Reeve Thompson:

Reeve: Sure. My name is Reeve Thompson and I'm the producer on RTX Red Rock, so I have received a team of about 50 people right now, who are all working to finish up the game. And RTX Red Rock is coming out on the GameCube this spring.

C-E: Sounds cool. And this the only project you're working on or do you have multiple projects at the same time?

Reeve: This is the only project I'm working on right now. We used to have producers that would do multiple projects in the company, but we've since shifted so that internal producers are only working on one, so my entire focus is on finishing this up.

C-E: Do you already know what you are going to do after the release of RTX Red Rock in spring 2002?

Reeve: I actually don't know yet. I have been talking with people about that, trying to figure out what I want to do and what the company wants me to do, that kind of thing. We are definitely talking about whether or not we are going to do RTX Red Rock 2. That is something I would be very interested in seeing happen. I am not sure exactly what role I would have on it but that is something we are looking at. We want to make Wheeler a character that you see in multiple games.

C-E: So you want to make it a new household name?

Reeve: Absolutely, we build Wheeler with that in mind. This is a character that was sent to Mars in Red Rock to save the colony there, but he could just as easily have been sent to the moon, Jupiter or somewhere else.

Reeve: At Lucas Arts, we have a producer-director relationship. So there's a director, like in the making of a film, who is in charge of what the game is going to be about � who the characters are, what the game design is. And then the producer's job is to figure out how to actually get that game done. So I'm in charge of budget, scheduling, and I do most of the media work, like this interview right now. But our director is in charge of coming up with the story, coming up with the characters.

Our director's name is Hal Baldwin. Previous to this game he did a bunch of Indiana Jones games, including the Firm Machine and Fate of Atlantis, and actually before he worked on games he was a screenwriter in Hollywood. He wrote Dragon Slayer, he wrote Sugarland Express for Steven Spielberg, so he has quite a history of coming up with really imaginative story lines.

C-E: Have you got any other titles under your name?

Reeve: Yes. I worked on Star Wars Star Fighter for the PlayStation 2. I also did the special edition for the XBox of that. I did Star Wars Jedi Power Battles which came out on the PlayStation and on the Dreamcast as well.

C-E: And with what console do you find it most interesting to work?

Reeve: They all have their interesting aspects. I mean, the PlayStation 2 has always been quite difficult. The GameCube is quite a bit easier on the developers, which is a nice thing. We definitely enjoy working on the GameCube quite a bit. XBox is a lot like developing on the PC, and we have a long history of developing on the PC, so that's nice as well. So they all have the things that they do well.

C-E: And you mentioned that you're working on the PlayStation 2 and GameCube edition? You guys are working on it at the same time?

Reeve: Yes. We have a core team that works on and so they'll just work on the game itself, and so they don't think about whether it's going to be on the PS 2 or on the GameCube. And then we have 2 programmers that are specifically working on the GameCube issues and then basically 2 programmers who are working on the PlayStation 2 specific issue.

Actually, right now we have a race because w ealso develop on the PC, so you can play the game on the PC and we're not ogin to come out with the PC version but for development reasons, it's a good place, so the artists can look at their models look at their levels and play the game there. So we have a race to see constantly between the GameCube programmers and the PS 2 programmers, who can get the game farther along first.

Reeve: Well, we originally knew we wanted to do a PlayStation 2 version. The engine when it began had its roots on the PlayStation 2, and the programmer who spearheaded the effort had a lot of experience on the PS 2. So when we started the project, we knew that was going to be one of the platforms. Then we needed to decide whether we would do an XBox version, a GameCube version, or both. We didn't really have the resources to do both, so we knew we needed to pick between the two.

We thought that this type of a game fit better on the GameCube. GameCube has a very strong adventure genre. You know, you have things like Zelda coming out soon, Star Fox Adventures, these type of games, and so we felt that that would be a nice fit. We also knew that Star Wars Bounty Hunter would be coming out on the PS 2 and on the GameCube, and we share some of the same code with them. So we knew that there would be a great amount of work done on the GameCube version of Bounty Hunter and then we could maybe use some of that code. So it seemed like a good fit from a console perspective for the GameCube, and then also from a technology perspective.

C-E: So you work closely together with the Bounty Hunter team?

Reeve: Yes, quite a bit.

C-E: And are people from that team on your team, or is it a mix, or are they two separate teams?

