Preview: Necessary Force
![[IMG]](http://www.edge-online.com/files/imagecache/article_content_360x270/midwaynew2.jpg)
For the unveiling of Midway Newcastle’s new game, there was no month-long website countdown leading up to the reveal, tidbits dribbled out day by day to keep bloggers champing at the bit. Nor was there a glitzy press conference masterminded by its publisher, no trays of canapés to distribute among journos, no NDAs to sign. Instead, the developers of open-world actioner Necessary Force set up their own website, loading it with an introductory video and concept art. They had to. No one else was going to.
Since parent company Midway ran into serious financial difficulty, its Newcastle development studio has been dangling in limbo. If a buyer does not come along soon – and soon in terms of days rather than weeks – the team will be dissolved, its 70-plus staff joining the hundreds of other game developers who’ve cleared their desks in recent months as the squeeze of the global recession has tightened.
The UK’s recruitment agencies have been circling for some time, attempting to pick off Midway Newcastle’s talent, but almost entirely without success. The team want to remain a team, and as we visit their offices on the outskirts of Gateshead the mood is quietly industrious, Necessary Force’s developers are assembling the component parts of a game that is considerably more ambitious, and more obviously loaded with potential, than their last production, Wheelman.
![[IMG]](http://www.edge-online.com/files/necessaryforce3.jpg)
What we're seeing in the developer’s demo room is the result of only three months' work, yet there is plenty to see, and in remarkably stable, consistent form. The action opens in a city at night stabbed through by a profusion of light sources, the environment illuminated by car headlamps, overhead streetlights and the occasional probing beam from a passing police helicopter. It is a world away from Wheelman's sun-baked Barcelona, not only because it's so forebodingly dark but also because it's tipping down with rain, slickening the neighbourhood's streets and its dilapidated architecture, home to an assortment of grade-A scumbags and their dirt-poor victims.
As a police officer assigned to this beat, you're looking at a clean-up operation, which due to the game's construction will play out literally. As you eliminate criminal activity to make these streets safer, we're told, they will transform. The ubiquitous graffiti will be scrubbed away. Boards will be removed from windows. Entire buildings will be replaced with shiny new constructions, putting a shop, say, were once there was a tumbling-down tenement. Progress will be measured visually, then, but the plan is also to feed into the game’s mechanics, a selection of overhauled locations playing parts in your investigations. Right now, though, as our demo continues to play out, it’s clear that there is a lot of police work to be done before this area becomes anything other than a grubby hellhole.
![[IMG]](http://www.edge-online.com/files/necessaryforce1.jpg)
In terms of overall graphical style, the studio is going for ‘neo-noir’, taking influence from the likes of Sin City at one end of the spectrum and LA Confidential at the other, with a shady helping of Se7en from somewhere in the middle. The contrast between light and dark certainly conjures up a David Fincher kind of vibe, but the characters within the gameworld are more comic-book in style. The time period, meanwhile, is 'near future', but one as imagined in the '80s, with the grit of Robocop, not the slickness of I, Robot.
The demo kicks into gear and Necessary Force’s as-yet-unnamed hero gets into his squad car and heads off in pursuit of a felon, whose whereabouts are relayed by radio contact with HQ. The city streets feel narrower than those of Wheelman, the more enclosed spaces heightening the city’s sense of oppressiveness. The perp is located and a clattering, lamppost-mangling chase ensues before he dumps his car and heads off into a back street on foot. It’s a scenario Midway Newcastle intends to form a kind of backbone to the game, with more emphasis placed on action outside of vehicles than inside.
“We’re not a driving studio,” emphasises studio head Craig Duncan. “I worked at Codemasters for six years so I know what driving studios are. Historically this was a driving studio [until 2005, Midway Newcastle was previously Pitbull Syndicate], but nowadays we’re focused on Unreal Engine, and that’s not driving-game technology. We made it work for Wheelman, but most of the key creative people here haven’t worked on driving games. Those people, combined with the strengths of the original team, have given us more scope as a studio.”
The on-foot chase moves through alleyways, up and over chain-link fences, and finally into a squalid-looking building, up through its grotty stairways and corridors and finally to the rooftops, target and pursuer jumping between buildings. It’s a pacy, dynamic sequence, designed with purpose, at odds with the sometimes-meandering out-of-car excursions of GTA. At the same time, though, it’s not Assassin’s Creed: Duncan explains that the protagonist isn’t a parkour expert, rather an everyman cop in the John McClane mould who may be able to make heroic leaps but may well stumble when he lands.
![[IMG]](http://www.edge-online.com/files/necessaryforce2.jpg)
Engaging the criminal in a fistfight emphasises the game’s comic-book influences, with punches thrown, and responses to them, played out to appropriately exaggerated effect. A giant neon advertising panel serving as a backdrop, meanwhile, bathes the action in spectacular multi-coloured lighting effects. The result, with rain continuing to lash down and lightning forks splitting the black sky above, is moody, to say the least.
We don’t get to see the full extent of the game’s grittiness, but it’s hinted at in the original trailer. Interrogations will play key parts in your investigations, and, with a subject apprehended, you’ll be able to play things by the book and follow standard-procedure lines of questioning or apply a little more pressure. Does dangling a suspect by his ankles from a rooftop constitute an approach that falls within the phrase that is the game’s title? It depends on your own personal perspective.
The game is intended to be all about this sort of choice. “How you complete a case is totally up to you,” explains producer Joe Neate. “You can go around knocking heads, or you can go around arresting people.” “Do you want to gather all of the facts about a case, or do you want to gather enough to give you a hunch, and then go and beat up a suspect until he confesses?” continues Duncan. The game is being built so that either approach will result in progress, albeit with knock-on effects. The higher-ups back at HQ will frown on excessive violence, for example, but building a reputation for not messing about will also see suspects more likely to spill information before they’re even offered the inconvenience of having their heads broken in several places.
![[IMG]](http://www.edge-online.com/files/midwaynew3.jpg)
It is no surprise that Necessary Force will be a mature-rated game, but its developers want it to more sophisticated than some of the controversial productions that have carried the Midway label in the past, giving it a narrative drive inspired by the best crime drama on television. “We want to deliver the story and the emotional attachment you get from watching TV shows like The Shield or The Wire, which I don’t think has really been done in videogames before,” says Neate. Just as The Wire creator David Simon worked with crime authors in putting together his show, Neate would like to look to the world of written fiction to explore how the game’s dialogue and storyline will play out.
This element is one of Necessary Force’s most intriguing. Who wouldn’t want to play something set in such a world? Unlike the lighting effects, the refined driving mechanics, and the focus on on-foot action, however, it’s an element that is, for now, intangible. We only hope that the team gets the opportunity to bring it to life.
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