Penumbra: Black Plague Interview

[Starfox]

After the review of the Penumbra series by bobdog published earlier this week, we have a little interview issued by Paradox Interactive of Thomas Grip and Jens Nilsson, the two guys behind Frictional Games and Penumbra. The interview itself is about the physical interaction system but also about the reasons behind the changes made in Black Plague gameplay compared to Overture.

Note: Clip is in the main news.

Frictional Games is still a small independent developing studio and as such, Thomas and Jens keep really in touch with the players and you can often find them wandering in the Frictional Games forum. They welcome players' opinions and game wishes for future projects and that's something that is rarely seen in the video game industry today where everyone seems so busy that they barely take the time to drop a note anymore except for talking with the "big" gaming press.

After presenting two good games as the Penumbra ones, we can only wish Frictional Games to push further and to deliver even more original gaming goodness in the future.

[bobdog]

Well, you can certainly see who the "idea" man is from that video! Thomas talked for all but the 4 seconds that Jens introduced himself.

[Starfox]

... Or more likely Jens thinks that his spoken English really sucks and didn't want to say one more word. It's not so easy to start talking a language that is not yours and for some people it takes a lot to overcome the fear of being ridiculous. It's a whole psychological stuff... You wouldn't believe how it was for me the first time I was confronted to people for whom English was the native language.

Well, no in fact it was the second time  The first one it was in Brighton (UK -- in '86 or '87, can't remember exactly) with a nice lady who had a shop on the beach front and seeing that I was French she wanted absolutely to speak French -- just to be nice, you see. So I appreciated the gesture a lot but I wasn't able to push a single English word in the whole conversation...

The second time was better because the people I met didn't want to bother about speaking French one bit. And for some reason (that I understood later) they found my first sentence pretty amusing. Well at least being a laughing stock for a bit didn't prevent me to learn English further... I guess that if I feared to be ridiculous, I wouldn't even be there 

As for Thomas, yeah, considering that he's the programmer, he actually got most of the stuff working in Penumbra, had to care about the engine and the graphics... that's a whole lot of stuff so he certainly has the most to say about it no matter what.