Reeve: They are two separate teams, but we do have people who sometimes play a support role. Like there are certain programmers who will do tasks for both teams, and definitely also when you're working on low-level code . One of the main PlayStation 2 programmers that we're using right now worked on Bounty Hunter, and the main GameCube programmer for Bounty Hunter is also going to come work with us. And once in a while we share artists as well. We have an artist who was on our project for a while and then went over and worked on Bounty Hunter for a couple months and then came back and is working with right now. So, we do share resources, but overall they are two different teams.

C-E: If you don't mind, let's talk about RTX a bit more. According to you, what makes RTX stand out from other 3-D, action/adventure games?

Reeve: One thing I think that's interesting is that right now a lot of the games are sort of action/adventure, and they consider themselves adventure games, where you do a lot of exploration and picking up items and using items and solving puzzles. It seems that in a lot of those you always seem to play a cartoon animal as a character. You think about Star Fox, or Clyde Cooper on the PS 2, those types of things, they always seem like they're made for little kids.

I happen to be a fan of that type of game; I like to play that type of game, but I don't like being treated like I'm treated like I'm ten years old. So I think RTX Red Rock will stand out in that regard, because if you like that kind of game � if you like adventure games, if you like problem solving and some action � this is the type of game you're going to enjoy. It's also a very interesting, more adult environment. You know, it's science-fiction; it takes place on Mars; it's a world you imagine will exist in 100 years; and it's human characters. Okay, there is a robot involved, Iris your digital assistant, but for the most part you're dealing with other humans. And I think that that's been fun for people who like adventure games.

On top of that, I think Wheeler's just a really cool character. You know, he has this synthetic eye, which lets you see the world in these different eye-modes so that you can see through walls at certain times, you can also see electricity patterns and certain areas that you can interact with. And Wheeler has a synthetic arm, which lets you get various power ops � you have a grappling hook, a tazer, grenade launcher, a plasma cutter a torque wrench, lots of things, and so I think as a character he's going to be really interesting to play.

Reeve: She's been there since the very beginning. It was always something we wanted to do where one aspect of Wheeler is that he has this assistant and that they kind of work together. And we knew we wanted to be able to take control of robots and use them to solve puzzles. And basically, when you're take control of a robot, you do that by taking Iris, plugging her. And in essence when're you're playing as a robot, you're playing as Iris. That's something that we knew we wanted to do from the very beginning, and you really can't have Wheeler without Iris, you can't have Iris without Wheeler; it's almost like they're the same character.

C-E: Is RTX Red Rock 2 a dream for now or is there already a writer working on the title?

Reeve: Well, we do have some ideas for what we would like to do with RTX 2. Hal has a storyline he's been thinking of and we have definitely left the door open doing more of these. We are going to finish the first one first, and then see where we want to go from there. But we have been talking about it a fair amount. I'd like to see it happen.

C-E: Me too! Now, it's a new game, new characters. How do you think that gamers will pick it up? How are they going to find out about it? I mean, except without us writing about it.

Reeve: Well, that's what I'm here to do, is to talk to you guys and hopefully have you write about it. Right now we're working on a demo, and the reason that we're working very hard on a demo version that people will be able to play is because I think that when people actually sit down and play this game, and start exploring the world, they're going to discover that this is a really cool game. So I want to get it in front of people as much as possible. Other that hopefully it will just be lots of stories. We're working on a comic book that we're going to have in some stores. We're working on toys as well, figures, so hopefully people will hear about it in the same way they hear about a summer blockbuster movie or any new game, and we'll get people excited about it.

C-E: As for the duration of the game: how many hours of gameplay for an average game is in RTX?

Reeve: For an average gamer I would say probably 25-30 hours, kind of standard for a game like this right now. A really good gamer might be able to beat it in closer to 20 hours. As I'm going through the levels right now, knowing exactly what to do, the levels still take me 45 minutes to an hour. Considering that I know exactly what to do, that means they're pretty big levels.

C-E: How far are you guys from completing the game?

Reeve: Just a couple months away. There's a lot of artwork to do, a lot of stuff that's coming in fast and furious. But as I said, we have 50 people working on this, so if you think about that, 2 months times 50 people, we have a couple man years of work that we're going to get done in the next couple months. A lot of things are falling into place very, very quickly.

C-E: Both for the GameCube and the PlayStation 2 version, that is?

Reeve: Yes, our plan is to have them both released the exact same day.

>>> Interview Part 2