if you spend enough time in a level, darkness will fall and vice versa?

Fuzzyeyes Studio: According to the story, both realms are stuck eternally in one state. Realtime day/night cycles are always neat but for us they don’t make sense within the world and it’d also break pretty much every environmental puzzle we have!

Mike Bowden: Are there any planned online modes for the game or is this a strict single player experience?

Fuzzyeyes Studio: Edge Of Twilight is a single-player adventure. We don’t have any plans to introduce online or multiplayer modes, as we want to focus on making the main adventure as rich and complex as we can. But of course we’ll have achievements for both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions that people can show off online.

Mike Bowden: How far are the team along with the development process? Can we expect gameplay videos/demo any time soon for instance?

Fuzzyeyes Studio: Well, watch this space! We’re a good way into development now, but as we’re scheduled for a 2009 release so it’s a bit early for a demo. We’re hoping to have some videos within a decent amount of time, though.

Mike Bowden: What has been the most challenging aspect of development up until this point and why?

Fuzzyeyes Studio: With a title as ambitious as Edge Of Twilight, there are a lot of challenging aspects to take care of! For us, the biggest challenge is populating the two realms to the point where they become genuinely dynamic worlds with rich, believable cultures. There’s a huge amount of work that goes into creating a world full of individuals and individual architecture, but it’s not impossible by any means.

Mike Bowden: What aspect of the game are you, purely from a developers point of view, most proud of and why?

Fuzzyeyes Studio: Aside from having some really unique gameplay coming out of the two alternate personas’ abilities and how the environments and enemies are designed around this, I’d have to say the level of depth we’ve put into the stories, cultures, art and architecture is amazing.
At first glance the story and world shows us one face, but as the player progresses and digs deeper into the universe we’ve created, exploring what went on before the events of the game, that face of that world changes. Of course, the degree of good or bad in those changes is purely up to the player’s own interpretations, beliefs and attitudes.
By the time they’re finished playing, we think people will want to go back and play through again to unravel more and more of the multifaceted story.

Mike Bowden: The game is billed for PC and 360 only. Why has the PS3 been excluded? Is it because the hardware is so radically different from the other two or are there other reasons?

Fuzzyeyes Studio: Well, we’ve very recently announced that we are developing a PS3 version, so sadly this question is a bit redundant!

Mike Bowden: We at Strategy Informer would like to thank you for agreeing to participate in this short interview and wish you the best of luck with the game.

Fuzzyeyes Studio: No problem! Thanks for giving us the opportunity to talk about Edge Of Twilight.