Where is XIII being developed?
In Ubi Soft Paris (France) internal studios.

  On which formats?
PS2, Xbox, PC and GameCube.

  When is it scheduled for release?
XIII will be on shelves Fall 2003.

  What is the basic gameplay ?
XIII is a First Person Shooter (FPS), the first one to use cel-shading. It’s the first comic style shooter!

  Will XIII feature all the good old classic FPS weapons? And how many?
Yes, all classic weapons are available in the game: 15 in total. Ranging from the knife to the bazooka. Each of them feature very special ;) secondary weapons! Ever knocked someone out with a bazooka rocket?

  Are there going to be innovative weapons?
Oh yes! Besides classic ones, you’ll be able to pick up up to 15 different objects from the environments (chair, shovel, ashtray…) and use them as weapons to defeat your enemies.
So all in all, you’ll have 30 weapons in XIII.


  It seems that XIII has some fairly violent content. Is this going to be a game for mature audience?
The violence in XIII is very stylish and exaggerated, not as realistic as most of the FPS in the market and is rated a 12+.

  Is XIII pure fun or deadly realism?
Definitely pure fun!

  Are there stealth elements in the game?
Yes, some levels are pure stealth but it is ultimately down to player.

  How many levels will be in the game?
We have 34 missions grouped in 8 big chapters.

  What environments will the player encounter?
The storyline brings you to several different places within the USA. You initially wake up on a beach and then you will go to New York, infiltrate a military base in snowy mountains or get imprisoned in a psychiatric prison for mad killers in the middle of the Nevada desert. You’ll also travel to the Caribbean islands amongst others...

  Will XIII fight alone?
No way! He’ll encounter lots of allies, and even some who were initially enemies.

  What will be the multiplayer modes?
The team are implementing all the classic modes such as CTF, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch… and also innovative ones that include Sabotage, Cover me…

  Is split screen multiplayer available?
Split screen multiplayer action is available on PS2, Xbox and GameCube.

  Will the game be playable online?
The game will be playable online on PC, Xbox and PS2.

  What kind of AI can we expect from the game?
The AI of the enemy is based on a teamplay concept where they are organised in small teams. For example, when an enemy is shooting at you with his gun asecond one goes to a more remote place to throw grenades at you.

  Why was the decision made to use cel-shading for XIII?
It came from 2 major ideas. First, the team was adapting a comic book license into a video game, so it seemed relevant to include the comic book style into the game. Secondly, the team wanted to develop something different than the traditional “realist” shooter. Those two ideas lead to the cell shaded technique. No shooter had used it before and it was the best visual technique to introduce the comic style into the game.

  What is the process of producing a cell-shaded image?
In fact, there are many different techniques depending on what element you consider: object, character, layout, background. Let’s take a character. To explain it simply, there are 2 major steps to produce a cell-shaded character. First, you have to produce the black outline of the character. Inside the character, we reproduce a second 3D character model in black which is just a little fatter than the first one. That is how have the black lines.
Then you have to work on light, you must recalculate all the faces and lightings to make them sharper as you have no faded lights in cell shading. At the end, the engine needs to calculate 3 times as much faces for a cell shaded character than a normal one. That is now possible with next gen consoles and the current PCs but it was completely impossible a few years ago.


  Where does the story behind the game come from?
XIII’s originally a comic book series very famous in French speaking countries written by William Vance and Jean Van Hamme.

  Did the team working on the game, work with the original creators of the comic?
The team worked with the two creators of the comic. As the game does not literally follow the scenario – the team really wanted to highlight all the action sequences – some modifications were proposed to the scriptwriter Jean Van Hamme. At the same time, the team worked with the cartoonist William Vance for the adaptation of the character into the cell shading style.

  The game’s storyline covers events from the first five volumes of the comic, and there were 15 issues overall. Is this correct?
Yes there are 15 issues: 14 are actually comic books and 1 is a “secret file” with tons of additional info about the story, evidences and facts that weren’t mentioned in the “classic” episodes.

  How closely does the game’s plotline follow that of the comic series? Are they very close, or are they two different stories that take place in the same universe? Or perhaps it’s somewhere in between?
The game follows the storyline of the first 5 volumes where XIII discovers a part of his past. We have adapted the storyline so that we can introduce many interesting and challenging game situations but the events are the same as in the graphic novel.

  Similarly, are there new characters in the game who do not appear in the comic, or did the comic provide all the necessary characters for the game?
The story itself was so rich that we did not need to create and design new characters. We really had the opportunity to focus on several characters like Jones, the ironic and sexy black military woman and Carrington, an anti-conformist general.

  It sounds like there are a lot of story elements in XIII, such as the conspiracy angle, the amnesia, clues pointing to your identity, and so forth. How are you telling the story in the context of what seems like mainly an action game?
The main goal of XIII is to discover all about the conspiracy, and more personally for XIII, get his memory back. Throughout the game, XIII will discover some elements about his past, like files, or special objects which help him restructure his past. Sometimes, his memory will be recall events for a short time and XIII will jump into an intriguing interactive flashback.

  On the technological side, the game was originally said to be using a modified version of the Unreal II engine. Is that correct?
Yes, this is correct. The team modified the Unreal engine so that it can fit their needs and render the game the way it is now.

  Who is Number I?
Like we’ll tell ya :) … maybe you’ll know it at the end of the game ;)