After a nervous wait late last year, it was recently confirmed Australia will be getting F.E.A.R. 2 uncut, just the way the developers wanted. Earlier this week, we were invited to Sydney to spend some time with Primary Art Lead at Monolith, Dave Matthews, to find out what's in store for gamers who like a bit of a scare, and who want to spend some more time with Alma, who's back, and still scary.

With video camera in hand, we found out all about those mechs, some new enemies lurking in Auburn, and Dave finally took the wraps off the game's multiplayer details.
Download the Games On Net F.E.A.R. 2 Interview

As you can tell, Dave is passionate about this title, and we got a chance to chat with him a bit while the cameras weren't rolling. He explained that while there are a lot of similarities, there are also a lot of differences between the original F.E.A.R. and this new sequel, and a major one is the use of a new engine to run the game. The original "Jupiter EX" engine has been retired, replaced totally with a new one, developed by Monolith which - excitingly - can be used to work on games for all three platforms (PC, PS3 and Xbox 360) at once, rather than needing to outsource the non-PC versions. We had a chance to check out both the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game and they seemed pretty much interchangeable, and Dave explained that while there will be some differences between the three different platforms, they will be "very very similar, very synonymous" with each other. This new engine has also helped contribute to the accessible specs of the sequel, making up for the original game's "system hogging" tendencies, and making F.E.A.R. 2 a lot more accessible.

Genevieve Aristide

The new Lithtech engine also means that some of the more horror elements can be heightened - Dave explained that while certain events are triggered or scripted, many are more organic and fluid, using the more intelligent AI capabilities. He mentioned that certain gameplay styles will see a totally different experience than others - meandering through corridors, you may start to see parts of Spectres appearing in the shadows, while rushing straight through may mean they will not be created in that gaming session.

The Spectres are just one of several new enemies to be featured in F.E.A.R. 2 in addition to the Replicas. The Spectres are people who had a greater psychic ability than most, when the explosion hit. Their physical bodies were "expunged", according to Dave - leaving these ghost-like creatures that are powered by rage. They float around in various areas, and once you come across them, they will lure you to a new location, which is somehwere they feel safe enough to attack. There is also the Abomination, which is (surprise surprise) another Armacham experiment gone bad, and they hang out in the lab missions.

Alma

My favourite, however, was the Remnant, who are a sort of puppetmaster character, stuck in a behavioural loop in the place where they were when the explosion happened. Dave explains that there may be an old lady sitting on a park bench throwing out bread for the ducks - and then the camera pans out to show that the ground around her is covered in dead birds; perhaps there may be a businessman standing on a street corner hailing a taxi - while there is a cab parked right next to him, in flames. The version we saw was of a music teacher, trapped for eternity playing out a short melody on a piano to an empty classroom. On the surface, the Remnants are a bit weird, but not all that scary - until they are disturbed. That's when they snap out of their trance-like state, and start to re-animate the dead bodies that you've just been working hard to kill. Suddenly, the enemies littered around you come back to life and start to attack you again - giving you a choice: kill the undead (and keep killing them), or try to get to the Remnant itself - killing the master will cause all the puppets to drop.

Community input is a major part of what makes Monolith and indeed the F.E.A.R. universe so special, and this was made very obvious by the "Name Your Fear" competition run by the developers in mid-2007. To recap - while Monolith owned Alma, Paxton, Point Man, Armacham and all of the story elements, they did not own the "F.E.A.R." title rights, which were kept by former publisher Sierra. To get around this, Monolith ran a competition to find out what the competition wanted as the title for their next supernatural spook-fest. The winning title - Project Origin was adopted as the name of the game, and when title rights were acquired back from Sierra, the fan-made label was kept on, as a subtitle. Another short-listed title, Dark Signal also appears in the game, as the name of the Delta Force squad Becket is a part of. The ingame 'Deep Throat' type character, Snake Fist, also took his name from a community submission, and various other titles pop up from time to time, incorporated into the game.


According to Dave, the Monolith crew have whiteboards full of bits and pieces about character development, plots and subplots, back-stories for virtually every character and everything it is possible to know about the F.E.A.R. world. He explained:

"Will we continue the universe of F.E.A.R.? I think it's up to the community to help us decide..."

If you'd like to re-visit Alma and the little town of Auburn in F.E.A.R. 2, stick around. The playable PC demo is out right now, and the full game reaches our shores for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 on Friday, February 13th (they say the date's just a coincidence).

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Like last time, our interview with Dave Matthews is a pretty hefty HD video that runs 400+MB. If that's a bit much for you, or you're not on an Internode plan which makes all our downloads unmetred, then we do also have a small version, a lower-quality copy of the video, which is a tenth of the size.

Also like last time, we're very interested in your feedback. Let us know what you think of these video features - if you like 'em, we'll do more!