Interview mit Richard Morton über Free Running

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Kevin Jensen & Christopher Marschik: (PSP.de) Could you shortly present your position and introduce your company to us?

Richard Morton: My name is Richard Morton, Lead Designer on Free Running. I work for Core design and have been here for 12 years now. Core is most famous for the Tomb Raider series, on which I had the pleasure of working.

Kevin & Christopher: (PSP.de) Can you tell us more about the basic concepts of the game? Does the player jump' around in town all day or is there a fixed storyline with certain tasks?

Richard Morton: Free Running is based around the sport of Parkour, which some people say is more of an art form than a true sport. The game portrays the player as a rookie Traceur (the name given to those wo practise Free Running) starting off at the bottom, and through a series of challenges and training lessons becoming the ultimate Free Runner.

Kevin & Christopher: (PSP.de) What was the idea of making a game about a kind of sports, where people jump over the roofs of houses?

Richard Morton: It's a new, fresh sport that is gaining media attentions and growing all the time. Just having a racing game that requires the player to jump, climb and balance was enough to get us motivated. Simply download some movies from the net and you'll be hooked by what these guys can actually perform without safety nets or harnesses.

Kevin & Christopher: (PSP.de) Can you tell us more about your personal opinion of David Belle and his type of sport? Isn't it a bit crazy?

Richard Morton: I first saw David on the BBC advert, which was the first piece of Parkour footage I had seen. It’s really impressive to see someone balancing on the edge of a building and performing the tricks in the way David does.



Kevin & Christopher: (PSP.de) Why don't you develop the game together with David Belle, the founder of "le'Parkour"?

Richard Morton: David Belle is the co-founder of Parkour along with Sebastien Foucan, and it is Sebastien we have as the main character in Free Running. He takes on the role of your mentor and teaches you how to Free Run.

Kevin & Christopher: (PSP.de) Which procedures did you use to implement the animations and characters into the game?

Richard Morton: Each character was hand built and animated in Maya, with over 60 different meshes in total created for each type of clothing.

Kevin & Christopher: (PSP.de) Do you think that Free Running will be able to compete with the famous fun-sports games like Tony Hawk's and co.?

Richard Morton: I hope that Free Running will compete in that area, yes. It has all the tricks and stunts of Tony Hawks but without the limitations of riding a skateboard. The player can race against other Traceurs, across a wide variety of urban areas, varying from a giant crane in the docks to a huge high-rise block in downtown London.

Kevin & Christopher: (PSP.de) Would you like to bring out a sequel of the game? What would you like to improve?

Richard Morton: There are still many features that could be added to a Free Running sequel, one idea is to have a 'Jump World' mode where you visit different countries and compete against top International Traceurs. The amount of tricks that Free Runners pull off is increasing all the time, so we could extend the players catalog of tricks as they play through. We wanted to keep Free Running true to the sport, but it would have been good to add a story mode, which had the player using his abilities to get him out of sticky situations with local gangs and the police - this might make an interesting addition to any possible sequel.



Kevin & Christopher: (PSP.de) Did the collaboration with the "experts" like Sébastien Foucan influence the game and how?

Richard Morton: Sebastien and the guys from Urban FreeFlow (UFF) were very useful; we met them a couple of times and they really seemed to like the game and how it portrayed the sport. We used their tricks and movement to animate the characters and also studied how they strung tricks together to move smoothly across the environment.

Kevin & Christopher: (PSP.de) Why did you decide to develop for Sony's PSP?

Richard Morton: PSP just seemed like the perfect console for Free Running, the ethos of the game matches with Sony's “gaming on the move” philosophy - it's all about breaking boundaries and the freedom to play wherever you like.

Kevin & Christopher: (PSP.de) Is there anything you would like to tell our readers?

Richard Morton: Yes, if you fancy something a little different from the normal extreme sports titles, try Free Running. It may sound a little beyond the norm, but once you start playing the game the philosophies behind the idea, and the natural, instinctive manner in which you get to explore and interact with the environment all quickly comes together. It has stuff in there that hasn't really been done before. There's a cool Wi-Fi link mode for PSP and a split screen 2 player mode for the PS2 version (out later). Aside from the main game we also have the Crash Test Mode, where the rules are turned upside down. Here the player controls Max Damage, our Crash Test Dummy, and scores points by smashing him up in the most dramatic ways they can come up with – an amusing change of pace.

Thanks to Richard Morton for the friendly support.

The Interview was held by Christopher Marschik and Kevin Jensen for PlaystationPortable.de