Bionicle Heroes - Special, Action-Adventure, 360, GBA, NDS, GameCube, PC, PlayStation2, Wii

Jonathan Smith: My name is Jonathan Smith, I'm head of production at TT Games Publishing. We work as part of the TT Games group. We are joined together with Traveller's Tales, but we operate as different entities, to make LEGO games and in the future other games as well.

4Players: Would you please like to introduce yourself, and what's your position at TT Games?

Smith: Well, we don't have any plans we can talk about right now, I'm afraid. I'm sorry it's disappointing. We'd love to talk about some things we're trying, but we only want to talk about things when we're sure of them, when we got some things to show.

4Players: More Star Wars games as well?

Smith: We've been surprised about how positiv reaction has been.to LEGO Star Wars 2. We knew it was a better game, because we set out to make it a better game. We set

That's how the LEGO series started: The first Star Wars game mischievously portayed Episode I to III.out to build upon the fundations of LEGO Star Wars 1, but just as with LEGO Star Wars 1 you can never be sure until people start buying the game off the shelves, and then you start reading what they're saying and you get e-mails and telephone calls coming into the office.

Smith: Yes. Also, I live in a small village and everyone who goes to school with my children always tells me on the playground. That's our main focus group: All the other parents in the village. So, if there where anything wrong with the game it would be terrible for me to walk into school.

4Players: They actually call you?

Smith: No, we have the exclusive rights from LEGO to make any game based on LEGO property. We are a separate company and we have our own seperate plans and business agenda. We make the games we want to make and we think it will be fun and successful.

4Players: How did you get to make a Bionicle game? Was it a condition by LEGO so you could do Star Wars 2?

Smith: From our point of view, we are very lucky to have LEGO have invested so much in these properties and these characters over the years. It's a great start for us to have all those fans out there, eager to find out what we're going to make rather than to be launching something completely unknown.

4Players: Then I guess LEGO was very happy to have you make three games based on their franchise.

Smith: Absolutely! The creative teams in Denmark, where LEGO company is based, have been very supportive and helpful all the way through. The team at Traveller's Tales in Manchester in the UK is the development group who has been putting the whole game together, but we've drawn upon the expertise and knowledge at LEGO in all our character design and story telling.        

4Players: Have you been working together with people from LEGO?

Smith: Well, we have good discussions with them as partners all the time, because they have an unrivaled expertise in the field of play and they know their audience. They know what their fans want to see. But also, as partners, we have a high level of trust from their company. We know how to make compelling video games and it's in the discussions that happen between two that together we come up with ideas that hopefully you will enjoy.

4Players: Did they get you any input as to what you need to do, what they want to see in the game?

Smith: The new range of toys from this year are their new range of Toa Inika and a new range of villains, the Piraka. Those are the main protagonists and antagonists, the main heroes and villains in our game - set on the Island of Voya Nui, which is where the action and story is set by LEGO. So it entirely ties in with their ranges and stories.

4Players: Does the story in Bionicle Heroes (ab 9,25€ bei kaufen) tie in with one of the movies or comics?

Smith: They'll

Less free play, less parody, more action: Traveller's Tales presents Bionicle Heroes.certainly recognize characters from throughout the Bionicle universe. It's not just the story setting, it does not just involve this year's characters. So you'll definitely see all the characters you remember.

4Players: To me, the hardest decision you had to make seems to be: How do we make the game as compelling as the Star Wars games? In LEGO Star Wars you make fun of a universe everyone knows. How do you get this kind of charm into Bionicle Heroes?

Smith: We tried to be witty and light in our treatment of the characters and story. You are exactly right to say that we don't have something to get a lot of homour from like we had in LEGO Star Wars, which is the irony, the contrast, between what we are doing and the story that everyone knows. Because while everyone knows the story of Star Wars, not everyone knows the story and characters in Bionicle. So, we had to work a little bit harder to talk to people about those characters and I think we had to rely a bit more on their immediate visual interpretation about what they are and what they're doing.

Smith: I think there are definitely some bosses that you will find intimidating and we tried throughout the game to add a richness to the environments that does give you areas to discover. But the game does have a path, a longer path than LEGO Star Wars 2. There is more variety through the duration of the main pathway, but it's not so much about free play and replay as LEGO Star Wars. It's more about the epic.

4Players: So far, I played the first level of the preview and the action seems pretty straightforward. Do we also get more adventurous areas or scary areas later in the game?

4Players: Last question: Just tell me there is going to be LEGO Indiana Jones!

Smith: LEGO Indiana Jones, imagine that!

4Players: I actually can imagine that.

Smith: Well, we'll see...

4Players: Thank you very much for this interview!