Salvation Interview
Online Information & More

We Recently got a chance to ask a few of the guys from newly formed, Black Wing Foundation, who are currently working on Xbox 360 and PC shooter, Salvation.

For those who aren’t in the know, what is Black Wing’s history and future aims?

As a group of people who started to work together on a common project, we exist from late fall 2006. Everybody was linked to media industry, in particular with computer and video games, movies and television. After taking part in a string of small episodic projects we decided to found our own company specialized in game development as primary business and a number of small other sub-directions to develop. Company has been actively working for the last 12 months and now runs a number of activities such as game development, producing and outsourcing.

As for the plans, we are up to developing existing trademarks – Salvation is the major one, but we have also some still unannounced ones. We’ll also continue to expand our presence inside and outside the country and plan to open representative offices in Europe and possibly UK. The main task for us now is to ship Salvation next year in the best quality possible.

We’ll also introduce you a few spin-offs based on that universe and a couple of small art-house games we plan to release till the end of the year.

Again for those that haven’t heard, whats the background on Salvation?

Salvation as an idea was hovering in the air for a while now and a lot of time and efforts were spent on the preproduction. We have also prepared materials for the books and movie script has been already finished and now is being pitched to the number of movie companies.

Salvation has a pretty deep story going on; it’s nice to see developers try something really adventurous. How come you guys didn’t start out with something that’s a bit more ‘common’ in gaming?

As you may guessed, the team’s experience in movies and television has influenced the game and what we have here in development is a great story-driven game with interesting gameplay and a number of interesting innovative solutions. The story is complicated, with a lot of plot twists and be prepared to reveal throughout the game progress that things are not what they seemed to be and neither side is a classic “good guys”.

As for the more “common” games, - the team has experience in the industry from 4+ years for each member and everybody participated in shipped projects. We had enough time for preproduction, know our edge and perfectly understand when to say “We can do it”.

We’ve seen a few real cities in the game. How many will be in the final game?

There are Sky Tokyo, Moscow, Berlin, London, Budapest and Prague. I’ll keep the few remaining ones as secret for now, all for the sake of a later surprise =).

Your site says that Salvation has 20 bosses and this seems like a high number. This kind of indicates that the game is long, Roughly how long are you aiming to make Salvation?

Yep, we have about 20 bosses, all of them are unique and story connected, though they are kind of frequent. We are planning to make Salvation about 10 hours long, which is not very long, but what we can promise – very rich. Like a good action movie.

The game has been announced for Xbox 360 and the PC. Do you have plans to bring Salvation to any other systems?

We are not really sure now. It’s possible to develop on other platforms but that would surely affect the team’s structure and terms.

Salvation looks like it’s going to a story driven game. Have you at Black Wing been influenced by similar story driven games such as Bioshock? If yes, in what way? Also what other games have influenced Salvation?

Bioshock is a great game and we really like it. I can also say that Gears of War and Halo influenced us in a definite manner. What we would like to bring to the game is a rich and interesting world which is in some kind a character itself, deep story with great dramatic characters – who are not plastic dolls, but people with their own personal dramas and hidden undercover metaphorical message in the game that I’d like to keep silent about for now =) The game has a lot of symbolic, hidden questions and yes, answers, and things that can be revealed by those who would like to do that.

The game features two different characters. Are there any plans for a split-screen co-op mode or possibly even an online co-op feature?

There are two playable characters and one you shall play episodically. As for the main story line, you play Narumi and Thor from episode to episode, uncovering the story with different methods and perusing different aims, basically.

Multi player wise what are we talking here? How many people, what modes, anything else unique?

As for the multiplayer it will introduce main characters and also enemies you have encountered in the game + their weapons and abilities. It will have three modes – Death Match, Team Death Match and special mode “Opposition”.

How early in the development cycle is the game?

We are to have a vertical slice soon and start level production.

Whats the release window you’re looking to hit at the moment? Will we be seeing a demo version on Xbox Marketplace?

We would like to release the game in Q2 2009 and are determined to bring out a playable demo one month before the game will be ready to ship.

We At Nidzumi would like to thank the guys at Black Wing for their time. Check out the Black Wing Foundation Site for news on Salvation and more.