Bowling on Human Element

Former Infinity Ward man Robert Bowling outlines his next endeavour {Human Element} at the recently founded Robotoki to Gamereactor's David Caballero. He talks of idea of creating a universe first and them moving on to developing mechanics for the proposed 2015 release on PC and consoles - he also explains how different versions of the game for tablets and smartphones will work with the "first person experience".

On his view on what game design is in this day and age:

"We live in an age of game design right now. Where we are not limited or restricted by the same things that we had in the past on how we distribute games, how we design games, and what we're designing games for, because in the past we really were mechanic focused.

"You know, okay we're making a shooter, for consoles or PC, so we're talking about that mouse to computer interface, but really we have so much more open to us nowadays. We have things like Smartglass technology, we have stuff like mobile to TV interfaces that we can use in our design.

On what {Human Element} is all about:

"{Human Element} as a whole is a first person survival game, now the thing is the story of the game takes place 35 years after the event. And that event happens to be a zombie apocalypse, but this not a zombie game, because in this world, it's 35 years after, we know how to deal with zombies. They're slow, they're stupid, they're immobilise themselves long before they get to us. What we're examining is the fall of society. That {Human Element} behind the apocalypse. The survivors who are strong enough and smart enough to kill us to take what we want and survive.

So we're really looking at providing you with the tools to survive the way you want to survive. Not everyone is action focused, not everyone wants to fight for what they want. Some people if you're fighting at the hardest difficulty and you're an adult with a child you want to avoid confrontation, you want to rebuild society, you want to create fortifications, you're taking a more intelligent approach to the apocalypse, but you still have to deal with all these elements in the world. The action focused guys, the stealth focused guys, and I think that diversity of player really adds to the depth and excitement of what the {Human Element} world is."

You can watch the full interview right here.