Interview: GUN

Dat ik de afgelopen weken een beetje raar deed – hoopjes kauwtabak rochelen in willekeurige bijzitters hun boterhamdoos; het springen in willekeurige passanten hun rug, om ze nadien een aardige steek in de dijen te verkopen met mijn scherpe sporen aan mijn leren cowboyboots (van mijn vriendin geleend, het schijnt weer helemaal hip te zijn) en het vangen van de meest koeachtige leerkrachten met m’n zelfvervaardigde lasso – was allemaal maar om me wat in te leven. For the sake of common knowledge ging ik namelijk de confrontatie met een stel neocowboys van Neversoft aan. Sneller dan mijn schaduw schoot ik een tiental vragen af over hun nieuwste game: GUN.

Voor diegenen die tot dusver nog geen idee hebben waarover ik spreek: GUN is een free roaming-actietitel (als in GTA) die handelt in het ruige Wilde Westen van de laat 19e eeuw. Vanop je paard schiet je Indianen en vanachter het glas imponeer je rondborstige bardames. Sounds sweet, doesn’t it?





X-Power: First of all: ever dreamed of being a cowboy? And is GUN the closest - and hopefully the most fun - way to live that fantasy for you and others as well?


Neversoft: Hasn’t everyone dreamt of being a cowboy? First of all, you play Colton White, and he isn’t your traditional good guy John Wayne style cowboy. In GUN, the villain doesn’t always wear the black hat and the cavalry doesn’t show up in the nick of time to save the day. Colton lives by his own laws as he travels across our massive streaming world that really brings the west alive. The West is an amazing setting for a game. You’ve got everything you could possibly want in that one place and time. We are talking about a world on the edge of civilization filled with brutality, lust and greed. You’ve got the freedom of the time and the lawlessness that went along with it. When you also figure that these ideas hadn’t been captured that well in a video game yet, we knew what game we had to make.


X-Power: Neversoft is probably the best known for its Tony Hawk games. From skateboards to horsebacks and from punk to country, is it a big step and why did you take it? Why not just make an epic first-person shooter in which you play a bad-ass cyborg who prevents an alien race, named as, let’s say, The Covenant, from destroying our precious earth?


Neversoft: The setting for the game is a personal passion of Joel Jewett president of Neversoft and other influential members of the team. As the idea grew and more research was put into it they knew it was perfect for a game. The old West really hasn’t been done well in games until now. We needed to capture the real brutality, greed and lawlessness of the time because it makes for such intense and compelling gameplay. This was a time when people had access to every vice, took what they wanted and there was no real order. You ended up with every type of person coming together on the edge of civilization. You had outlaws, cattle ranchers, railroad tycoons, whores, immigrants, Native Americans, prospectors and gunslingers- and everyone carried a GUN.


X-Power: We’ve pimped girls in the various GTA games, we’ve blown up barracks in Mercenaries, we’ve married small-town girls in Fable and we’ve played the quasi card game ‘Kazaak’ in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. What does riding horses, shooting cattle and playing poker in a louche tavern in the Far West add to this wide range of free-roaming titles? Oh yeah, and will we be able to pimp tavern girls?


Neversoft: If you want to talk cards we’ve got pure Texas hold-em with tournaments in the various saloons across our world. In addition to that you can take jobs hunting down bounties, ranching, riding for the pony express or even working as a federal marshal. While you are exploring the world you can hunt wild animals, mine gold and have to fight for your life and possessions from bandit’s attacks. Cause to much trouble in town and a posse will form to take out their own form of justice on you.


X-Power: You’re really putting time and effort in the story itself. Without revealing too much of the plot details, could you tell us something about the storyline?


Colton was raised by father Ned in the mountains of the Montana territory. Before Ned is killed in a renegade attack setup by a homicidal preacher on a steamboat, he tells you “I ain’t your father”. Now Colton is out to discover the truth, and get his deserved revenge. Along the way he’ll encounter gamblers, gunslingers, whores, cattle rustlers, renegades, resistance fighters, Native Americans and an evil one eyed railroad man named Magruder that wants nothing more than to see Colton hung until dead.


