Inside Look: Sentinels

May 05, 2009

From the beginning of the project, we knew we needed to have a huge Sentinel in the game AND have Wolverine take it down. Not only is this a classic Wolverine enemy, but it is an awesome game moment that shows off how badass Wolverine really is. Everyone was super excited and thought this was going to be the greatest boss battle ever. Then we sat down to plan it out and implement it, and we were slapped in the face with the cold, hard reality of how difficult it would be to really do it “right.”

The first hurdle we faced was, “How do we make something THAT big move around in the world and look good?” I won’t go into the technical details here, but there’s a whole slew of issues to overcome involving feet sliding, animations not blending smoothly and AI getting stuck. And of course, every little glitch that can occur is amplified by 1000% when you’re dealing with a 100–foot-tall character versus your normal six-foot-tall dude.

Our first instinct was to solve this problem using tried and true boss mechanics such as having the Sentinel remain in roughly the same place for most of the battle, occasionally stepping out to attack and always returning to his original position, or having the player run around on a higher plane than the boss, thus allowing us to “fake” him walking around like a giant, robotic puppet. We actually tried some of these approaches, but it never felt right. It always felt cheap or like something was lacking. We wanted the player to feel like Wolverine could go “toe-to-toe” with a 100–foot-tall robot. So in the end, that’s what we did. We literally put Wolverine on the ground right next to the Sentinel’s huge feet and gave the Sentinel the freedom to go wherever he chooses and do whatever he feels is necessary to take out Wolverine.

The next issue we had to conquer was, “How would Wolverine take down a Sentinel?” Most of our ideas centered on climbing up the Sentinel using Wolverine’s claws and dismembering him bit by bit as the Sentinel reacted to where you were on him at any given time. Rather than climb the Sentinel, we thought using our patented new “lunge” move would be perfect for hopping quickly around the Sentinel’s body.

Our first pass was an elaborate, timed, and almost puzzle-y sequence of lunges that Wolverine had to perform to get to key points on the Sentinel’s body. In these spots, Wolverine would rip parts off and get the Sentinel to destroy other parts of itself. While this had some really cool moments (like the part where Wolverine literally ripped the robotic baddy’s “eyeball” out before destroying him), most people found it difficult to figure out, and it really took away everything the player had learned up until this point in the game. It forced you to do a contrived series of tasks instead of just having fun doing what you already knew how to do. So, back to the drawing board it was.

The battle you will see in the final game is the culmination of over six dedicated months of work from a team of people. We have little bits of something from every dead-end path and crazy idea that ever came up during this time, and somehow it all comes together to deliver a truly epic moment in the game that I think you’ll really love. I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say the battle is drawn out over 100 miles of some of the most intense gameplay you’ll ever see in a game – with a finishing move you won’t forget.