GameSpy: So the storyline was worked on by Dwayne McDuffie, what was his involvement in the game like?
Ng: Snowblind originally came up with the story idea, and Dwayne McDuffie came in and took the general idea and turned it into a great Justice League episode, similar to what you'd watch in the animated series. He brought in villains and story components to the game, giving us a solid story, and allowing us to become invested in the characters. It's not very often that you get to work with someone that talented, so that was very cool.
GameSpy: If we can get back to the gameplay, I'd like to get your take on how this latest Snowblind game is entirely focused on two-character cooperative play, whether it be two human players or one player with an AI controlled bot assisting. How does this system change things from a gameplay perspective?
Ng: I really like the ability to zip back and forth between the two characters, and that's my preferred style of play. If one character is low on health or energy, you can switch to the partner and let the AI take care of the enemies while I get the hurt character to safety. We also have the 'on the fly AI', where you can set the AI into one of three states, normal, defensive, or offensive, so you can quickly control their tendencies.

There are also situations like when you use a character like Green Arrow, and his barrage ability. Green Arrow fires arrows into the air, and he's vulnerable here, as you wait for the arrows to come down on the targeted enemies. What I'll do is fire off the barrage, and immediately switch to the second character to provide cover for him. That kind of thing makes it a much deeper single-player experience. But if it was a single character only, I wouldn't have anyone watching my back.
GameSpy: Like having Zatanna play a support role, healing and crowd controlling for a more offensive-character. You have to really watch your player's health and energy as there are no health or mana potions like in one of the previous sword-and-sorcery Snowblind games. Did this new resource management affect gameplay balance very much, and influence level design?
Ng: I find our style of gameplay, with the Halo-styled energy and health replenishment to be lots of fun, since you have to always keep moving, and keep watching your health and energy. It's like in a target shooting game, you have your six shots and then you have to reload. I play a lot of Halo, and it gives me a similar experience to how you have to watch your shields, and then duck into cover and stay out of sight for a little while until they replenish. In our game, we have the controller vibration warning you and the red flashing icon telling you to block or get some cover, giving the player a sense of urgency, and keeping the game going.


GameSpy: I've found some points where I've had to run with my tail between my legs, walking into a room and just getting blasted.
Ng: By doing that, you can reassess the dangers in there. Maybe you shouldn't just run blindly in. You can take inventory of your super powers, and decide that, "hey, there's cannons in the walls there, what ranged attacks can I use to take them down before charging in?" You could maybe send a bat swarm in to take out the turrets, or switch to Zatanna and use her fireballs on the ground turrets. You're never standing around and waiting for things to happen unless you've cleared a room and are taking a breather. We also didn't want constant spawning enemies, because then the game becomes an arcade-shooter.
GameSpy: I found it interesting that the sword-and-sorcery roots of Snowblind were expanded upon for this superhero themed game. Can you tell us about that?
Ng: Well, with this game, we added flight, and flight combat, so we have two planes of combat, and we have characters that can interact with the environment, picking up trucks and cars and uprooting lamp posts. The engine has been pushed to the next level of interactivity, and with next-gen coming around, we can see characters picking up tankers, even! Faster combat in the air, air combos, that kind of thing isn't out of the question for future Snowblind games that make use of the engine. It's pretty much open to whatever we want to do with our characters.