X-Power: The late 1800s, the era in which the game will take place, where not quite the happiest years mankind has seen, especially not in the Far West. How will this all be translated into Gun, you’re not shy for some gore effects, are you? What is the most brutal thing we can do in GUN?


Neversoft: With a title like ours we had to concentrate on making the gun fighting brutal, realistic and most of all fun. You can blast an outlaw’s head apart into gory chunks and go into quick draw mode to juggle his eyeball with your six shooter. Use a shotgun to take the horse out from under your ruthless enemies and watch them thrown to the ground only to be trampled by your Native American allies. Take a shot of whiskey to numb the pain and jump behind a gatling gun to mow down your enemies.
Most brutal thing you can do in GUN? You can put bullets into the knee caps of your enemies and then listen to their whimpers turn to screams as you scalp them with your special knife.


X-Power: There’s also a Xbox 360 version scheduled, in how many ways will it differ from the this- gen edition? Will it be worth the wait, or should we just buy both?


Neversoft: The game looks amazing on the 360. Normal mapped textures, higher resolution models, and more characters on screen all at 720p resolution make it truly next gen. The game doesn’t just look better but feels much more alive as you traverse the game world at a higher frame rate.


X-Power: Because horse riding in first person view probably will just make me seasick, we can do that, and most of the rest of the game, in a third person view. The shooting, however, will be in first person, how will that be handled, and will there be some sort of auto aim in Gun, like in the GTA franchise?


Neversoft: You can use your full arsenal of attacks from 3rd person view or zoom into 1st person with your rifles to precision shoot. You fight most of the time from the 3rd person but when facing overwhelming odds (or just want to pull off some insane combo shots) you can go into Quickdraw Mode. Quickdraw allows you to get the drop on groups of enemies by slowing the world down. You can target specific points and shoot the gun out of someone’s hand or even the hat off their head. Use it to take down a room full of bad guys or to watch your opponent react as you fill them full of lead in slow motion.


X-Power: Will there be any RPG elements in the title, like a weapon upgrade after making a couple of hundred Indians ‘dance’, or perhaps some new spoilers at the buttocks of your horse after you’ve ridden it for, let’s say, quite some distance?


Neversoft: Stats play a very important role in GUN. The story of the game ties everything together and moves you along but there is an entire world to experience through side missions and exploration. Stats are the reward for immersing yourself in this whole different side of the game. Play through the side missions and you earn upgrades to Colton’s skills. With these upgrades Colton is not only able to perform better in the main story but also the rest of the free roaming sections. Perform ranching missions to improve your horsemanship and then hunt down outlaws. Once you’ve brought back the outlaw’s dead or alive you improve your Quickdraw which gives you that advantage you want over the evil preacher responsible for killing your father. By maxing out your stats you can butcher in a knife fight, gun down your enemies in vicious gun battles and even survive deadly wounds that would kill another man.
After earning money you can purchase upgrades to your equipment at any of the various stores and traders throughout the game world. Buy a barrel extension to give your rifle even more punishing power. Get yourself a pick axe so that you can mine the gold hidden throughout the wilderness and abandoned mines of the west. You could even buy special herbs to allow you to stay in Quickdraw mode longer.


X-Power: What do you like most about the game? And is there any accomplishment in particular that you are proud of?


Neversoft: Freedom. We give you the freedom to climb onto the saddle and explore a massive living streaming world. We drop you into the West and let you feel everything but the dust in your eyes. You have the freedom to experience first hand how brutal and lawless the west really was.


X-Power: It’s no secret that Activison and Neversoft want GUN to become a new successful franchise. Are there any plans or ideas you keep in mind for a sequel, elements that were, for example, not possible at this moment because hardware or time constraints? A multiplayer free-roaming Far West game comes to mind...


Neversoft: We definitely have a lot of amazing plans for the future of this franchise but they are currently under wraps. You’ll just have to wait to see what we’ve come up with.






GUN zou de elfde november op de Europese markt moeten verschijnen. In cowboyland houden ze precies echter helemaal geen rekening met feestdagen, dus wij zullen minstens nog één dag extra moeten wachten. De 360-versie zou twee december, wanneer dus ook de 360 zelf in de schappen ligt, moeten halen.

Yihaa!