Sometimes those interactions would be simple: When used on a keypad, Raz is seen as a giant finger. "We know we have to have something fun for if I use the clairvoyance on the feather I'm holding, for example," he says, "We knew those interactions would all be possible… it ends up being a situation where a bunch of creative people have to brainstorm and come up with fun solutions, and hopefully, that ends up being entertaining for a player." The team knew players would try to combine seemingly unconnected items, or try out their powers on inanimate objects, so they created a huge spreadsheet of every possible interaction, filling each box with a new idea. The trick, Robson tells me, was to make every possible item and Clairvoyance interaction entertaining, including failures. It fit well with Clairvoyance, a psychic power that let protagonist Raz see through the eyes of other characters, which had come from Schafer's research into psychic abilities. Those puzzles would be themed around the G-Men guarding certain areas, and the players would have to carry the right item to blend in. Up until that point in the game, the team hadn't used the player's inventory much, and Robson was keen on an adventure game-style level where players combined items in their inventories to solve puzzles. Schafer knew instantly that was the road to pursue, but he still had no idea what the gameplay would look like, so he brought in lead designer Erik Robson.
"And I was like, 'woah', the programmers were like, 'woah'."
"Suburbia is supposed to look mundane, but what if it was all just vaulted up against the sky? He had this drawing of the roads bent and twisted in the air, like thinking was twisting back on itself and illogical. Schafer recalls the initial magic of the level coming from a drawing by concept artist Peter Chan. It's why you see G-Men using red stop signs to hammer in imaginary nails, or playing a bouquet of flowers like a guitar, and it's the root of much of the level's humour. "I just loved that spies always wore those overcoats and people were supposed to not notice them in hotel lobbies or on park benches with their newspapers covering their faces, with just their eyes showing."Ĭampbell says the team found it funny to simply give the G-Men a single object as a disguise, and have them act out what was clearly the wrong use for that object.
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"I based their outfits on the classic '50s G-Men detectives in their overcoats and hats, reminiscent of the Spy vs Spy comics in Mad magazine and every single TV show from that time period," he says. He also came up with the G-Men, who kept an eye out for suspicious activities. He gave the concept to his artists.Īrt director Scott Campbell tells me he wanted to emphasise paranoia, and he drew eyes and binoculars popping out of trashcans, mailboxes and bushes to make the player feel like they were being watched. He also wanted it to give it a retro, '50s spy vibe, and thought a suburban neighborhood would be the perfect setting: Relatively mundane on the surface, but hiding a dark secret.
Visually, Schafer imagined Boyd's mind world as a giant spider's web, with Boyd's house at the centre.
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