Just as Legion surprised and devastated the world after hiding in the shadows for years before hand, chatter has been practically non-existent on Agents of Mayhem since its reveal at E3 last year. Now Volition and Deep Silver are opening up about it once more.
After playing the game for about an hour – catch our preview here – we spoke to Volition’s Kate Nelson, Producer on Agents of Mayhem about the game and how they’re moving on from Saints Row, but keeping the humour and style of those games.
TSA: It’s kind of old news now, having announced Agents of Mayhem almost a year ago, but moving on from Saints Row and that kind of brand recognition, why was that the path that Volition decided to take?
Kate Nelson: At Volition we like to focus on our special sauce, we feel like we have a very certain humour and tone that we go for, so that’s something that we’re definitely pulling through into AoM, from our experience of making open world games.
We liked the idea of digging into a new territory, right? The Saturday morning cartoons, but with a mature take. How far can we push it? What lines can we walk?
TSA: Such as Daisy’s swearing while jumping into a car, which I quite enjoyed!
Kate: Yeah, she has a little bird for the camera there!
TSA: That was one of the thing I quickly picked up on with the cartoons, which are nicely done. Do they pervade the entire game? Coming out for mission intros?
Kate: Yes, every agent has a cutscene that introduces their back story, how they came into the agency and a kind of “this is how I met Persephone” moment – Persephone being the leader of Mayhem. Then there’s also key moments for our lieutenant backstories, as well as key story moments along the way. We really wanted to tie that into the whole framework of the game.
TSA: It’s interesting that you’ve gone with set characters to play as. There’s ten, that I spotted, I think?
Kate: There’s twelve, but we’re holding three back, so there’s going to be a big surprise coming up…
TSA: But it’s interesting that you’ve gone with that instead of being able to customise your character completely and just have whatever ridiculous person in a pimp hat that you want.
Kate: It was a big switch for us, because we’re used to taking The Boss, and having them customised in a lot of different ways. In this game, we take that and we distil it all into different character, but we still love our customisation, so each of the twelve agents have different ways that they can be kitted out. They can choose between three different special abilities, you can move their stat points in different ways, there’s Legion tech that pushes them even further, and then core abilities that change them even more. We really like the idea that you might have a favourite hero, but then you can push them one way or the other to fit your play style.
TSA: Yeah, I spotted that variety, but also, because you’ve got three characters with you most of the time, you can have characters that compliment each other. There’s a lot of interplay waiting to be discovered.
Kate: Yeah, or you can take all the shotgun character like I do! [laughs] I just really like that kind of gameplay.
But yeah, you can have your ranged character, your tank, your swishy DPS, and even within there, you can play around a bit with which way you’re pushing them. Red Card can be more or less tank-y, because he has a lot regen, so you can go a lot more squishy, but then have him really blast everything away.
TSA: It’s difficult to get a feel for how deep, varied and nuanced everything will be after just an hour of the game!
Kate: I know, it’s so hard to try and show everything, but you can’t!
TSA: With three characters on the go all the time, it kind of feels like the game’s tailor made for co-op. Do you have that here? Personally, playing co-op was one of my favourite things about the Saints Row games, just sharing that craziness with a friend.
Kate: So in this one, we really focussed on the single player experience. We want it to be you versus the bad guys, and you choose your group of three and play as the whole team. We really want to encourage players to find their favourite combinations, talk to friends, and see what other people can come up with.
TSA: How are you going about fleshing out the open world? What I’ve seen here has mainly been missions, but there’s also going to be this open world of Seoul to mess around in as well.
Kate: Yeah, that comes back to the demo framework, right?
In the open world section, we had you strictly taking on an outpost in the city, but what will happen in the final game is that will open up the city and all the Legion activity around that outpost. So taking over that outpost reveals where Legion patrols are or we’ll throw in what we call Doomsday Weapons, these evil villain, bad guy devices that they drop all over the city.
That’s just one aspect of the open world, and we’re planning on showcasing that more later on, but this demo was a bit more about some of those mission experiences.
TSA:Â Can you talk a little bit about how you’ve create Seoul? How have you adapted it into this futuristic interpretation of the city?
Kate: Yeah, our artists really dug into it. What was really fun for us was that Devil’s Night happens in the lore of our game, and all of the world is turned upside down. The story of Seoul is that this particular area became the hub of technology, but it also has all of these ancient temples and areas that you can explore, so it provides a really diverse feel around the city. You have this, like, temple fortress, and you have these smaller crammed market areas, and then you have these looming, huge science buildings with hyper-looped tubes, and all of that.
So yeah, we had a lot of fun with the idea of technology being placed in a more ancient feel that’s also being built up.
TSA: Lastly, I think I just want to say that I liked that you’ve got a literal girl Friday in the game! [laughs]
Kate: Yeah, you caught that? [laughs] We had a lot of fun with our characters, and our voice actors had a lot of fun too, especially Daisy’s!
Thanks to Kate for chatting to us about Agent of Mayhem. Check out our preview for the game over here, and if Saints Row tickled your funny bone, then mark 18th August for this game’s release date.
