Hydrophobia: Radical Technology, Profound Narrative

by Patrick Steen on September 23, 2008 at 9:46 am

Who’d think the developer who brought us snooker sims could also bring us a game as technologically exciting and narratively intriguing as Hydrophobia. Blade Interactive are the folks to do so, who had a successful yet muted showing at this years E3.

Featuring a real-time fluid dynamics engine, in Hydrophobia water isn’t only there to be pretty, it’s there to either aid or obstruct: water is your friend and foe. In a new interview over at PS3Attitude, Blade Interactive’s Rob Hewson and Pete Jones reveal the game’s exciting cover system that allows the lead character, Kate Wilson, to shoot from moving objects floating on water:

Floating cover gives you a platform to shoot from in the water, but you can also duck your head beneath the surface to hide from Malthusians as you float down stream… of course Kate can’t hold her breath forever.

Game designer Rob Hewson continues to describe how they managed to get such a complex gameplay system to work:

We are using an excellent procedural animation system and that really helps the situation because there are so many different kinds of floating cover, and Kate has to be incredibly agile in the water around floating cover. With the water being completely dynamic, a traditional animation system would not have given us the scope and flexibility to achieve what we have done.

Being driven by technology, you’d think the game’s narrative would be left wanting. Thankfully this is not the case, with Blade Interactive concentrating heavily on its story to avoid disappointment. Hydrophobia is set in a dystopian future where water levels have risen so much as to drown much of the world’s cities. This flood breeds poverty and human rights drown in a sea of desperation.

As Kate Wilson, a Security Engineer onboard a floating city home to the powerful and wealthy, you must fight your way past Malthusian terrorists (named after political economist Thomas Malthus who predicted population growth to eventually outstrip agricultural production) and escape the sinking supership they bombed. Rob Hewson elaborates on the importance of having a credible narrative:

Hydrophobia has its own heart and soul, when you pick up the game we want you to get the feeling of discovering a brand new universe, not fighting yet another improbable alien invasion, or facing off against the Nazis yet again… we want you to think wow, this is a world I’d never imagined before, and we want you to feel that it’s relevant to the world we live in today.

For the rest of the interview please follow this link to PS3Attitude, where you can read up on the game’s story, philosophy, and neo-Malthusian terrorists who have no regard for human life: “Save the world, kill yourself.”