Stranglehold Q&A - Inspector Tequila Returns

Tequila Time!

This exclusive trailer shows off explosive action in a number of Stranglehold's previously unseen levels.

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Famed Hong Kong action director John Woo's classic films are so ripe for video game translation, it's a wonder nobody's done it before now. But if it was going to take this long, at least it looks like the team at Midway now hard at work on the Unreal Engine 3-based Stranglehold is doing everything it can to get the first game based on a Woo film right. The game marks the triumphant return of Hard-Boiled's tough-as-nails cop inspector Tequila, brought to life for the first time with the voice and face of action star Chow Yun-Fat. To get the straight dope on Stranglehold's development as it nears completion--and to find out more about the new trailer you'll find linked to the right--we went straight to the game's director at Midway, Brian Eddy.

GameSpot: Start off by introducing yourself. Tell us what you're doing on this game, and also briefly give us an idea of what you've worked on in the past.

Brian Eddy: I'm Brian Eddy, the director and project lead on the game. In the past, I worked on Psi-Ops, and then before that I did arcade games, like the arcade version of Arctic Thunder. And if you really dig back, I did a bunch of pinball machines.

GS: Can you tell us when Stranglehold takes place in relation to the movie Hard-Boiled and run down the storyline of the game?

BE: It takes place soon after Hard-Boiled, and the basic storyline is that [inspector] Tequila gets pulled into this adventure by a cop getting killed. And along the lines of investigating why the cop was killed, he finds out that it starts to involve his family. He actually has an ex-wife that has been estranged and sent to Chicago for safety, and he finds out through investigating what happened to the cop that it actually starts to get personal. And then Tequila gets pulled into the other side of the law and has to cross the line in order to save his family.

GS: Most of the footage in the gameplay demos you guys have shown so far has just been set in that one teahouse area, but this new trailer is showing off a lot of new environments. Can you elaborate on what we're seeing in the trailer and talk about some of the new features that are being introduced here?

Inspector Tequila is back--and he's pissed. That means a whole bunch of people are gonna get shot.

BE: Yeah, there's a couple of different snippets in there. One, there's a museum level in Chicago based upon all the local museums, and it's a great place to be because it has tons of stuff to break and explode when the battle's going on. So you see one little clip of Tequila running up the dinosaur exhibit, and that's really cool because he can use the environment and the things in the environment in different ways. So one of the things--the dinosaur tail--you can run up the side of it, leap off of it while you're taking out guys and stuff. Or you can just blast it away and destroy the whole skeleton, as it crumbles down and falls and kills people all around it and such. There's another little snip of an exhibit of the terra-cotta soldiers, they're kind of famous from China, and there's a whole exhibit of them. A great thing to have a battle in between, with them shattering and breaking all around you.

Then there's a little bit of the penthouse in Chicago. This is a very opulent palace--this is the [home of the] Russian mafia boss who runs the Chicago-area syndicate, and you have to go there and basically take him out and all his guys. But this is a really opulent house, multiple levels and floors, and he's got it decked out, and you get to just trash the place. And being at the top of a high rise, it's all glass windows all around, and you know, you're blowing people out the windows and having them fall to their death and stuff. It's a great place to have a big battle in.

There's one more different level, the boat hanger that's part of the dock area. There are two giant hanger areas with dry docks, where they bring boats in. Multiple levels, you know, scaffolding climbing all over the place, so lots of areas to do cool interactions--sliding down railings, diving off--and there's a giant boat in the dry dock, too, that you fight on. So there's a big variety, a little bit of outdoor and indoor on that one.

GS: The environmental actions are the one thing in the trailer that stood out the most to us. How extensive are those going to be? How many different options will you have for doing different things, and how automated are they?

BE: Yeah, we really want to give players as many options as we possibly can squeeze into it. We're really big on the whole emerging gameplay thing, just throwing a bunch of little [gameplay] tools out there and letting people play with it and kind of work their way through the game the way they want to. So you'll see a lot of that. We're really focused on making sure that you can do those things, and you can do them really easily, and they'll lead to really cool events as you use them. So I mean, the control is just as easy as it was in the teahouse, you see something highlight and you just press the interact button and he does it.

GS: OK. So it's basically a matter of hitting one button and seeing something cool happen?

Chow Yun-Fat provided his likeness and voice-over for the first time in Stranglehold.

BE: Yeah. And most of them, you direct them along, too. When you start using it, you kind of put together little movie scenes yourself when you're playing, as he dives off in the slow-mo, as he's running up railings and sliding down them. And you're kind of making these little moments, which are really cool.

GS: So even when you're having these specific interactions with the environment, you're still given some kind of free reign over what you're doing?

BE: Right. So you can jump on banister rails, and you can still move left and right--you're attached to it, but it gives you a better vantage point and allows the camera to go into the slow-mo automatically for you.