Sleeping Dogs Gets a Combat Trailer

So as we know, I have been very eagerly awaiting more and more information on a lot of games, but one of the higher priorities, after the last couple trailers and bits of information anyway, has been Sleeping Dogs.  After recently learning that it got a lot of influence from The Protector, the game shot way up on my 'want' list and I've been gnashing my teeth hungrily for some proof of this, some actual showing of the influence that can be taken from The Protector.  And I gotta say, the trailer doesn't deliver a lot on that front, but it does deliver -some-, but what's more important is that it looks awesome.  Mostly.  I mean, let's face it, that footage isn't near final product or at least it shouldn't be, and as such, I look at it more as an indication of the spirit rather than the end result.  And the spirit is really hitting on the buttons that I want it to hit on.

Let me first direct you to "The Protector Moment" as I saw it about thirty seconds into the video, and this is very clearly from the movie and I don't care what anyone says otherwise.  If you've seen The Protector, you know that the fighting style used by the main character is basically "Capture and Destroy" which is exactly what's going on there.  I'd wager to say that it was a move directly used -in- the movie, honestly, but that's beside the point.  That right there is -awesome- and I want more of it.  There's a couple more instances of this style of thought, specifically a disarm and one of the counters, but that knee stomp is classic capture and destroy, it's what drove the movie, and it's what I want to do all the time.

The thing I like about the trailer is that it sort of is pretty basic in the combat, showing off things you'd expect - Roundhouse kicks, takedowns, the classic judo flip and the like.  Then it reminds you that weapons are a part of the game and will likely be a big part in some fights.  If I can extrapolate a little information, it looks like you can specifically finish off opponents with melee weapons as opposed to basic slices and the like.  I mean, that's just what I'm guessing based on the guy jumping up in the air and slamming a butcher's cleaver down across a guy's head.  Then also bringing one down on the neck of a guy laying on the ground all defenseless.  It's quite brutal, as the developers promised and it's rather glorious in that aspect of it I must say.  Still, I would've liked to see more than just knives used to show off the weapon system.  (Yes, there was a flash of a lead pipe, but you get my point.)

Then after all that fairly basic stuff, we get to the fifty-five second mark to see a guy get impaled on a fucking pipe.  Read that again.  Our protagonist, an undercover cop, picks up a guy and slams him down onto a pipe that impales him through the fucking midsection.  This was about the moment that I said "Holy shit!" and flailed my arms around in the air as would an excited little girl do.  The next ten seconds were nothing short of awesome (barring a few animation things) and did more than any live-action trailer with pretty good music could do in terms of hype.  This is what I want, game developers.  I want to be able to slam guys into meathooks.  I want to be able to turn a table saw into an impromptu brain surgeon.  I want to set a guys head on fire with a stove.  This sort of visceral environmental interactivity was something I only dare dream of back when the only trailer was a live action one and to see it given form and life is more than I could hope for.

At a certain point, I do remember that this is a combat system for an open world game, and I start to realize that that does mean there will have to be a few things given up.  So I can look at the animations and the effects in a softer light, but at the same time, if we've seen anything it's that games can offer us fairly decent animations in an open-world environment.  One only needs to look as far as inFamous 2 to realize that, and especially so, given that the original game was oft-criticized in that department.  (with good reason, unfortunately)  At the same time, I enjoyed the hell out of inFamous 1 despite the stiff NPCs and the like and I can imagine that if the above trailer, in the unlikely event that it is close to the final look, I will enjoy it regardless.  But I can't help but hope for a little more, I suppose, since I really want this to succeed.  So here's hoping for just a little bit of tightening before release!

Some Interesting Sleeping Dogs Information

Siliconera had a neat interview with a couple of the head dudes from United Front Games to find out a little information about the upcoming game, Sleeping Dogs, which I have been really interested in as you might know by now.  It has a storied history already because of its inception and rebirth, but we've been over that before, and this post is more about the future of the game anyway.  Information has been a little scarce on it so far, as is normally the case, but with this interview, we get a nice little peek into the inner workings and the thought put into the game so that we might be able to think and imagine how the end-product will actually turn out.  A few nice little tidbits have been parceled out here and there but there's one little factoid that I am particularly interested in, and it's pretty much the single bit I picked out and went "Yep, making a post about that" when I saw it.

The actual name of the article at Siliconera is "Sleeping Dogs' Fighting System Inspired by Tony Jaa Action Flick "The Protector"", which is....a little familiar round these parts.  I mean, I may have talked about it a while back because I thought it was a fantastic martial arts movie.  Oddly enough, I was beginning to think that I was the only person to actually know about the movie since trying to talk about it to others always ended the same way:  Showing them two clips and then going "Yeah, I told you it was awesome" when they're blown away.  But I've never actually been able to talk about the movie with someone who has shared knowledge of it prior, which is a little frustrating.  So seeing it referenced by an outside source was a little surprising at the least, as well as highly encouraging.  If I may quote a section...

I think the first piece of reference material we used was a scene from Tony Jaa’s The Protector. What we knew from the get go is we really wanted to have a combat system that incorporated multi-directional combat, the ability to grapple and counter enemies. We wanted to combine strike based gameplay with a lot of environmental interaction. Environmental interaction has always been what we consider the key hook of our gameplay. It’s something we try to bring about in all of our systems. Making one big violent sandbox was our initial concept.

[...]I remember when Mike first came aboard and started working here he sent me this clip from The Protector – it’s the scene where he goes up the spiral staircase.  It’s an amazing fight scene because he uses melee and he uses the environment. There are no camera cuts. It’s all continuous. Mike said with the team’s experience I feel confident we can deliver that and that was in the fall of 2007.

