Studio Nekki with developers from Russia a couple of weeks ago asked fans to ask them questions regarding the third-person action game SPINE. In total, they received over 300 questions via Discord, X/Twitter and YouTube. The most interesting of them were answered by the game producer Dmitry Pimenov.
Can we expect Redline to have voice lines? Or will she be the silent protagonist?
Of course!
Since we initially agreed to treat our action film as a real blockbuster film, the voice acting of the main character is of great importance to us. We are currently actively casting actresses for this role.
Will we be able to customize or change costumes?
Yes, definitely! Stay tuned for more news on this.
Does the AI that helps Redline have any other use than for narrative purposes?
The city where the action takes place is controlled by an AI called Tensor, and Redline has her own combat assistant, the intelligent AI Spine. The theme of interaction between AI and humans is at the core of our narrative.
As designers, we believe that if you want to tell a story in a game, use everything it can to tell a story. So expect Spine to work on all levels: storytelling, gameplay, and system for leveling up the main character’s abilities.
Will there be multiple playable characters?
We’re focused on the Redline narrative. This is who we always wanted to tell the story about: a charismatic adventurer with an “act now, think later” approach.
However, we created the SPINE universe to be able to tell more stories about different characters in different timelines. For example, you can watch our web cartoon, which is an indirect prequel and tells the story of a slightly different group of characters: the Bullet Dancers.
Will Shiva appear in single player SPINE, and if so, what will her role be, since Redline is now the main character? Will Mickey and other characters from the comic appear in the game?
You will definitely meet familiar characters as the story progresses.
Will the game be open world? The fighting and shooting style reminds me of Oni, an old PC game that I really love.
It’s great that many people Oni, which was one of the sources of inspiration for us!
No, we won’t have an open world. Instead, we will focus on providing our players with a very rich, emotional game with a strong storyline, without artificially stretching the length or grind. As gamers, we ourselves are tired of drawn-out games and are now looking for a more unique gaming experience that we are happy to provide.
How much emphasis does the game place on story?
Let’s put it this way: SPINE is focused on the feel of a badass action movie with guns and cinematography. Everything else is pure narrative and narration 🙂
Story is always important to convey the feel of the film, especially when we plan to expand our universe.
Hope this answers your question.
Does SPINE take place in the same universe as Vector?
Maybe 😉
Animator, I would like to know if you will be finalizing the animation? The heroine animates smoothly, but her attacks lack impact, transition frames could be sped up by delaying before subsequent ones + add secondary animation with physics for her cloak and body.
Oh yeah! This is an excellent and very deep question. I’m glad people are diving deep into animation and bringing up topics like this.
With the release of the previous trailer, we wanted to gather more from gamers and start a dialogue with our community early on. One of the themes raised by the community was the fluidity of combat movements and responsiveness of character controls. We are directly addressing these issues right now and will address them this summer. The redline will become more responsive and agile, and the pace of the game will even out and speed up.
As for secondary animation, it depends on the character model, which we plan to refine in the coming months (we are currently moving to an updated animated skeleton). Similar things (physics simulation, etc.) will be improved until the game is released.
Will we be able to improve our fighting skills and level up our character? Will we also be able to customize our weapons?
We believe that this is a very important topic, so we will definitely tell you more about it in the near future.
Will there be accessibility settings to make the game easier for people with disabilities?
One of our core philosophies when developing SPINE is to make the beat ’em up genre more accessible and fun for everyone, as we believe these types of games are often overlooked by many players. Therefore, we want to pay special attention to this aspect and welcome the opinion of our players.
What kind of accessibility options do you expect from modern action games? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
Will SPINE be playable on Steam Deck?
Yes, because I’m personally interested in it – it’s one of my favorite gaming devices at the moment. I also play early versions of SPINE on it from time to time.
We will pay special attention to the comfortable performance of the game at release.
What do you think was the biggest obstacle during development?
The main obstacle for us has always been our own ambitions.
Our animation team is amazing and we have some cool tools like Cascadeur that improve your animation productivity and quality. But this results in us having hundreds and hundreds of animations. There’s always something to mock, block, or polish, and our technical design team is inundated with content that needs to be integrated into the game.
However, our goal is for SPINE to be another demonstration that small teams can achieve AAA quality animation with Cascadeur!
How long will the game take to complete and will there be any replay value in it?
We believe gamers want more unique and emotionally immersive gaming experiences.
So we’re creating a game that guarantees you a few weekends of action and fun, with some of the replayability features that I think are expected in the genre – like Hardcore Game Mode and New Game Plus.
So far the game looks amazing and is exciting! But my question is why did you decide to make a gun fu game? What brought you to this type of game?
In short, when you work a lot with animation-based games, you always want to add more features to your next one that highlight the animation.
That’s why we decided to work more with in-game cameras. And the cinematography leads you to the idea of taking inspiration from famous action films. We’ve worked with martial arts animation for over 10 years in the past, and we really wanted to work with firearms. Add it all up and you have the idea of a gun fu game. Gun-fu is an incredibly exciting action genre, so the idea of creating it immediately resonated with all our teams.
However, this topic also deserves a deeper discussion, so stay tuned for a reblog on this topic.
How did you learn to develop and animate these beautiful martial arts-inspired fight choreographies, and how do you keep the audience from disbelieving that they are realistic when using weapons? I’m guessing you studied a lot of martial arts and also used camera tricks.
You’re right, we look for inspiration everywhere.
Every week we watch movies together, deconstructing many of the references. In addition, our lead animators have worked on our previous games that featured parkour and martial arts for a long time, and some of them are even martial artists themselves.
We also work with film experts – stuntmen and one talented production director. This collaboration is an amazing opportunity for us and we can’t wait to share more details about it with you later.
I know it’s too early to talk about this, but are you planning on releasing a physical version of the game in the future?
Indeed, it is too early to answer this question, since it depends on our publishing approach, which is currently undefined.
As a gamer, I understand the importance of owning a physical copy of a game, smelling the plastic packaging of the disc, and truly owning the game rather than renting it, if you know what I mean.
When will the release take place?
We don’t have a release date yet, but we have a lot to share so you can immerse yourself in the world of SPINE while we all eagerly await that moment.
Should we expect any artbooks, guides or something like that?
We love the way the game art looks. In addition, we have a ton of them – so we will be happy to share them with you in one form or another and will definitely consider the idea of an art book, for example, in some kind of “fan set”.
Thanks for the idea!
Will there be a demo before the game’s release?
We are considering this possibility.
Our vision is for the game to be a rollercoaster of emotions, so I think the demo with the first gameplay missions will work well and leave you wanting more. However, the final decision will depend on our publishing approach, which has not yet been determined.
I do not have any questions. I hope you are doing well and have a good work-life balance. That’s all. Keep up the good work.
Thank you! Sending love to our entire community.
Don’t forget to relax and play cool video games!
