A Look Back
After I left Konami, I took some time off and attended film school. There I learned all about story and cinematic arts. I also discovered that I did not want to work in film, but rather use these skills back in the game industry. As luck would have it, Radical Entertainment was looking for a Level Designer with this skill set.
When I was first hired, this game was the top project in development at the studio and well into production. The team was far larger than any team I had been on before and the scope of the game was ambitious. Unfortunately, there were some major issues with the production pipeline that really ended up breaking the game. The biggest issue was the fact that the environment artists had to build the world well in advance, which resulted in the designers having to hack stealth gameplay in. There were also issues with the licence itself, where the main character is super powered melee fighter but the goal was to sneak around. The concept works well for TV, but not so much for a game. Actually, come to think of it, it didn’t work well for TV as half way through production of the game, the show was cancelled. Not long after that the team was reduced in size and I moved over to another team.