I hate linking the same video twice, but it's topical and totally worth it:

If you're going to reference anything for a combat system for a video game this is definitely on the fucking list and I'm absolutely ecstatic that Sleeping Dogs is going to have this influence in it.  I can only hope they really get to this sort of level of interactivity with the environment and the surroundings, because that would be amazing.  It does seem like, at the very least, they're taking the core to heart, since it's at least -attempted- at length in several different areas and in several ways, though they won't go into detail.  "There is a fish processing plant action scene that has particularly violent props in there. I won’t spoil them, but those are some of the my favorites." Is about as in-depth as they'll go which, on one hand, I can respect that.  On the other hand, goddamnit, stop holding out on us.  I want to look forward to some environment interaction as seen in the live-action trailer the game lead with, which makes a whole lot more sense now.

Something else that is a little more exciting for me personally is their approach to guns, which saw a fairly heavy focus so far as well.  The team understands the difficulty in trying to balance melee with shooting and, no matter what, you're going to have to have your feet firmly planted in one camp, even if you're leaning into the next.  For Sleeping Dogs, it sounds like the feet are planted in melee as they try to really have firearms that are worthwhile but not too good, nor too bad.  Described as "power ups", guns seem like they'll supplement the core combat, which will more focus on you getting to a foe to melee them, rather than hanging back and pumping round after round.  You're not going to keep guns for a while; it seems when it's out, it's gone, meaning as I said, the focus seems to still be on melee.  As you all know, I love me some friggin' melee combat, so this is making yet another tantalizing game for me to purchase in this flood of games.

It's safe to say that Sleeping Dogs has had a place on my radar, but with every mention it seems to move closer and closer to the center...which is good and bad.  As I said, I have too many games already, both unpurchased and purchased, so it's not like I need another one to look forward to.  On the other hand, it's always nice to be excited about something because, well, how often do you really, truly get to be genuinely excited for things?  Fairly often, yes, but it's not reliable, and it's not a constant, so we really should enjoy every single time and every single moment that real feeling kicks in.  Here's looking forward to part two of the interview which will likely either get a few bits editted here, or if it's big enough, will be a post all on its own.  Until then, I'm going to go watch The Protector again and see if I can count just how many bones get broken during the fight scenes.  Because it is a lot.

Popcorn On - The Protector

For this first installment of Popcorn On, I wanted to talk about one of my favorite Martial Arts films, The Protector (Also known as Tom-Yum-Goong).  Namely because the amount of badassery it contains is fairly unfathomable, which initially made me a bit wary to try and write about it without just linking to youtube clips (which I'm still going to do) and just spoiling the whole thing.  (Which I won't do, not that there's much of a plot to spoil, anyways.  I mean, it's a Martial Arts movie.)

I will say, which is a very very minor spoiler, that The Protector isn't exactly the best name for the movie.  Kham (Tony Jaa) is a protector of sorts, as he's the last of a long line of warriors who were in charge of guarding the King of Thailand's war elephants.  But the fact is, the two elephants, a mother and baby, he's charged with guarding get captured within the first fifteen or so minutes of the movie and the rest is him trying to get them back, not only because it's his job, but because he more or less grew up at the same time as the baby elephant, so it's kind of a pet of sorts to him, or something equally cared for.  If anything, I believe the new title was a subtle nod to Jackie Chan, whom Tony Jaa really admires.  (Jackie Chan starred in a movie also called The Protector, you see.)

As I said, rather quickly into the film, Kham's elephants are captured by poachers and what follows is one man's badass journey of ass-kicking, shit-ruining combat to find out just who are responsible and to make them p- er, get his charges back.  The journey spans a number of locations and the fights get more and more intense with each locale as he gets closer and closer to the heart of this Poaching operation.  The story stays fairly straight-forward throughout, which is welcome, even if the characters don't seem to match in that aspect.

Throughout the film, a number of opponents with rather varied styles of fighting get put up to Tony Jaa whose own altered form of Muay Thai (the form roughly translates to "Elephant Boxing", though focuses more on Captures and Incapacitation rather than striking) offer quite a nice variety, even though Jaa's Muay Thai never wears out its welcome and barely ever repeats itself.  Capoeira, Wushu, an improvised form of Mounted Combat (You'll just have to watch the movie for this one), Wrestling (Not olympic style, but not the type you really watch on TV either) as well as a few weapon styles that I can't really think of at the moment.

One of the things about the movie that I have to impress upon you is the sheer impressive choreography the movie has without relying on dreadful Wire-fu.  One of the best examples of this is simply referred to as the Continuous Fight Scene, in which Kham ascends a Restaurant/hotel type of building, set up as a tower while fighting groups of people the entire time.  The scene is just under 4 minutes long, but it was shot in whole, as a single take, and took five takes (I believe) before it was, from start-to-finish successful.  There's also a fight scene directly after it as Kham takes on Johnny, the man he believes has his elephants.

There are a few mild spoilers towards the end of the video (If you speak Thai, I guess, there's no subtitles in this video for some reason) as they speak, and then after the fight is over, but again, it's a Martial Arts movie; you don't really have to expect much.  If you just want to see the scene in question, you can stop it around the 3:50 mark, where Kham storms through the door of the upper floor.

It's hard to say how many impressive scenes are in the film, but there's at least a few more on the same level as that one, which I won't link because I want you to watch the movie instead of just the really really good parts here.  I can honestly assure you that if Martial Arts films are something you like (as in, you can tolerate the generally weak storylines that lead to a bunch of people fighting in awesome ways) then you certainly won't walk away dissatisfied.