Legendary Preview at Gamecock 08

By Joe Haygood | July 18, 2008

Yesterday, Spark Interactive’s John Garcia-Shelton was nice enough to sit down with us and talk about their upcoming title, Legendary.  Of course I had to start off with asking him why they droped the colon title, Legendary: The Box, and John told me it just did not go over well in testing, so we now have Legendary.

The game puts you in the shoes of Charles Deckard, a renowned thief, who has been hired by a shady character to steal an ancient artifact, Pandora’s Box.  However, the full story has not been revealed to Deckard, who has been manipulated into opening the box, not stealing it, so it will unleash its contents upon the world.  The evils of hell escape and it is now up to Deckard, who has been empowered by Pandora’s Box, to stop the end of the world from happening.  Get ready for a long day.

Spark is using the Unreal engine for Legendary, but in a change of philosophy, Legendary is not about pushing the polygon count for look’s sake.  John informed me that they were looking to scale and making the levels have a large size with lots of detail.  For you graphic whores out there, don’t worry though, because the game still looks fantastic, especially when it comes to the evil creatures that you will come to battle.

The creatures that you fight have really been a focus of development to make sure that they do not become easy and repetitive to beat.  A good example is the Alphas that you fight, which are akin to giant werewolves.  The first thing you notice about the Alphas as you fight them is that they don’t come straight at you.  As you shoot at them, they move from side to side, trying to find the best path to avoid damage.  When you do get a target on them, they will instinctively cover their face or area you are trying to shoot to minimize damage to the targeted area.  Creature AI is really solid, and could make Legendary a stand out from the other Unreal Engine shooters on the market.

Creature damage is another area where Spark did not want to retred over the same damage models that have been done in the past.  Now, we have creatures that have layers that peel away as you do damage.  After a couple of shots from an assault rifle, you notice the skin from the beast starts to peel away, showing off the musculature underneath the skin.  It is a great effect, and truely shows off the damage that you are applying to the beasts.  A really cool detail that happened while I was watching the game, was an Alpha breaking an arm while in combat.  It swung around wildly as the creature went into a rage from the pain of the injury, before it finally regenerated.

Creatures are not the only evil you have to battle.  Combat soldiers have been sent out to make sure you do not stop the chaos that has ensued.  Seems that there are people, including the man that hired you, that want to see Hell on Earth.  These soldiers will attack you relentlessly, which will put you in the midst of three way combat, where you have soldiers to left and creatures to right all after you.  Well, not exactly, because if you can get them to chase you, monsters will attack the soldiers and vice versa, allowing you to sit back and pick at the pieces after they finish their battles.  It is just another dynamic that Legendary throws at you while playing.

As I mentioned before scale is a big part of Legendary, and in the beginning level, you get to see what Spark is shooting for, as you walk outside and see what has been unleashed from Pandora’s Box.  Being in New York, you see the large skyscrapers that tower around you, while you can look down the streets and see detail all the way to the end of the draw distance.  Times Square looks very detailed, and when you see the surprise creature that comes out here, it will put Godzilla to shame.

And as a tease, some of the boss battles you can expect to see while fighting through Legendary include a minotaur that will break through any cover you try to hide behind, and a griffen, which we only got to see the beginning of, before John told us that the presentation had concluded.  Way to tease me there John.

I have to say that coming away from the presentation, I was much more hyped for Legendary, than I was was walking into it.  Initially, I had felt that it was a me-too Unreal shooter, but as they went through the levels, there was a sense of a great narrative, with solid enemy AI.  The game still needs a bit of polish, but they did explain that the build we were looking at was a few weeks old and things had been tightened up a bit.  It will have multiplayer served through Gamespy, so no achievements on the PC side.  Also I just wanted to say thanks to John Garcia-Shelton and Spark Interactive for taking the time to show off the game.  Legendary is coming to the PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 in late September to early October.

Legendary Fact Sheet